"George Galloway and Larry Johnson Talk Ukraine and Russia on MOATS"
by Larry Johnson
sonar21.com (July 29, 2023)
https://sonar21.com/george-galloway-and-larry-johnson-talk-ukraine-and-russia-on-moats/

Larry Johnson, Intro: "I always relish the chance to share a chat with the legendary George Galloway. He is the quintessential iconoclast and I am flattered he thinks I can contribute something of value to his broadcast. George has a regular show now on You Tube. He knows cancel culture up close and personal and has continued to fight the machine. (As a side note, George is 5 months my senior)."

George Galloway: "Before we go to the War directly -- though I believe indirectly -- my question does relate to the war: How long can the U.S. public tolerate being led by men, not so much because of their age -- Mick Jagger is 80 and still moving silth-like -- but men whose brains have gone, have melted? How long can the US public tolerate this?"

0:48 Larry Johnson: "You know, George, you and I have seen this before. This was the sclerotic last days of the Soviet Union when you had Gromyko, Brezhnev, these empty shells of old men who had fought valiantly in World War Two but they were used up. America has become what the Soviet Union was. And on so many aspects. Both the persecution of political prisoners, suppression of free speech, and being led by a bunch of doddering idiots."

1:23 George Galloway: "Yeah. It must be time for new people, Larry. Surely everyone can that, including their own parties."

1:34 Larry Johnson: "The state of politics in the United States right now is broken. The disfunction is so great. The Democrat[ic] Party used to be the party of the working class, of the blue-collar folks. But they have abandoned the blue-collar folks. And simiarly, the Republicans who always had a reputation of being with the country club crowd, those who were members of exclusive clubs, they still sort of retained that. And then you have Donald Trump, as a populist attracting a broad base of support of the former working class blue-collar types. And they are shunned and feared."

"So, what you would hope would be like a normal market activity, it's not. The process is rigged. It is controlled and structured in such a way that it makes it difficult for anyone to clear the [ballot] threshold. And that is why -- I'm not a rabid Trump supporter by any measure -- but this is why they are trying to destroy Trump, because he is so outside-the-box of the traditional politial parties, both Republican and Democrat."

2:53 George Galloway: "Both Trump and Kennedy have every reason to want to smash that box. And the question is: Can The Box allow either, or maybe even both of them, to win?"

3:08 Larry Johnson: "Oh, no. At some point, what's going on in the United States is going to come crashing down. We cannot continue to maintain this facade of a house of cards pretending that it is a house of stone. Just look at what is happening to government spending, into the trillions of dollars. In the past we got away with that because we could borrow money from the rest of the world. But now we've managed to alienate the majority of the population of the world, if you count China, India, Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia. All of a sudden the United States is facing the possibility of being isolated itself. Its "International Rules-based Order" is coming unglued. It is no longer going to be able to call the shots and bully other countries as it has over the last fifty years."

4:07 George Galloway: "Absolutely. Now let's turn to the war, Larry, where your where your great expertise will be valuable. Every time I look at the war map now, it's not Ukraine that's advancing, it's the Russian forces breaking through lines. Sometimes 5 or 10 kilometers in a matter of days. It's not yet a rout, but it's beginning to look like an accelerated period of substantial advance by the Russians. Has that dawned on the security and intelligence establishment in Washington yet? And if so, what are they going to do about it? "

4:53 Larry Johnson: "Not yet. In fact, you've seen sort of a coordinated messaging. You've had Joe Biden, who's demented; Antony Blinken, who's not, both saying the same thing the other day: Russia has lost. And that was echoed by one of your own countrymen, Sir Lawrence Friedman, who wrote an article stipulating that 'Russia has lost' and 'Putin has lost.' I look at all three gentlemen and say: They need to go back to school and learn what the meaning of the word 'Lost' is. Because Russia is not losing in terms of casualties. It's not losing its ability to produce weapons systems. Just the opposite. It's out-producing NATO itself, outproducing the United States. It's not languishing in terms of forging new relationships with countries that are outside the sphere of US control: particularly a de facto military and economic alliance with China. So, by whatever definition or measure of "losing" you want to come up with, the only ones losing are not only Ukraine, but Sir Lawrence let it slip at the end of his article. What terrifies him, and what has most of the West terrified in terms of the political leadership is that WHEN Russia wins this, not IF, but WHEN Russia wins this, it will represent an existential threat to NATO. NATO will probably not continue to exist as we know it."

6:29 George Galloway: "Now, do you have a view on the thesis I advanced in my monologue -- and I reprise it in case you didn't hear it -- that the war will now move south, as it were. That the advance in the Donbas is now certain right up to Dniepro, and that might be the demarcation line, to use a Korean parallel. And perhaps the only thing that remains of importance to Russia is to liberate Odessa and take the coastline, and render the stump state of Western Ukraine landlocked and make the Black Sea a Russian sea. It seems to me that there is an ineluctable logic about that." What do you think?

