This is a war of aggression, so it's a war crime.

And that is that they moved in an armored column. Same thing happened in Ukraine initially. They know they're a lot smarter than that now. They moved in an armored column into Lebanon across the Latani River and in more or less administrative road march, there was hardly 15, 20 meters between the macavas, the Israeli main battle tank and they had no top cover whatsoever. You will not see a Russian or a Ukrainian tank in Ukraine moving without top cover now. It may be fabricated, it may be welded on, it may be jury rigged to the maximum, but it works and it works against principally drones. Nothing on the Israeli tanks. And so they moved in and I'm watching this video. The first tank is knocked out by a drone. Now, imagine this is Israel's best main battle tank. This is supposed to be one of the best in the world.

And here's this little drone up there knocking it out, but it didn't just knock out the lead tank very effectively. It knocked out the trailing tank. And then it started picking off the tanks in the middle. And then you watched the vaunted Israeli Hummered core personnel leaving their tanks and running up the hill of the opposite side because they were being slaughtered.

And this is happening, not so much now because they've learned their lesson, but it's happening and it's happening in a similar fashion, asymmetric fashion, in Iran in terms of other assets. What are they using their drones for? They're using them when their bigger missiles or their intelligence tells them that they've either destroyed with their missiles or they have found a place that's not very well protected by, I'll say the enemies' missiles, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, the United States and then the drones go in and do their habit because there's no air defense really capable of bringing them down.

And it doesn't take much to bring a drone down unless it's really, really sophisticated. And these are not those kinds of drones, at least the majority of them aren't. And then what they do when there is capability there, they send in bigger stuff like Khorramshahr and more sophisticated missiles.

It's very carefully orchestrated to not expend the asset if you can help it and yet use it. They're doing the same thing in Israel right now and really doing some damage to Israel, colossal damage from what I've seen in the satellite photos—they are coming in with drones, whereas they wouldn't initially come in with drones because they'd be shot down. Well, what they've done is come in with drones periodically and exhausted the Israeli missiles that are principally air defense missiles, either ours like Thaad or Patriot or theirs like David's Sling and so forth.

Once those missiles were exhausted or down to such low supplies that the Israelis dare not shoot a lot of them, then the drones operated with impunity pretty much. But before that, they sent the Khorramshahrs in and the more sophisticated missiles, ballistic missiles, especially this one that they have that almost has like a MIRV warhead on it, like our nuclear missiles. It's not nuclear, of course, but what it does, they call it a cluster missile, but I don't think that's the right name for it. I think calling it a missile with multiple warheads, if you will, because what it does is it comes in at a certain altitude, preset on it, it explodes its nose cone and out comes 30 or 40 other submunitions that go all around in a circle and very much damage done inside that circle. And they fired a lot of these missiles.

So asymmetric for them and to go back to your earlier comment, to say that we've destroyed their Navy is to say nothing really, because they don't have a significant Navy. The significant Navy they do have, we have not totally destroyed and that's the real small, fast boats. But in terms of big ships, they don't have a Navy, not really. They don't have an Air Force either because even the F-14s that they got under the Shah, which were being husbanded by them, couldn't get repair parts because of our sanctions. So they don't really have an Air Force. So when you say asymmetric, you're saying, "Well, we are already up a country that doesn't have an Air Force and doesn't have a Navy, not really. " Now they do have an army and that army is huge. It's probably four, five, maybe six times as large as our army.

(11:51)
So if we ever do put significant boots on the ground, look for a real battle there. And I dare say they would probably win it because we simply don't have enough boots. The thing where they really, really have capability is their ballistic missiles. Awesome capability, because they probably haven't exhausted even half of them yet of all types, ranges, warheads and so forth. And Israel is being absolutely pummeled. And to a certain extent, the first tier target set within the Arab countries, which Iran attacked about a week ago, Bahrain being one of the targets where they destroyed the oldest refinery in the Gulf with just quintessential, incredible precision. I couldn't believe that they probably have—my guess and this is more than a guess because I have it from some people inside who tell me that it very well might be true—China has put a satellite up, a very special satellite, kind of like the satellite, but probably even more sophisticated than we gave Ukraine access to in order—if you'll recall back there a few months ago where Ukraine actually attacked very, very dangerously, some Soviet nuclear response equipment.

