Scott Ritter's Boyfriend
Posted on 09/26/2002 12:49:44 PM PDT by finnman69
Scott Ritter What turned the hawkish Iraq weapons inspector into a dove? By Michael Crowley Posted Wednesday, September 25, 2002, at 10:51 AM PT
If you've been paying any attention to the debate over invading Iraq, you're probably familiar with Scott Ritter, the blustery former U.N. weapons inspector who has spent the past few weeks vigorously denouncing the Bush administration's rush to war. Ritter's ubiquity has been breathtaking. Lately he has appeared on every major TV network and in a slew of major newspapers arguing that, contrary to what you may have heard, Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein poses no real threat to anyone.
You may also be aware that Ritter didn't always feel this way. In the 1990s he made his name as the macho leader of U.N. inspectors hunting for Iraq's hidden chemical, germ, and nuclear weapons programs. A hulking figure at 6 feet 4 inches and 200-plus pounds, Ritter was known for shouting down Iraqi officials during tense standoffs outside suspected weapons sites. When he concluded in 1998 that neither the United States nor the United Nations had the stomach for disarming Iraq and resigned in disgust, he was a regular on television and at Capitol Hill hearings, urgently warning of the horrors that would reward the world's wimpiness. Iraq is "not nearly disarmed," he wrote in a 1998 New Republic article, asserting that Saddam likely retained everything from nerve gas to anthrax, as well as his "entire nuclear weapons infrastructure." Iraq could completely resurrect its weapons of mass destruction programs "within a period of six months," he told a Senate committee that year. As for Saddam, Ritter said he "remains an ugly threat to his neighbors and to world peace."
Today Ritter sings a suspiciously different tune. He now contends that Iraq was "fundamentally disarmed" in the 1990s. It turns out that when U.N. inspections ended in 1998, Saddam "did not have the capability to reconstitute" his death machine. Ritter now assures us that "Iraq is a threat to no one." Earlier this month, he took the extraordinary step of visiting Baghdad to address the Iraqi assembly, where he said that "in regards to the current situation between the United States and Iraq, the truth is on the side of Iraq."
Ritter hasn't provided any explanation for his change of heart or cited any new evidence. Instead, he denies contradicting himself. He says that as an arms inspector in the 1990s, he observed the United Nations' absolute, "quantitative" standard for disarmament. Anything but the elimination of 100 percent of Iraq's WMD program was unacceptable. Now he urges a more subjective, "qualitative" measurement: "the elimination of a meaningful, viable capability to produce or employ weapons of mass destruction." For instance, Ritter says that although U.N. inspectors may have failed to destroy some portion of Saddam's chemical and germ weapons, most of them have lost their potency by now and are merely "harmless goo."
There may be some merit to this distinction, but it doesn't get Ritter off the hook. In 1998, he suggested that Iraq failed both the quantitative and qualitative tests, writing that Iraq's remaining weapons "represent a vital 'seed stock' that can and will be used by Saddam Hussein to reconstitute his former arsenal." Ritter's argument also fails to explain his old insistence that Iraq could quickly restart its weapons programs. Nor does it account for the probability that Iraq had weapons Ritter never found out about in the first place.
That leaves us to consider ulterior motives. One popular theory, recently advanced by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, holds that Ritter has essentially been bought off. By his own admission, Ritter accepted $400,000 in funding two years ago from an Iraqi-American businessman named Shakir al-Khafaji. Ritter used the money to visit Baghdad and film a documentary purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections (which in his telling were corrupted by sinister American manipulation). As Hayes has reported, al-Khafaji is openly sympathetic to Saddam and regularly sponsors anti-American conferences in Baghdad. Al-Khafaji seems to have gotten his money's worth: The documentary was so anti-U.S., says one of Ritter's former U.N. colleagues, that Iraqi officials were passing out copies of it on CD-ROM at a recent international conference.
But this theory doesn't solve the Ritter riddle. Of the $400,000, he claims that only $42,000 went into his own pocket—which, if true, is a low price for the integrity of a former Marine who by all accounts was a zealot for his old cause. And Ritter didn't need to switch sides to make money. A few years ago, he had ample work as an Iraq-bashing TV analyst, lecturer, and author. As a Bush critic, he may be more visible, but he is certainly less employable; Fox News, for instance, dumped him as an analyst after deciding his views had become too pro-Iraq.
What's more, Ritter's conversion apparently began before he ever met al-Khafaji. In 1999 he published Endgame, a book that railed against the Clinton administration, labeled the sanctions against Iraq "evil," and suggested that the international community could do business with Saddam. It was only after Endgame was published that Ritter says he was approached by al-Khafaji. It's possible that Ritter took money from al-Khafaji, or some other ally or agent of Saddam, before writing Endgame. But there's no evidence of that.
Finally, Ritter hardly sings in perfect tune with Baghdad. He has recently called Saddam Hussein "a pathetic old, brutal dictator" who is "clearly repressing the innocent people of Iraq" and who he wishes would "drop dead." Nor does he pretend that Saddam Hussein's phony inspections ploys are a solution. "[I]f Iraq chooses to play cat and mouse and cheat, we don't play that game," he told the Guardian last week. "We back off and the Security Council takes decisive"—presumably military—"action." Ritter's basic position—that the Bush administration should work with the United Nations to win the return of an unrestricted inspections process under the threat of force—is not so different from Al Gore's.