7:34 Larry Johnson: "I agree with you. In the aftermath of the termination of the grain deal, Russia has effectively embargoed that port. It has bombed it and made it impossible for normal shipping activity to go on there. And when this war ends, Russia will be in control of all territory in Ukraine that is to the immediate east of the Dnieper and it will be in control -- and retake -- Odessa. Putin and his generals are not going to negotiate away Odessa because it is so integral to Russian history. And not just during Soviet times but predating Soviet times."

8:31 "But what we have seen is that Russia is not tipping off its hand. In stark contrast to Ukraine and NATO who kept saying: 'Boy, there is going to be a grand counter-offensive coming. And it's coming soon. Maybe in June.' They kept announcing it in advance. Russia doesn't announce anything in advance. It just moves. It acts."

8:55 George Galloway: [something about the really Hard Man who if he really were hard he would just walk up and do it and not publicly mouth off about it] "On the principle of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, there's only so many times, but to mix the metaphor as Mrs Thatcher once said -- as I don't often say -- You can't make a souffle rise twice. So, to call it a Spring Counter Offensive, a Summer Counter Offensive, 'oh no, wait, the Real Counter Offensive is about to start.' You begin to look ridiculous.

9:41 Larry Johnson: "It's akin to a failed Hollywood stratetgy. ... And that's exactly what is happening in Ukraine, only this time we're not talking about entertainment, something as trivial as a movie. We're talking about the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers. The equipment that was supplied by Britain and France, by Germany and the United States is being chewed up as if an iron eating monster was consuming it with a ravaging appetite, taking it all in and scattering it about the fields of Ukraine. And they have no answer. Their only answer is they continue to throw men up against these Russian lines that are well-entrenched, well defended. And they're paying a terrible, terrible price. It's really catastrophic the losses of human beings, Ukrainian human beings in this case. And the Immoral West, frankly, is enabling this. They're allowing this to go forward because their entire plan consisted of banking on Ukraine as the wedge they were going to use to drive into Russia and cause Russia to split apart. "

11:20 George Galloway: "Larry, they're running out of Ukrainians, no? I mean, they've already drafted 16- to 60-year olds. They're drafting people with physical and even mental disabilities -- I saw some videos of one unfortunate man with clearly mental disabilities being drafted. They are literally pouncing on people who thought they were in a reserved occupationand dragging them off. The richest Ukrainians can be found, I can assure you, driving the most expensive cars around some of the most chic parts of Europe far from the front. They're running out of Ukrainians to feed into the mincing machine

12:12 Larry Johnson: "You're absolutely right. This is -- I don't know if you've ever heard of a movie with Michael Keaton called Multiplicity -- but it was premised on the notion that they would take some of his genes, his DNA, and reproduced him. But with each generation of reproduction, the quality of the individual deteriorated. It became less, not better. Until, by the third iteration, it was severely mentally handicapped. Well, that's what's happening to the Ukrainian Army. The Army that existed and stood intact in February of 2022 is gone. And what was important about February 2022, even though Ukraine was not a member of NATO, it represented the second largest Army in NATO as a de facto member. The United States was Number One. Ukraine was Number Two in terms of troop size. Turkey Number Three. If you put the armies of the United Staes, Turkey, and Ukraine together, that represents, easily, 80-85% of the manpower of all of NATO. Which puts all of this into context."

13:24 "So now what has happened with the deaths of the senior generals, senior officers -- colonels -- and by the deaths of the senior non-commissioned officers, they're being replaced by younger inexperienced people at each go-round. This offense represents the third iteration of these troops. So now they're going to have to rebuild a FOURTH Army. They don't have the time. They don't have the manpower. They don't have the secure places to do the training. They are in a death spiral. And it is time for the world to come to grips with that. Because once Ukraine collapses, the collapse of NATO is the most likely next step."

14:08 George Galloway: "Finally, Larry, and I'm grateful for your time. I'd be the last person to hold a candle for the CIA or MI-6. I've been opposed to both of them for all of my life. And they to me, if they had ever heard of me. The one thing I never thought about either of them was that they were dumb. I assumed that clever people like you were in these agencies. If that were so, or if it was so, what do they think about? Because presumably, although they feed lies to the public, I work on the assumption that they don't feed lies to their own government. They must be in possession of the kind of intelligence that you have, the kind of publicly available intelligence that sensible people have already grasped. So what is it that they are telling their government? And what do they think of their government apparently completely ignoring what they're being told?"

15:22 Larry Johnson: "Are you familiar with the cartoon Dilbert? It's about a chubby bureaucrat who is always getting into trouble. Unfortunately, some people harbor the image of either the CIA or MI-6 as Pierce Brosnan or Sean Connery. But, really, it's Dilbert. And what it is is a bureaucrcy that sets the kind of incentives that people will do stupid things. ... [stuff about Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina and not seeking intelligence about Hezbolla as possible perpetrators] ... and my word to you is that attitude, that kind of obtuseness remains within the CIA. It has gotten worse over the years. Right now, any smart CIA officer that tried to write an analytical piece pointing out that there is no way Ukraine can win this and that Russia is not going to allow any other outcome than a Russian victory, that analyst would be run out of the building. Because the bureaucracy does not want to hear that. So, it has become its own sort of choir. It sings to itself. Preaches to itself. And without actually being forced to come to grips with reality."

17:11 [End of Interview]