Scott Ritter

If he is, there's a way to find out. They have to register with the government. But I suppose he could be doing it illegally.

Perhaps others will confirm this, or strike it down, but if I remember correctly ole' Scotty boy was "very unhappy" when he was pulled out of Iraq. At that time he was saying that his job wasn't done and that he was sure Iraq was not under control. That's why I was so surprised to see interviews with him later in which he seemed to be the mouthpiece for Hussein. I'll be happy to defer to others if I am wrong, but this guy simply doesn't pass muster in my opinion.

I'm glad to see someone raise the topic. Perhaps I'll learn that I was wrong.

It just so happens the Weekly Standard had a reprint about Scotty-boy today:

Saddam Hussein's American Apologist

Try this for starters: Saddam Hussein's American Apologist: The strange career of former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter

Now he wants UN inspectors - the very ones he said back in 1998 were being duped by Saddam.

He is an anti-Iraq-war Republican and ought to be heard and treated respectfully.

And we ought to examine him very closely after we hear him.

Ritter is, likely, still on the payroll of the Iraqi film producer. To keep getting the coin, he's got to parrot Hussein's line.

I saw Ritter this morning, and he looked pretty pathetic. He's right and EVERYBODY ELSE is wrong about Hussein?

He as much as said that Rumsfeld is lying to the American public and that Biden is holding "sham" hearings.

Yep. He's sold his soul for filthy lucre.

I just got done reading that and it's *very* interesting.

>>Ritter is, likely, still on the payroll of the Iraqi film producer. To keep getting the coin, he's got to parrot Hussein's line.

I wouldn't be surprised at all. Excerpt:

The part about admiring and greeting is literal. Ritter was welcomed back to Baghdad in July 2000, with the blessing of Saddam Hussein. The reason for his trip? To produce a documentary film, "In Shifting Sands," that would chronicle the weapons-inspection process and, he says, "de-demonize" Iraq. The 90-minute film, which he says he is close to selling to a broadcast outlet, was produced with the approval of the Iraqi government and features interviews with numerous high-level Iraqi officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

U.S. intelligence officials and arms control advocates say Ritter has been played--perhaps unwittingly--by Saddam Hussein. "If you're Scott Ritter," says one arms expert, "the former 'cowboy' weapons inspector, kicked out by Saddam Hussein, you're not going to get back into Iraq unless Saddam Hussein invites you and wants you there."

Ritter doesn't entirely disagree. Though he claims the film is an attempt to be "objective" about the situation in Iraq, he predicted before its completion, "the U.S. will definitely not like this film."

He acknowledges, as well, that the U.S. government doesn't like how the film was financed. Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American real estate developer living in Michigan, kicked in $400,000. By Ritter's own admission, al-Khafaji is "openly sympathetic with the regime in Baghdad." Al-Khafaji, who accompanied Ritter as he filmed the documentary and facilitated many of the meetings, travels to and from Iraq regularly in his capacity as chairman of "Iraqi expatriate conferences." Those conferences, held in Baghdad every two years, are sponsored and subsidized by Saddam Hussein.

The Weekly Standard

Saddam Hussein's American Apologist
From the November 19, 2001 issue:

The strange career of former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter.
by Stephen F. Hayes

11/19/2001, Volume 007, Issue 10

"IRAQ TODAY represents a threat to no one."

It's hard to imagine that argument coming these days from anyone other than Tariq Aziz, or another
of Saddam Hussein's propagandists. But those are in fact the words of Scott Ritter, former chief
U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. This represents an astonishing conversion. Ritter, after all, abruptly
quit that job in frustration three years ago, complaining of Iraqi obstructionism and U.S.
acquiescence. At the time, he had quite a different view of Baghdad: "Iraq presents a clear and
present danger to international peace and security."

