Scott Ritter Speech Sparks More Iraq War Debate

[DUreader]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1125-08.htm



Former United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter spoke to an audience of
about 300 Northwestern students and community members Monday night, sparking
more than an hour of discussion and debate.

The Muslim-cultural Students Association hosted the lecture, "Iraq: A Case Study in
the Failure of American Foreign Policy." Ritter started his speech by warning the
audience in McCormick Auditorium the lecture was "not going to be an easy dialogue
or discussion," and took a strong stance against U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

Ritter repeatedly emphasized the failure of U.S.
involvement in Iraq under the Bush administration.
He criticized the administration for losing the war in
Iraq and lying about the basis of the war to the
American people. He also condemned U.S. citizens
for not questioning the government's policies.

"The president says he knows there are chemical
weapons in Iraq," Ritter said, "and yet nobody asked,
'How do you know, Mr. President?' and no one asked
what the basis for these assertions was."

[Brucey]

1. He's mostly right.

Some people did ask and were told that it was classified. Same thing in UK. Most of us knew that WMDs was not the reason for the invasion. Senators who claim they were misled are either ignorant or lying.

[blm]

2. In fairness, Ritter did testify at a hearing in 98

and told Kerry that there were WMDs and capabilities to advance them. That was part of the intel package.

It is likely that the bombings that Clinton ordered then wiped out those WMDs, but without further inspections, there was no way of being certain.

[aneerkoinos]

6. In reality

I'm not sure if Ritter told there were still banned weapons or that some were still unaccounted for - note the differencd. Got a link?

But in reality, there was nothing, Saddam did get rid of everything, so Clinton didn't wipe out anything, only killed some innocent people. He was part of the hoax with Bush I, Majos and Blair to distort intelligence, undermine UN and lie to the world, so they could illegally keep bombing Iraq and not have to lift sanctions.

[sandnsea]

8. Some on Ritter; You have a link?

If you have some information that there weren't any weapons in 1998 so Clinton couldn't have destroyed them, I'd like to see that link.

I can't find the full testimony for some reason, but here's various links and also a page with a variety of links going back to 1998.
http://www.nci.org/sadb.htm

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1998_h/ws915981.htm

http://www.cnsnews.com/indepth/archive/199812/IND19981210c.html

"The only way to turn it around is for the United States to carry out its promise that it would support the weapons inspectors wholeheartedly," Ritter told CNS. "This means that the US has to be willing to apply the amount of military force required to compel Iraq to agree with the inspections. If that means putting in enough forces to include ground troops to threaten the regime of Saddam Hussein, so be it. We can't keep backing away from holding this man accountable."

"If the components of the implosion device are operational, if they have not been damaged through moving them around the country and hiding them from the inspection teams, and the fissile core is of the correct properties, it's a matter of days, maybe weeks before they could be assembled into a device."
http://www.nci.org/t/t91598.htm

[Media_Lies_Daily]

10. This may be what you're asking about in terms of 1995...

Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed
<http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.html>

"On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis. In a revelation that 'raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist,' the magazine's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims."

[sandnsea]

12. Something with credibility

Not the word of a defector. Other defectors told us alot of things that weren't true also.

Ritter said there were weapons in 1998 and then changed his story. Every agency that deals with these weapns in any way expressed their belief that Saddam had weapons. There is just no way a responsible Senator can ignore all of that.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

18. Well, he was the darling of the conservatives because of the....

...information he had already passed on. Here's another quote from the article:

"Kamel's defection has been cited repeatedly by George W. Bush and leading administration officials as evidence that 1) Iraq has not disarmed; 2) inspections cannot disarm it; and 3) defectors such as Kamel are the most reliable source of information on Iraq's weapons."

But the minute he claimed that all of the weapons had actually been destroyed in 1991, that's when they turned on him.

Here's the truth of the issue in a nutshell...have we found any WMDs
to date? Could it be because they just don't exist?

[aneerkoinos]

13. Operations Rockingham (UK) and Office of Special Plans (US)

Here's Michael Meecher, minister in Blair governement until quite recently, on operation Rockinham, citing Ritter:

"Operation Rockingham cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD Unscom was showing the opposite."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1090082,00.html


As you must be aware, proving a negative is very difficult, but the UN got very close two times, both (1998 and 2003) times they were pulled out by US and UK before inspectors could state that Iraq was clear of banned weapons. This is logical question: why the need for intelligence spinning if there really was banned weapons left in Iraq after 1992-95?