Really, we should never have done that, of course, because Putin would've been within his right to respond to that and even to respond with an attack on our early warning systems or something similar tit for tat, if you will. Very dangerous thing to do. But the way they were able to do that, Ukraine, was with our satellite guidance.

Well, that's what's being provided by China now to some of these Iranian missiles and targeting and intelligence. And the second tier that they're going to hit, if the ceasefire and the talks in Islamabad don't work—and I don't think they're going to, it's all farce really—this second tier is targets throughout the region that don't have any circumspection attached. In other words, they're going to take out Saudi Arabia's basic fundamental capability to produce oil and to ship it. They're going to do the same thing for the other countries and they're going to do similar things for regional powers like Jordan, Iraq, other places where they know Mossad, CIA, MI6 have facilities or have war fighting potential war stocks or whatever.

They're going to hit them all. I'll give you an example. The two ports they have targeted in Saudi Arabia will take down about eight, nine percent of the production capacity of Saudi Arabia. That's a heck of a lot when you think about it. Not only will it not be able to get out of the Strait of Hormuz or over to Jeddah on the Red Sea on their pipeline, it won't be there. It'll be flaming, it'll be burning. And so will the facilities and so will all the workers around there. They haven't done this to this point, but if they do do this, I've talked to some economists who say it's very likely the world will be in recession by the end of June and perhaps even depression by September or October if they do this because this will be absolutely devastating. Talk about asymmetric. I don't know what we'll do about that.

I'm really worried that we'll do something stupid, truly stupid.

And while I'm saying that about doing something truly stupid, professor Ted Postal, emeritus professor at MIT and a person whom I respect for his knowledge of nuclear weapons and particularly respect with regard to Iran, believes there's at least a 70, 60 chance. And if it's over 50, I'm going to plan for it, that Iran has underground plenty of highly enriched uranium, already has warhead capability and has the missile to match the uranium and the warhead with. So he's saying that they have a latent nuclear capability deep underground and they have labs in which to do all this deep underground, and that at some point in this, it may become two nuclear armed states looking at one another, one of whom is tiny and the other vast. So if there's a nuclear exchange there, Israel's going to be on the losing end of the proposition.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Surely.

It could be Epstein, it could be a tremendous blackmail operation run by Mossad. I look back and I remember vividly (Colin) Powell's and my meeting with (Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman) Arafat in Ramallah right before Arafat passed away. And I remember his conversation about Tala farms and about the Oslo process and the shock that he registered with how quickly Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak, the then prime minister of Israel, terminated those talks. Shocked him and how quickly too—and this was even more indicative—how quickly too, the Israeli propaganda machine followed by the U.S. propaganda machine, began to operate almost within the moment of the talks failing to blame Arafat and the Arabs. So it looked like it was canned. It looked like it was already ready to go. Well, Barak was one of the most frequent visitors to Epstein's island and we all know Bill Clinton had a little problem too.

So I go back and look at that and try to explain to myself why those fairly successful talks to that point suddenly got derailed. And I'm thinking about blackmail and I'm thinking there's much more to Epstein than we will ever know. Even if we got full disclosure by justice and others, I'm not sure we would ever know all the things there are in those files and how many people are implicated in the Congress, in the government, in past governments. That would be a very powerful tool to use to create some agency in Trump that would look like absolute stupidity to a lot of us and even maniacal behavior. And yet it's understandable, I think, from a very vile perspective if there are powerful, powerful pictures or powerful evidence within those files about Melania and about Donald and perhaps a lot of other people too. So that's the only way I can explain it other than money.

Now, we all know that the president's the grifter in chief is what one person I know calls him. We know that Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, the whole clan are more interested in money than anything else. Kushner and Witkoff, for example, have never had a security clearance. They have never had a security clearance and yet they're dealing with the highest levels of national security and diplomacy associated there with, but they've never had a security clearance. They've never been through the process. So most of what they're doing when they go on their diplomatic jaunts is making money. By some measures, Jared Kushner has already agreed to with the Saudis or others about $200 billion in contracts. So that's a possibility, too, that money is at the root of all this and they don't give a hang about the nation. I don't think they do anyway, but it's hard to parse it without something giving you a reason why a president of the United States would provide agency for another power to the degree that he is doing it.