But Ritter has lately been hawking his Iraq-as-a-lamb theory to everyone who will listen--from his
perch as a Fox News analyst, in regular appearances on NPR, to reporters at newspapers across
the country. When his former U.N. supervisor, Ambassador Richard Butler, suggested that Iraq
might be responsible for the spate of anthrax attacks in the United States, Ritter told a Boston Globe
reporter that such speculation is "irresponsible." Asked on Chris Matthews's Hardball whether
Saddam Hussein has anthrax, he equivocated: "Well, there's--you know, we, as weapons inspectors
for United Nations, destroyed Iraq's biological weapons program. There's a lot of things that are
unaccounted for such as growth media, which allows them to--to grow these germs. But the basic
factories, the fermentation units, etc., had been destroyed. So, you know, the--the chance of Iraq
having something like this is--is slim to none. We won't ever know until we get weapons inspectors
back in. But Iraq's not on the top of my list in terms of, you know, places we should be worried
about."

Obviously, Ritter's views on Iraq have changed over the past three years. Indeed, they've basically
flipped. Then, Iraqi leaders were inveterate liars; today, they are victims of American "propaganda
mills." Then, Saddam Hussein was hell-bent on building his deadly arsenal; today, he wants to feed
Iraqi children. Then, the key to Iraq's future was overthrowing Saddam Hussein; today, Hussein is a
"viable dictator."

The Scott Ritter of 1998 would have some fierce debates with the Scott Ritter of 2001. But the
Scott Ritter of 2001 doesn't even admit to having changed his mind. "That's a common criticism," he
says, but "I just ask people to take the time to review the record. When I first resigned, which was in
August of 1998, I spoke out--and I said this to the Senate--that I'm speaking out as an inspector,
even though I'm not an inspector. And what that means is, I'm speaking out in defense of the
resolution, 687, that the Security Council passed that the United States endorsed. And this called for
100 percent disarmament, and we have less than that."

So does Ritter believe, as he wrote October 12 in the Los Angeles Times, that Iraq really
"represents a threat to no one"?

"From a conventional standpoint, I'd say that Iraq represents virtually a zero-sum threat," he insists.
On weapons of mass destruction, Ritter hedges a bit. "I'll always maintain that we never got 100
percent of the weapons, but I will maintain--and the facts speak for themselves--that we got 90-95
percent of it," he says. "In the past three years, we just don't know what's been going on. And that
should be put on the table right off the bat. But what we do know is that using 1998 as a benchmark,
Iraq, frankly speaking, hasn't had the time or the resources to effectively reconstitute its weapons of
mass destruction program."

Among the former arms inspectors, Ritter is unique in his benign views of the Iraqi threat. Butler has
referred to this as "Ritter's crap." Iraqi leaders, needless to say, are thrilled with what the Washington
Post's Colum Lynch called Ritter's "bizarre turnaround." They now "seem to view their erstwhile
enemy as an asset in the propaganda war against the United States." But don't take the Post's word
for it. On Iraq's official website--www.uruklink.net--after a few words of token criticism of the
former weapons inspector, there is a tribute to Ritter, in a rather fractured translation from the
original Arabic.

"The admittance of Scott Ritter and his enthusiastic in calling for the lifting of the unfair embargo and
to halt the continuous bleeding of Iraqi people is a conscience scream." Then there is an appeal to
other former U.N. inspectors to follow in his footsteps. "The truth veiled by the American poisoned
propaganda . . . sooner or later the truth will shine. . . . He who will not participate in revealing the
truth and support Iraq will regret in the future. He who says the truth, as Scott Ritter did, will be
happy, conscientious, and proud to be one of the honest people who participated in revealing the
truth. Those who will be so, we will admire and greet."

The part about admiring and greeting is literal. Ritter was welcomed back to Baghdad in July 2000,
with the blessing of Saddam Hussein. The reason for his trip? To produce a documentary film, "In
Shifting Sands," that would chronicle the weapons-inspection process and, he says, "de-demonize"
Iraq. The 90-minute film, which he says he is close to selling to a broadcast outlet, was produced
with the approval of the Iraqi government and features interviews with numerous high-level Iraqi
officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

U.S. intelligence officials and arms control advocates say Ritter has been played--perhaps
unwittingly--by Saddam Hussein. "If you're Scott Ritter," says one arms expert, "the former 'cowboy'
weapons inspector, kicked out by Saddam Hussein, you're not going to get back into Iraq unless
Saddam Hussein invites you and wants you there."

Ritter doesn't entirely disagree. Though he claims the film is an attempt to be "objective" about the
situation in Iraq, he predicted before its completion, "the U.S. will definitely not like this film."

