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Remember Scott Ritter? Today’s media want you to forget yesterday’s hero
Human Events ^ | 4-18-11 | John Hayward

Posted on 04/18/2011 12:35:53 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic

Does the name “Scott Ritter” sound familiar? It should. He used to get a lot of media attention.

Ritter was the chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq during the Nineties. He became a darling of the press and Democrat Party when he began criticizing President Bush’s invasion of Iraq in the strongest possible terms. On the eve of war, he predicted the United States would “leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated.” Our defeat was “inevitable” because we did not “have the military means to take over Baghdad.”

Once the U.S. military made Ritter eat those words, he transitioned smoothly into a full-time apologist for the Iraqi terrorist insurgency, which he described as a “genuine grassroots national liberation movement.” He declared that history will eventually “depict as legitimate the efforts of the Iraqi resistance to destabilize and defeat the American occupation forces and their imposed Iraqi collaborationist government.”

Ritter maintained that the entire disarmament effort directed at Iraq, including both pre-war sanctions and the war itself, were a massive “fraud” and “conspiracy” begun by the first President Bush to get rid of Iraq’s rightful ruler, Saddam Hussein. He described the search for weapons of mass destruction in post-war Iraq as “a public joke.” The British intelligence that figured so prominently in the run-up to the war was not merely mistaken, but an “abysmal abuse of power that occurred when Blair’s government lied to Parliament, and the electorate, about the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD.”

He was an early and reliable hysteric about the imminent Bush attack on peace-loving Iran. He even wrote a book on the subject, Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the United States is planning right now, as we speak, a military strike against Iran,” he said in April 2008. “We take a look at the military buildup, we take a look at the rhetoric, we take a look at the diplomatic posturing, and I would say that it’s a virtual guarantee that there will be a limited aerial strike against Iran in the not-so-distant future.”

As a fervent Bush critic with a military background, United Nations credentials, and (best of all) some history as a Republican, Ritter was extremely useful to the anti-war Left, which absolutely lionized him. “Few people were as right about the Iraq War as Scott Ritter was,” declared liberal writer Glenn Greenwald, adding that it was “difficult to imagine someone with greater credentials and credibility who ought to have been listened to on those issues.” At the Daily Kos, they called him “one of the few who called bulls**t on Bushco’s claims of WMDs in Iraq… A former Marine and former Republican, he’s not exactly a partisan player, he seems to be a guy who just doesn’t like being lied to.”

And then, suddenly, Scott Ritter disappeared. The Left stopped talking about him. The legacy media stopped running his articles. His media perch as the pre-eminent Bush critic crumbled to dust overnight.

Why? Because Scott Ritter is a convicted pedophile.

His offenses caught up with him in a Pennsylvania court on Friday, where a jury found him guilty on six counts of unlawful contact with a minor. He was taken down in an online sting operation, when he used a webcam to show himself having inappropriate contact with his own naked body to someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl. His sentencing will take place next month.

It’s a big story in the foreign press, but the U.S. media has been very subdued in reporting Ritter’s conviction. Like Cindy Sheehan, John Edwards, and other hard-Left superheroes, he stopped being interesting when he stopped being useful.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: baghdad; pedophilia; saddamhussein; un; wmd
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To: Buckeye Battle Cry

I would be willing to bet a wad of cash Saddam’s Intelligence service had a folder on him 3 inches thick, and he was offered all the little girls he wanted while in Iraq in trade for his cooperation.

JMHO of course, but its the way I would lay my bets.


21 posted on 04/18/2011 1:17:45 PM PDT by Abathar (Proudly posting without reading the article carefully since 2004)
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To: All

b


22 posted on 04/18/2011 1:21:03 PM PDT by Maverick68
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To: Sherman Logan

Are you kidding?


23 posted on 04/18/2011 1:21:14 PM PDT by EnquiringMind
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To: Sherman Logan
Sort of a “thought crime”????

Oh, you mean because he “thought” he was actually committing a crime?

24 posted on 04/18/2011 1:23:39 PM PDT by EnquiringMind
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To: Abathar

IIRC, he did receive some $400K for book? movie? from some Arab/Muslim entity....he now joins John Kerry’s greatest Anti-Swiftboat guy (name escapes me at this moment) in the Pederastry Hall of Fame!


25 posted on 04/18/2011 1:24:50 PM PDT by Seeking the truth (0cents.com - Where's the Birth Certificate stuff here!)
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To: Sherman Logan; woofie

You didn’t answer woofie, so I’ll ask you again: Would you feel better if he had done this to a real 15-year-old?


