What is the deal with Scott Ritter?

Self | Self

[AfghanAirShow]

"John is tearing Ritter a new one."

I just caught the tail end of the exchange, and Ritter was really getting worked up. Gotta catch the replay tonight and see how the whole conversation went.

"It seems that Ritter ingested mucho bad stuff during his stay in the 'Sad-Man-Lands'..."

Something's just not right with the guy, IMO. What strikes me most is how determined he is that Iraq doesn't have WMD, and how he seems to be finding every opportunity to get camera time to say so. As Shakespeare once put it, "Thou dost protest too much". Ritter is free to say whatever he likes, but the way he's going about it raises suspicion about his motives for doing so.

[AfghanAirShow]

"He was sharing and recieving intel with the Isarel. They were more helpful to his work at tracking down Sadams weapons than the members of the Clinton adminstration."

I wonder what Israeli intel says about Iraq's WMD program today?

[AmericanVictory]

He seems to ignore, and perhaps cannot comprehend from conditions when he was there, how much difference the oil revenue which Iraq was able to create after the price began rising and Clinton was seen to be to weak to stop Iraq from taking advantage of it. All that new money since Ritter left has given Iran much greater capability for mischief.

[Concentrate]

I heard him on a show recently, mouthing the tired liberal complaint, that the sanctions are killing the children of Iraq.

You would think that the Iraquis don't know how to grow food or to make medicine. The Internet must not have been invented there yet. I would say the same about Cuba, North Korea and any other impoverished nation.

[massadvj]

I heard him on a show recently, mouthing the tired liberal complaint, that the sanctions are killing the children of Iraq

This is total bull. The sanctions are almost completely useless in terms of keeping Saddam from engaging in trade for just about anything he wants. We are deluding ourselves if we think otherwise. Here's how it works.

It is illegal for an American to sell goods to Iraq. But it is not illegal for a Jordanian to sell to Iraq since they do not participate in the embargo. It is also not illegal for an American to sell to Jordan. So Americans sell legally to Jordanian middlemen who pass it to Iraq and all is honky dorey.

About the only thing the sanctions have accomplished is that Saddam pays a bit more because of the longer channel of distribution; plus the Jordanian economy gets a windfall.

As for the starving children, I'm surprised that the bastard Saddam has not gassed them in order to avoid having to feed them.

[10mm]

Ritter is definitely a UN whore. I wonder how much he gets paid for his talking-head appearances.

Enjoy your 15 minutes, Scott.

[wideawake]

The "million dead children" spiel is refuted by the Iraqi government's own published population statistics.

Children under the age of 15 make up an even larger proportion of the Iraqi population in 2001 than they did in 1991. The Iraqi population grew three times as fast as the US's in the past ten years.

[TADSLOS]

Ritter is either flying into the bright lights of fame like a blind moth or perhaps being extorted by Iraq. Why else would he change his views so dramatically?

[Harrison Bergeron]

Ritter quit because he wasn't allowed in to see what was really going on in the Iraqi weapons labs. Now he's tellin' us he knows whats going on in Iraqi weapons labs.

Which is it? He can't have it both ways.

[Red Jones]

The Ritter case is very strange;

[wewillnotfail]

btt

[spectre]

Ritter is on FOX now..

He is of the opinion that Saddam doesn't have WMD, and that if BUSH wants to believe he does, then he has a good excuse to go in and remove him from power.

Ritter is no friend of the Bush Administration, but he does have some friends in Hot Springs, AR.

sw

[Harp]

He was just on Fox and he's got me scratching my head too.

bump

[The Iron Duke]

The thing he seems most experienced in is self-promotion.

Falling in love with seeing your face on TV may be the deadliest virus of them all.