And we're going to find out just what degree that might be if we do wind up with some sort of threat to use nuclear weapons on either side of this war between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Iran and of course us involved too. So it's a dangerous situation, I think, because we really don't have a president. What we have is a person who's acting for other powers.

RUTHANNE BAUMGARTNER: Right.

And the world is now repulsed by us and gearing up to challenge us. Sixty percent of the world right now is probably on the other side, as it were. We're talking about a China with now-technological superiority, probably industrial base superiority and that means they can make ships a lot faster than we can, airplanes a lot faster than we can and so forth.

Other levels of superiority and what they call capitalism with Chinese characteristics and their latest pronouncement in a series of edicts from Deng Xiaoping all the way to Xi Jinping—with a little lull during Hu Jintao's time—which is why they got rid of him. They have put these edicts out and then fulfilled them. The latest one he issued has got no press in this country that I've detected and yet I was given a copy of it and was able to send it to Master Chas Freeman to make sure that Mandarin was translated properly because I was bowled over by it. And what it says in essence is, "We have come to be very powerful in all these aspects of state power, technology, military, industrial might and so forth. There's one we are not triumphant in yet. I am going to declare today that this will be the latest step in capitalism with Chinese characteristics. We're going to do the financial system."

And what he means is he's going to substitute the renminbi, the Chinese currency for the dollar. And he goes on in it to talk about how that'll get rid of SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), that'll get rid of the Bretton Woods system altogether—that will allow all the world to operate without being under U.S. sanctions.

We have two billion people plus under sanctions right now. Think about that for a minute. There's a report coming out. I've seen it. It's very believable, done by some reliable people that says from 2000 to the present day—actually it goes through end of '25—American sanctions have killed 38 million people in the world. That's right, 38 million people. Many of whom, in fact, a majority of whom—a small majority—are children and women. In Iraq alone, our sanctions killed about 500,000 people. Madeline Albright, once when she was informed of that said, "Well, it was worth it. We got rid of Saddam Hussein."

This is not something the world likes. And so Xi Jinping is now saying, "Okay, China, you guys who have flocked to me, you guys in BRICS, you guys who I'm giving you development money and such, I'm going to take care of this last aspect of state power—call financial power—and I'm going to make sure that I eliminate that beast on the other side of the Atlantic that's doing this to you." And I have no doubt he's serious. Serious. And oil sales are already, in real terms, they're already, and other commodities, are being delineated now, paid for and such in other currencies. The ruble, the rupee, the renminbi. And now what they're going to do is make sure the renminbi becomes the base currency. The transactional currency, the reserve currency, the one that the dollar is doing right now.

And they didn't want to do this. They debated it in the Central Party School and in other places of power in China because they knew what the pound sterling did to Britain. They knew what the guilder did to the Dutch empire, if you will. Having this kind of financial power usually goes to state's heads. It usually corrupts them. Look at us, for example. It usually makes them squander their wealth because they can do it a lot easier and a lot faster than other people can because people will buy their debt because their currency denominates the world's system.

But China's going to be ... If you believe Xi Jinping, they're going to be careful about it. They're going to do it, but they're going to be careful about it. They're going to try to not get in the state the British did and the state the Dutch did and empires before them. But this is going to be very, very difficult for us because with almost $40 trillion aggregate debt and a trillion dollars now, interest payments on that debt every year, within eight to nine years to be $2 trillion, much of that, about 50 percent right now, trillion-dollar debt, interest payments we have now, about 50 percent of that is defense spending.

So we are in trouble in terms of the budget and deep, deep trouble. A Republican congressman yesterday even surprised me. And he said, looking at the president's request for $200 billion more on top of $1.5 trillion already going to DOD, DOW. He said, "This is insanity. This is utter insanity. We have not spent this money in World War II. We did not spend this money in any given year in World War II. Why are we doing this?" This is a Republican congressman. Now, he doesn't mark the majority, but soon he will if we keep doing this.