He acknowledges, as well, that the U.S. government doesn't like how the film was financed. Shakir
al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American real estate developer living in Michigan, kicked in $400,000. By
Ritter's own admission, al-Khafaji is "openly sympathetic with the regime in Baghdad." Al-Khafaji,
who accompanied Ritter as he filmed the documentary and facilitated many of the meetings, travels
to and from Iraq regularly in his capacity as chairman of "Iraqi expatriate conferences." Those
conferences, held in Baghdad every two years, are sponsored and subsidized by Saddam Hussein.

The conferences are little more than propaganda shows, designed to bash the United States and
demonstrate to the world that Hussein has support even among Iraq's expatriate community. The
official conference website posts several articles condemning U.S. "terrorism and genocide" against
Iraq.

Ritter says al-Khafaji had no editorial input on the film project but that without his help, the movie
would not have been made. "I tried to get independent sources to fund the movie," he says. "People
can talk about the funding all they want. If I'd been able to be bought--from '95 to '98 the CIA paid
me. Did I do their bidding?"

Ritter says the FBI investigated the relationship between him and al-Khafaji and found nothing. "They
surrounded my house, they stopped me on the street," he says. "Nothing."

HOW DID THE MAN who was arguably Public Enemy No. 1 of Saddam Hussein's Iraq end up
three years later as perhaps the leading American apologist for Iraq? Ask the average American
about Scott Ritter, and those who don't confuse him with the clumsy guy on "Three's Company" will
probably still tell you he's an American hero.

Ritter was the ex-Marine tough guy who very publicly resigned his position as chief U.N. weapons
inspector in Iraq in late August 1998. Since the end of the Gulf War, he had been part of the team
enforcing the cease-fire agreement that prohibited Iraq from developing weapons of mass
destruction, the equipment to make such weapons, and the vehicles (missiles) to deliver them. By the
mid '90s, the inspection process had deteriorated into a potentially lethal game of hide-and-seek.
Ritter, as he put it, was "the alpha dog," a badass inspector there to show the deceitful Iraqis who
was in charge.

Except for the occasional armed confrontation, the routine was predictable. Iraqi leaders would insist
that they were fully disarmed, and shortly thereafter U.N. inspectors would happen upon, say, a
stash of VX nerve agent or perhaps some shells containing mustard gas, 97 percent pure. When the
inspectors showed up at potential weapons sites, the Iraqis often simply refused to give them access.

"The fact of the matter is that since April 1991, under the direct orders and direction of the president
of Iraq, the government of Iraq has lied to the Special Commission about the totality of its holdings,"
Ritter later testified.

Ritter became frustrated and demanded a more aggressive inspection process. "He used to write me
the most strident memos about their refusal to let us do our jobs," says Richard Butler, former head
of the U.N. inspection team and Ritter's boss. "I remember him banging his fist on the table--telling
me to let him go in."

But as Ritter grew more determined to force inspections, the Clinton administration grew wobbly.
"We have been directly told, 'Do not do these inspections,'" Ritter recalled shortly after resigning.
"And since April [1998] we have not been allowed to do these tasks, largely because of pressure
placed upon the Special Commission by administration officials."

A week after his resignation, following a whirlwind of debriefings and interviews, Ritter was invited to
testify at a joint hearing of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees on
September 3, 1998. Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Republican, introduced Ritter as "a tough
and demanding inspector" and a "dedicated American."

Ritter wasted no time in offering his assessment of the continuing threat: "Iraq has not been
disarmed." The United States, he claimed, had deliberately thwarted the U.N. inspections for fear of
a confrontation with Iraq. He ripped the administration for its refusal to back up the inspections
process with a legitimate use of force, including, but not limited to, removing Saddam Hussein's
regime.

Ritter was such a hawk and so critical of the Clinton administration's non-confrontational approach
that he drew the ire of Senator Joe Biden. "They have responsibilities above your pay grade--slightly
above your pay grade--to decide whether or not to take the nation to war alone or to take the nation
to war part-way, or to take the nation to war half-way," the Delaware Democrat scolded. "That's a
real tough decision. That's why they get paid the big bucks. That's why they get the limos and you
don't."