Why else would Ritter be making friends in Baghdad? Another theory holds that he's an embittered man grinding an ax against his government. Ritter left his weapons-inspector job in 1998 feeling betrayed by the Clinton administration, which, not wanting to back up his aggressive tactics with force, had grown uncomfortable with his runaway machismo. After he resigned, Clinton officials publicly trashed him. And just when he would have been looking for a new government job, Ritter learned he was under investigation by the FBI, on suspicion of being a spy for Israel (with whom he had shared some seemingly benign U.N.-gathered intelligence data about Iraq). Ritter had already been denied a security clearance a few years earlier because U.S. officials suspected his wife, a former Soviet translator, of having been a spy herself for the Soviets.
Together the experiences appear to have left him with an (understandable) persecution complex. "[A]fter all this time of serving my country I don't want to be treated like Aldrich Ames or Edward Lee Howard. It incenses me. I'm not a spy, I'm a patriot," he told the Washingtonian magazine in 1999, demanding public apologies from FBI Director Louis Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet. More recently Ritter fumed to the journalist David Wallis that "[s]ome idiots in Washington, D.C., betrayed me." But a sense of betrayal isn't an entirely satisfying explanation, either. Most of the national-security officials who Ritter feels undercut him, like Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, are now out of government. And it's hard to see how questioning George Bush's Iraq policy amounts to revenge against the FBI.
Perhaps a better possibility is that during his thousands of hours in Iraq, Ritter developed something like Stockholm syndrome. He may feel a genuine concern for Iraq that makes him want to see it restored to economic and political health. In interviews Ritter has spoken of the "warmth" of the Iraqi people, the beauty of the country's mosques and ziggurats, and the suffering of children who he says are victims of economic sanctions. It's conceivable that Ritter has simply had a change of heart about our Iraq policy and is too bull-headed to acknowledge it. (One person who knows him says Ritter once told him, in all seriousness, "I've never been wrong.") But if Scott Ritter wants to be treated with respect and not with mistrust, he'll have to admit that his story has changed—and explain why a lot more persuasively than he has.
A complete 180 degree turn. No good reason given for the turn except to pretty much deny that he did turn ... but I remember hearing him and what he talked about back then.
Sorry, he has no credibility with me.
The reasons could be varied ... but he is the one holding that card and he has not given a credible one to date as far as I am concerned. The 400K is plenty disturbing as for me.
The plight of the Iraqi children rests on Saddam's head and the people there, not ours. If the Iraqi people feel so terrible (and they could well), then they need to risk the consequences and through the bastard out ... civilly if they can, violently if they must. If our vital interests are threatened, then we will do it ourselves ... should have done so over ten years ago IMHO, the UN be damned.
Straight Democratic ticket, I see.
Saddam is not a threat to us or his neighbors. He can't maintain his military, much less produce a WMD in any significant time period.
And when al-Qaeda proves you wrong, can we use your neck for load-testing a rope?
I had never read this before. Has anyone else?
Are you really this naive? Do you think Ritter was?
1. He wanted to be a member of the CIA, but flunked his polygraph examination. Subsequently was put under FBI investigation.
2. He has a Middle Eastern girlfriend.
3. He took at least $500,000 from an Iraqi front-man for Saddam to produce a documentary film (read: B.S. propaganda piece) titled "Shifting Sands."
Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lybia have all abetted, trained and funded terrorists who have killed innocents over the last 20 years ... quite a few of them Americans. It's way past time for them to pay that piper, or roll over and lift their leg all the way into the air.
I believe Saddam has a much greater capability for WMD than you suspect or indicate. Certainly nuclear is something he is working hard on and trying to produce. How close is he? Can't say. But chemical and biological he already has and there are many ways to deliver those ... from missiles, to human carriers. He is capable of hurting us, our interests and our allies terribly. He is a belligerent, he is an enemy.
My own reasons for going in after him are really focused on the former. If we say that the latter is the principle reason, then by we'd best take care of Red China, N. Korea and quite a few others. Not saying that is not what it will ultimately come to, because I believe it may ... just saying that we stage right now for the former and include anyone in that list who has abetted, supported, funded or harbored terrorists who have killed American citizens.
The proper course of action would have been to remove Hussein. A less proper course (but still morally better than sanctions) would have been to remove all the restrictions and simply let Hussein prove his full malignancy once more.
Never would have crossed my mind, I'm a relic of the past. :-}
Consider This:Clinton’s chief Iraq expert announces his reluctant belief that an invasion is needed
< snip >
"But what Pollack stresses is the terrible danger that, once in possession of nuclear weapons, Saddam will take this as a license to invade Kuwait, and otherwise terrorize the Middle East. The real danger from Saddam's possession of nuclear weapons is the conviction they will create in Saddam that he can act with impunity in the region, safe in the knowledge that the U.S. or Israel will not dare attack him (for fear of risking nuclear annihilation of their troops).
"The frightening scenario described by Pollack, in which Saddam could seize Kuwait and threaten to nuke the Saudi oil fields if we attack, is something I've never seen publicly discussed. But as Pollack lays it out, the scenario is all too realistic. A nuclear-armed Saddam taking over Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia leaves us with a choice between ceding him control of the world's oil supply, or of seeing that supply destroyed and contaminated for decades by a nuclear strike, sending the world's economy into radical shock, perhaps for years."
< snip >
I can add two more: ideology or a moral crisis.
Ritter, AFAIK, is a tremendous UN supporter. It may be that he sees that if this comes to a confrontation the UN will be shown to be useless. He is desperately trying to avoid this.
During his trips to Iraq, he sees the tremendous suffering occasioned by sanctions. Since Hussein will not relent and US politicians need the fig leaf of sanctions to prove they are "tough" (but will not go through a regime change), there is no way out of this mess. Eventually, Ritter(v.2002) figures Ritter(v.1998) is obviously part of the cause of the problem, since he(v.1998) refused to lie about Hussein's lack of cooperation. So Ritter(v.2002) reverses course.
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