Ritter repeatedly stated that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Because of the prevailing political climate in the United States at the time, Ritter was widely condemned for this position, which later proved to be largely accurate.
Yes— that was it. It did not keep the US out of Iraq, as Colin Powell blew right past this report of UN’s own inspectors. Thank you for setting the order of events straight. Not crazy about this guy, possibly due to the tons of material dumped in counter propaganda on the net— but to be fair, all of his problems started after his report “they aren’t there”. Fedgov harassment of this guy began after that (they dug into everything, claiming paedo, etc.) And now they are back at it.
Iirc- the “weapons” were said to have been “found” by US personnel in the form of buried warheads (all empty, trace elements)- those left. And the real weapons trucked to Syria for protection.
Tha
Not really... Hussein definitely intended to fully reconstitute his nuclear program and BCW programs, but in the meanwhile Hussein was outsourcing his programs. That is why we found his nuclear scientist Obeidi working on Qadaffi’s program in Libya- the same scientist in whose garden the prototype for one of Saddam’s centrifuges wad found.
It was also no coincidence that was around the time we rolled up the arms trading network of Pakistan’s Qadeer Khan, and not long after that Israel took out a nuclear lab in Syria that had been hosting North Koreans.
Those parts of it the Iraqis couldn’t bury or hide ended up on Russian transports before the fall of Saddam, and Saddam awarded the Russian General Primakov for his work in an official ceremony.
100%