Posted on 09/09/2002 8:02:00 AM PDT by elenchus
DOCUMENT: You’ll never guess who said this. 9/09 9:00 a.m.
National Review Online
Axis of Hypocrisy? Times have changed.
Compiled by Steven Eros and Sherry W. Eros, M.D.
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document090902.asp
QUESTION:
Who made the following statements suggesting that the U.S. take unilateral military action against Iraq?
The continued rule of Saddam Hussein poses a danger to the stability and security of the region. He has threatened his neighbors while doing everything possible to acquire weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of international law, even during the last several years, when subject to the most restrictive supervision in the history of international arms control.
The United States should be prepared to maintain Iraq's military containment unilaterally should the will of others falter.
if and when Saddam's regime crosses clearly drawn lines of appropriate behavior, particularly with regard to its weapons of mass destruction programs and its threats to other countries, the United States should punish it severely and effectively.
For several years the United States has responded to Iraqi provocations with more bluster than action; the precedent of Operation Desert Storm shows the reverse is a better strategy.
With his behavior incurring militarily insignificant penalties, Saddam may have concluded that he can continue to maneuver with relative impunity to heighten the contradictions in the allied coalition. This cat-and-mouse game should stop.
Forceful American action can and should build on multilateral consultation and a sense of purpose and necessity; it should not be conditioned on allied approval, but neither should the United States be perceived as ignoring allies' concerns or taking their support for granted.
ANSWER:
The foregoing statements are taken from an article authored by some of the principal accommodationist opponents of President Bush's strategy of regime change in Iraq: Brent Scowcroft; Zbigniew Brzezinski; Richard Murphy ("Differentiated containment," Foreign Affairs, May/Jun 1997).
They've removed their rose-colored glasses and seen the stark reality of the iminent potential for Saddam's attacking the rest of the planet, starting with Israel.
They see the slippery slope that Saddam is sliding on, hand in hand with Scott Ritter and whoever's left in Al Qaeda.
1. Cowardice. When they wrote this stuff in '97, they knew there was no chance these actions would be taken.
2. Notoriety. When you're a consultant going for the big bucks, there's no profit in saying what everybody else is saying. The big money comes from going against the flow.
S(l)ick Willie, DemonRAT Maximus Gluteus Maximus, who was in power in '97 and who had to distract, delay and hopefully derail impeachment in November '98 (when he got El Diablo D'Ashole and Little Dick Gimphardt to run back to Congress to support action in Iraq as long as it was done before Ramadan), is no longer in power.
The Q-card is current intelligence, ain't it?
And those guys don't have it and need to put up that disclaimer every time they go before the media -- before they condemn this administration.
Bovine excrement. The millisecond Israel feels threatened by Saddam is the millisecond Israel launches. Also, do you really think a third tier country with 25 million people can threaten the rest of the world?
Get a grip.
Given that much of the world is lead by El Diablo D'Ashole types, and that we're saddled with him running our Senate, yes.
Look what 19 ragheads did.
We're not going after Iraq; we're going after Saddam. That ONE MAN can threaten the stability of the Middle East, and has.
He won't be missed, especially by those 25 million Iraqis.
We're doing them a favor.
Well, we're going after Saddam and Iraq's WMD. If it were just a matter of taking out Hussein, we could do so fairly easily with some Spec Ops assassination units. But we need to secure and destroy Iraq's massive stores of WMD, some of which might be loaded on Scuds, and that's going to require a much larger military effort.
Scott Ritter in Pro-Iraq Movie Deal, 9/1/02
...Ritter's reported involvement in a pro-Iraq movie deal that depends on financing from an Iraqi-American supporter of Saddam Hussein.... [H]is documentary film, "In Shifting Sands," the goal of which was to chronicle the weapons-inspection process and, according to Ritter, "de-demonize" Iraq.... [H]e told the Standard it was produced with the approval of the Iraqi government and features interviews with numerous high-level Iraqi officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz... Saddam's one-time nemesis managed to secure the unprecedented access through the help of Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American real estate developer who ponied up $400,000 for Ritter's movie
From kcvl:
U.S. citizens are prohibited from traveling to Iraq under an embargo imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Violators face up to 12 years in prison and $1 million in fines, though there is an exemption for journalists, which Ritter maintains he meets...
The documentary project has aroused the interest of federal law enforcement authorities. Ritter said that FBI agents have followed and questioned him and the film's producer, Tom Osborne, about their contacts with Iraqi officials and warned that Baghdad would seek to manipulate them into joining the Iraqi cause or at least into presenting a more favorable portrait of the regime...
Ritter said he was first invited to Baghdad last year by the Iraqi government after the publication of his book "Endgame," which argued that the continuation of economic sanctions on Iraq was more "evil" than doing business with Saddam Hussein. "They were shocked by my position in the book," Ritter said.
Scott Ritter Interview, 9/02/02
Well, I've been very frank with the FBI from day one. The first FBI investigation began back in 1991 after I married my wife. She's a former citizen of the Soviet Union, currently an American citizen, and they initiated something. It was dropped in 1992 after they found out that nothing was going on. It was of no concern to the national security of the United States, never came close to representing a violation of any law...
getting the UN job as an intelligence officer caused a lot of concern and consternation in the CIA because now they have an intelligence person they no longer control, engaged in a position of some influence. That's why the FBI was brought in, basically, as a vehicle of intimidation...
By our going out to Israel and getting an extremely effective alternate source of information, the CIA lost its influence. The way they dealt with it was to fabricate charges that I was somehow spying for the state of Israel. They turned the FBI loose on me on that one. That's still an ongoing investigation to this date... When I resigned and started speaking out against American policy in Iraq, a third investigation was initiated. I was made aware of it when I decided to make a documentary film in Iraq called 'On Shifting Sands.' ...
No traditional outlet for documentary films – PBS, Frontline, CNN, etc., wanted to come forward and put money up to back this idea.
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