But the hearing's most sober moment came just minutes later, when Sam Brownback, Republican
from Kansas, asked Ritter for his opinion about the continuation of the Iraqi
weapons-of-mass-destruction program. "Once effective inspection regimes have been terminated,"
said Ritter, "Iraq will be able to reconstitute the entirety of its former nuclear, chemical, and ballistic
missile delivery system capabilities within a period of six months."

All inspections stopped in December 1998. That same month, in an article written for the New
Republic, Ritter again warned of the continuing Iraqi threat, this time in much greater detail. "Even
today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed," he maintained. "Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM
[the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum
toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile
warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains
several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent
is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use
industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons
production."

Saddam Hussein had successfully faced down the United Nations and the United States, and if Scott
Ritter was right, that was big trouble.

SO IT WAS, and is. But Ritter now utterly contradicts his testimony of 1998, according to which
Saddam Hussein could have reconstituted a fearsome arsenal of weapons of mass destruction by the
middle of 1999. By that time, in a June 1999 interview with leaders of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, a peace organization based in Nyack, New York, he had changed his tune. "When
you ask the question [does] Iraq possess militarily viable biological or chemical weapons? The
answer is 'no.' It is a resounding NO! Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful
scale? No! Can Iraq produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Ballistic missiles? No.
It is 'no' across the board. So from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed. Iraq today
possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability."

Virtually every expert on Iraq and arms control disagrees. Ambassador Butler, Ritter's former boss
with the U.N., says that Iraq never disarmed during the 1990s and almost certainly has weapons of
mass destruction today. Charles Duelfer, Butler's number two, believes Iraq currently has biological
and chemical weapons, and the means to deliver them. Arms control experts Gary Milhollin and
Kelly Motz, with the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, detailed in the July issue of
Commentary the steady and stealthy weapons trade with Iraq.

Butler, for one, is nonplussed when asked about Ritter's change. "In a day filled with lots of phone
calls, interviews, etcetera it's almost a waste of time to comment on that," he says. "I don't want to
sound arrogant, it's simply ridiculous." Pushed, though, he offers this assessment: "I'll say this about
Scott, either he's misleading the public now, or he misled me then."

Duelfer, too, rejects Ritter's all-clear declarations on Iraq. "Why would [Saddam] have given up his
intent to develop these weapons? He's made credible arguments that these weapons have saved
them in the past, in the war against Iran, in the Gulf War," says Duelfer. "Why would Saddam say,
'This saved my ass one time,' and then say, 'Oh yeah, you're right. This isn't moral. I'll stop.'"

"Maybe Scott's got some very narrow definition of 'threat.' I just don't see it."

Ritter is dismissive of his former supervisors. "Those critics?" he says. "Screw 'em."

In his less guarded moments, though, Ritter appears to acknowledge that Iraq retains weapons of
mass destruction. Just minutes after he told the Fellowship of Reconciliation that Iraq has "no
meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability," he qualified that assertion. More than that, he
offered a justification for Saddam Hussein to repudiate the agreement that ended the Gulf War and
rearm Iraq.

Iraqi leaders, he said, "see their neighbors' weapons of mass destruction, they see the inevitability of
conflict with the United States, and they're not going to give up their weapons. When Madeleine
Albright made that awful statement in March of 1997, that economic sanctions would continue while
Saddam was in power regardless of weapons disarmament, she basically closed the door on any
hope that the Iraqis would get rid of their weapons."

Ritter says he doesn't want to whitewash Saddam, but that Iraq's "mistakes" are no different from
those of the United States. "We are the United States, and I'm not trying to give Saddam Hussein the
moral equivalency that the United States has, but I believe that it's disingenuous to acknowledge that
we are capable of making mistakes, and on the other hand interpreting everything the Iraqis do as
having nefarious intent. This is a nation that has been devastated by a war, bombed to hell and back,
and then it has these brutal economic sanctions which leave the country in disarray. There will be
mistakes."

Earlier this year, Ritter worried in the Harvard International Review about pre-Gulf War
"propaganda mills in America" that "demonized Saddam in the most extreme fashion in preparation
for war." Saddam Hussein, he argued in a recent interview, is simply misunderstood. "We try to
apply our own perceptions of morality and ideology to an environment that we just do not
understand." He pushed the same line at an appearance last month at the University of
Arkansas-Little Rock.

