Posted on 05/05/2008 5:56:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Here is a partial transcript of the interview Matthew Rothschild conducted with Scott Ritter on April 18 for Progressive Radio. To listen to the entire interview, click here.
Q: For several years now, you’ve been warning of the possibility that the Bush Administration will attack Iran. What do you think the likelihood is now in the waning months of the Bush Administration?
Scott Ritter: I think we’ve never been at a greater risk of American military action against Iran.
Q: Really? Why do you say that?
Scott Ritter: Because the Bush Administration has made it clear that they seek to resolve the Iranian problem before it leaves office. They have defined the Iranian problem in quite stark terms. It’s a nation pursuing an illegal nuclear weapons program. It’s a nation that retains the status, according to the United States, as the largest state-sponsor of terror in the world today. And if you listened to the testimony of General Petraeus and Admiral Crocker, it’s the nation solely responsible for all that ails the United States in Iraq today. President Bush responded to Petraeus and Crocker’s testimony by calling the Iranians criminals, noting that they will be crushed.
I think the American people need to understand that when we speak of conflict between Iran and the United States, we’re not talking about a repeat of Operation Iraqi Liberation, later known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. We’re talking about a limited military strike, at least initially.
We’re talking about a five to seven day aerial bombardment that can be extended to thirty days. This is the status of planning taking place in the Pentagon today. This is what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about the invasion and occupation of Iran.
A lot of Americans are dismissive of conflict with Iran because they envision it involving hundreds of thousands of American troops occupying this nation that’s over two and a half the times the physical land mass of Iraq with a population similarly larger. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about punitive aerial intervention. And this is something very much on the books.
Q: But how limited would that be? I’ve read some accounts: Sy Hersh in The New Yorker saying this could involve 10,000 bombing strikes. Then things could spin out of control. The Atlantic magazine did a war games plan on this, and the thing just spun and spun and spun. So it wasn’t just a simple seven-day or two week or three week affair.
Scott Ritter: I concur with these assessments. But again when we talk about the initiation of the conflict, the Bush Administration continues to live under the illusion that it can limit this conflict. I concur that once we initiate . . . I was always trained in the military that the enemy has a vote. There’s the other side of the coin. When you start something, you’ve suddenly lost control. No plan survives initial contact with the enemy.
Q: What are some of those predictable negative consequences?
Scott Ritter: The easiest one is that the Iranians won’t roll over and play dead, and the Iranian people won’t rise up and embrace the United States for bombing them. The Iranians aren’t stupid. They know the region better than we know it, and they are planning as we speak appropriate retaliatory measures. It’s up to the Iranians to decide how they want to escalate this problem. And I’ve told the Iranians, I’ve told the Iranian ambassador, that it would be foolhardy of Iran to escalate in a large fashion, that the best thing that Iran could do is suck it up and take the five-day aerial bombardment and let the condemnation of the international community to come into play and hold America in check.
Because if Iran retaliates, it will lead to the spinning out of control. If they shut down the Straits of Hormuz, which they can do, if they intervene into Saudi oil production in the eastern oil fields, if they shut down Kuwaiti oil production, if they unleash the hounds of war in southern Iraq and shut down oil production there, and tie down American troops there, if they fire ballistic missiles against the state of Israel, thereby prompting an Israeli retaliation—all of these things are well within the realm of the possible, I would even say probable in terms of Iranian retaliation, but all of them will create a massive escalation of the conflict, spinning dangerously out of control.
Q: Scott Ritter, how will Bush be able to get away with this?
Scott Ritter: Well, he’s already gotten away with it. There’s no constitutional impediment to prevent the President from launching a military strike against Iran.
Q: Well, there’s Article 1, Section 8, which says Congress has to declare war.
Scott Ritter: Congress has declared war. Congress has given this President two standing war powers resolutions that clearly link the use of military force to the global war on terror. And the President has successfully defined Iran as the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today. And the United States Senate has gone further, giving the President a de facto target list by naming the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Command as a terrorist organization.
Q: This is the Lieberman bill, right?
Scott Ritter: Kyl-Lieberman. I will say again, there is no constitutional impediment to this President going to war.
Q: The Kyl-Lieberman Amendment also says that the Iranian government is engaged in a “proxy war” against the United States in Iraq, which is what Ambassador Crocker said when he testified. I guess it’s not a big leap from there. Some members of Congress have tried to pass a bill that says no, Dick Cheney and George Bush if you want to do this, you’ve got to come to Congress first. But that bill died.
Scott Ritter: It died for some of the most curious reasons, too. Nancy Pelosi, the erstwhile leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, stated that she opposed this legislation because she did not want to tie the President’s hands when it came to securing the national security interests of—and now we can have a drum roll—Israel. And here we have an elected American official stating that she is willing to push the Constitution of the United States aside not for American interests, which I would still disagree with, but for a non-American entity, in this case, the state of Israel. I find this as repulsive as can possibly be.
The story is near the bottom of the food chain if Scott Ritter has it now.
Snotty Scottie rears the ugly head again.
we are ALL subject to the manipulative and predetermined decisions of our authoritative governments, regardless of constituent lives or money spent.
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