All I can see Ritter saying IF in 1998. And that was his job at UN, to find the stuff if it was hidden, account if it had been destroyed, and declare Iraq clear once the job was finished so the sanctions could be lifted. What you see is a guy dedicated to his job and wanting to finish it. Ritter knew not to trust Clinton, Gore and Allbright, he knew they had been spinning the intelligence on Iraq; admitted being fool to trust and vote Bush and Cheney, perhaps he should have voted Green or Libertarian...

[durutti]

7. Read Frontier Justice

He does a good job of defending what he said then.

[phirili]

3. DEAN WAS MISLED ON IRAQ WAR IN HIS OWN WORDS:

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, another Democratic contender, followed Mr. Kerry's lead yesterday with a similar accusation on NBC's "Meet the Press in June."
"We were misled," Mr. Dean said. "The question is, did the president do that on purpose or was he misled by his own intelligence people?"

[xchrom]

4. bushco lied about the war

and ritter is only emphasizing the fact.
it's a bitter truth -- but the people will have to swallow it. bush lied and people died. those assholes knew there were no weapons -- i'm not even sure it was uncommon knowledge that iraq didn't have those damned weapons.

[aneerkoinos]

15. And how were they able to pull their lie of?

Because it was not only bushco lying. Also Clinton and Blair had been lying about the stuff since the beginning, and very few had the intellect or balls to question these lies from the beginning.

It was a very compelling argument that both Blair and Bush II used ad nauseam, and the war would not have happened without it: "We know Saddam has been lying to UN until now, why would he have stopped lying?" In fact, it was Saddam who had been telling the truth since about 1992 and US and UK had been lying since that and having almost everybody believing, so the war was relatively easy to sell after Reichstag of 9/11. Nobody (but Ritter, Ekeneus & few others) could show their bluff, because those who knew, were part of the lie.

[bpilgrim]

17. Corporate Media

played a large role as well.

peace

[4_Legs_Good]

5. I had a speech of Ritter's which I put on CD and distributed

to a bunch of people before the war. Some pro-War folks said, that they just didn't agree with him. I don't understand how *any* of them could not eat their words now as every point he made was dead on correct. It's like saying, well yeah, maybe they're the facts, but I just can't agree with them.

Keep it up Mr. Ritter. You should be on every media outlet available as the man who told the truth while George Jr. was busy lying to us.

david

[RainDog]

11. Is there anyway for others, say, uh, me, to get a copy?

I've heard quite a few cds from a guy I know who's gotten them from conferences-- different speakers, etc.

I would LOVE to be able to get copies of these sorts of things.

as far as the Iraq invasion issue...on one point, I have no doubt that anyone who wanted to know in the legislature could know that Saddam did not have the capacity for nuclear weapons before bush's invasion, nor the capacity to have them any time in the near future because my rep told a man this very thing at a town hall meeting in Oct 02, in response to this man's concern about his son stationed in Turkey (and possibly in danger from any nukes.)

last week someone told me his wife was working at the U.N. at the time when Ritter started saying there were no WMD and this guy said that everyone at the UN assumed Ritter had been bought off.

I said...hmmm...why would they think that when the info they were getting from Blix and the IAEC and other intelligence sources did not support the Cheney/Wolfie/Rummy/Feith bottle of the shot glass, or is that belly-button gazing? intelligence analysis.

He just kept saying...everyone at the UN thought...and I didn't get a chance to ask him who "everyone" was, but I thought it was an interesting comment, and one that this man has no doubt told others, tho I told him that I was convinced, before the invasion that Saddam did not have the weapons capacity that Bush stated, with the idea, of course, that my info could be limited, so I always kept open the idea that I could be wrong, based upon the availability of info.

It is simply heinous that the Bush thugs lied to put us in the middle of a mess which makes the entire world, and esp. the US, more at risk of actual terrorist threats.

for that alone the man and his neo-con "true believers" should be kicked out of the White House so that some people with a grasp of reality could keep the country from further damage by these nutcases.

[glitch]

16. plenty of audio at radio4all.net

if you don't mind listening to mp3 -

http://www.radio4all.net/search.php

enter Scott Ritter in the search box and you'll get almost 20 recordings of his speeches and interviews.

[0007]

9. I would like to see Scott Ritter lecture at every major University...

in the U.S. with Michael Moore to follow a week after then Al Franken a week after that.

I can dream can't I?

[Petrodollar Warfare]

14. Check out his book "Frontier Justice"...

.. I read it in 1 day, and it is quite good. Scott is a patriot.

[Ernesto]

19. Works for me

Semper Fi Scott

[Sticky]

20. Watch this video of Scott Ridder on BBC

He absolutely nails it!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/3171186.stm