"When I say Saddam Hussein, you say 'evil,'" Ritter rebuked his audience. "I say 50,000 liter
fermentation unit, and everybody goes, 'biological weapons.'" (Actually, everybody probably goes,
"Huh?") "Well, that's not necessarily the answer. The answer might be that Iraq wants to make
single-cell protein so that it can feed its cows, so the cows can produce milk, so the children can
have something to drink."

Yes, Scott Ritter is right. There may well be propaganda mills in America. It certainly looks like he is
running one of them.

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.

November 19, 2001 - Volume 7, Number 10

I try to bring things here so that later on it will still be available. Thanks for the link.

Thank you.

He should have got more tough treatment this morning on C-span.

Tuesday June 27, 2000 4:39 AM EST
Has Scott Ritter 'Turned'?

Formerly head of U.N. inspections in Iraq, Scott Ritter has been taking a much more conciliatory tone toward Iraq lately.

Once considered the staunchest of U.N. officials in their quest to have Iraq live up to promises it was not building weapons of mass destruction, Ritter quit his post with dire warnings that Clinton administration appeasement toward Iraq was enabling Hussein's regime to continue its weapons program.

But this week Ritter has been widely quoted as saying U.N. efforts to stop Hussein's weapons program were doomed if the U.N. insisted on Iraq's full disarmament, a demand Mr. Ritter believes should be dropped.

Say what?

Ritter is also now claiming that Iraq has no real program of making weapons of mass destruction, nor the capability to produce such weapons.

Ritter argues that Iraq had no prayer of seeing U.N. sanctions lifted because the bar - for 100 percent disarmament of weapons of mass destruction - is too high to meet because Iraq could just never convince the world it had met those demands.

In the same breath that Mr. Ritter says Iraq has "lied and cheated," he also scolds the U.N. for its hard-line approach: "It is imperative that the Security Council decide what its objective in Iraq is: is it to forever keep the Iraqis prisoner under the guise of weapons inspections, or is it to disarm Iraq?"

Hmmmm. We thought Mr. Hussein was keeping the Iraqis prisoner.

Is this the same Scott Ritter of 1996 who was outraged by U.N. acquiescence to Saddam Hussein's lies and refusal to account to the international community?

London sources tell NewsMax.com that Scott Ritter has made some strange new bedfellows in the pro-Iraqi community and among critics of the U.N. sanctions who would like to see those sanctions lifted.

He gets no respect from me! He is a democrat poster boy!

Ritter has a very big fan in William Rivers Pitt, IF THAT TELLS THE TALE OF THIS MORON!

I recall when they were originally kicked out Ritter was rabid about Iraq, they were dangerous, etc., etc. The next glimpse I get of Ritter is when this administration starts talking about going after Iraq, low and behold Ritter starts appearing on TV with a complete opposite view.

It was obvious to me IMHO something strange had transpired, he's either being supported by Iraq or gone nuts.

What an odd minuet:

In 1998, Scott Ritter was tough, drug from Iraq kicking and screaming, humiliated before the Senate by Joe Bidet with his broadly sarcastic "I don't want to sound flip, but isn't that slightly above your pay grade?" crack.

Now in 2002, Scott Ritter says Saddam is like buttah, a pussycat, and Joe Bidet cannot Rambo it up enough with macho-under-fluorescent-lights Beltway bravado lines like "take him out"--"we need to take Saddam out"--"he needs to be taken out"--

Now, Ritter is "can't we all just get along", while Bidet is auditioning for Joe Soprano Goes To Washington.

Phonies in opposing pairs, doe-see-doe-ing.

Scott ritter needs a KNUCKLE SANDWICH.....MINE
a bought and paid for commie.....i have several links to prove it

............NEXT........

My recollection (and reaction) is the same as yours. Ritter raised hell when he was pulled out, but then totally changed his story later. Something was very fishy.

"a bought and paid for commie.....i have several links to prove it"

Fine. That's what I'm asking for. Links.

Thanks Phil. Looks like my thoughts on ole Scott were pretty close to the mark. Guy's gone soft in the head.