26 posted on 04/18/2011 1:25:47 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (Oh, well, any excuse to buy a new gun is good enough for me.)
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To: EnquiringMind

Read down the thread. Apparently not kidding.


27 posted on 04/18/2011 1:26:51 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (Oh, well, any excuse to buy a new gun is good enough for me.)
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To: afraidfortherepublic

Let us not forget two other hero’s of the left, one Bernie Ward, former KGO talk show host now serving a seven year term in a Texas prison for distributing child porn, and disbarred attorney Lynne Stewart, convicted of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and defrauding the U.S. government, and now serving ten years in prison. They sure pick ‘em good.


28 posted on 04/18/2011 1:31:35 PM PDT by SpaceBar
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To: Cyber Liberty

“Mr. Ritter, is it true that UNSCOM has intelligence that Iraq has three Nuclear assemblies that only lack fissile material?” - Sen John McCain Sept 3, 1998

“Yes.” - Scott Ritter


29 posted on 04/18/2011 1:32:35 PM PDT by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: Sherman Logan
I'm not going to EVER defend pedophilia, but when I see shows like "To catch a predator" on MSNBC, I see dirtbags being ENCOURAGED on camera to "confess". It seems like entrapment in some cases.

BTW, (old saying) if you're a sweaty, balding, obese 50 y.o with erectile dysfunction,living in mommy's basement communicating with a "luscious" 15 y.o who just can't wait to have sex with you, you're talking to a COP.

30 posted on 04/18/2011 1:36:37 PM PDT by boop ("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)
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To: Cyber Liberty
Would you feel better if he had done this to a real 15-year-old?

Of course not.

My only point is that the crime in question is purportedly "sexual contact with a minor," or something along those lines.

But there was no minor, so how did he have sexual contact with her?

31 posted on 04/18/2011 1:40:47 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Seeking the truth

Pedophiles are my ultimate personal nemesis that I despise above all others.

If I had the power to kill every single child rapist alive with the push of a button you’d think I was a contestant on Jeopardy with a brain-dead simple question.


32 posted on 04/18/2011 1:42:24 PM PDT by Abathar (Proudly posting without reading the article carefully since 2004)
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To: Abathar

I hear you........if it was up to me, I would make public hangings every Saturday with mandatory TV/Radio coverage!


33 posted on 04/18/2011 1:52:23 PM PDT by Seeking the truth (0cents.com - Where's the Birth Certificate stuff here!)
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To: boop

Don’t get me wrong, I will be a happy camper when all of these low-life roaches are in the slammer for a long, long time. BUT, what kind of idiot in this day and age when everybody on the planet knows that if you think you’re IMing with a 15 year old hottie, it’s really going to be a badge you’re chatting with?


34 posted on 04/18/2011 2:11:36 PM PDT by Ax (Barak Hussein Obama is of Questionable Provenance.)
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To: afraidfortherepublic; All

35 posted on 04/18/2011 2:18:46 PM PDT by musicman (Until I see the REAL Long Form Vault BC, he's just "PRES__ENT" Obama = Without "ID")
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To: Ax
If you see this guy, you're busted. Even if you wolf down the cookies they set out.
36 posted on 04/18/2011 2:35:47 PM PDT by boop ("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)
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To: afraidfortherepublic

Let’s not forget, before he was a hero to the left, Ritter was a hero to the right.


37 posted on 04/18/2011 2:37:23 PM PDT by EDINVA (wh)
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To: Seeking the truth

Did you know that ‘planning’ to commit a crime is a crime?

It doesn’t matter if you actually commit the crime.

It’s a matter of ‘intent’. And that’s all that has to be proved.

Just like bankers that get busted for ‘intent to defraud’.

All it takes is evidence that the intent is real.

You can’t get more real than slapping the monkey in front of a cop thinking it’s a minor.

Intent is still a crime.


38 posted on 04/18/2011 2:37:53 PM PDT by Bigh4u2 (Denial is the first requirement to be a liberal)
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To: Sherman Logan

By that logic, if someone is given a shotgun to murder someone but the person giving them the shotgun was working undercover and filled it with blanks instead of bullets and they go to shoot the victim at point blank range, there was no crime committed because he only fired blanks, not a bullet? No murder occurred, so he can’t be charged with attempted murder? It was just a ‘thought crime’?


39 posted on 04/18/2011 2:54:29 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
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To: Bigh4u2

What about “virtual reality” kiddie porn? There are some (on the left) who defend this on the grounds that nobody was hurt. In fact, they say it may reduce actual molestation and may be a “cure”. Because molesters can get their jollies without hurting a real child. But the “intent” is still there.


40 posted on 04/18/2011 3:13:13 PM PDT by boop ("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)
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