Posted on 01/28/2003 11:30:18 PM PST by JohnHuang2
It's funny how soliciting sex from an underage girl can be the difference between Iraq having nuclear capability and not having nuclear capability.
Just ask former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. In 1997, before Ritter was arrested for soliciting sex from a police officer posing as a teenager, Saddam Hussein indeed had been furtively building a nuclear arsenal, according to Ritter. But in 2002, a year after Ritter acquired a dirty little secret of his own, Hussein suddenly became beyond suspicion.
Ritter has said that the timing "stinks," and lamented that "it's a shame that somebody would bring up this old matter, this dismissed matter, and seek to silence me at this time."
But this didn't surface because he is an opposing voice. He is an opposing force because he knew this might surface. And the timing couldn't have been better. The day his 2001 arrest hit the national press last week Ritter was supposed to be on a plane to Baghdad to offer alternatives to military action.
Barring the possibility that Ritter was blackmailed by the Iraqis into resurfacing into public life and speaking out against a war, the reasoning behind his anti-war stance may have been a combination of three frequent motivators which often drive men to the wrong positions they take in life: fear, immorality, and moral confusion.
If Ritter were to confirm that a clandestine Iraqi weapons buildup was underway, thereby implicitly recommending war, he would be at the mercy of the Left's vengeance, which would work more swiftly and loudly to dig up dirt on him than the other side might. Allowing for the possibility that it would get dug up anyway, Ritter knew that an anti-war stance would bring less furor than a pro-war stance. He wagered well: A week later, there is still barely a peep from the media big wigs.
So on the one hand, Ritter feared exposure of his immoral character. But he also suffered a bout of confusion, wherein he subconsciously asked himself, Who am I to tell a man he can't seek world domination, when I sought sex with a minor?
Examples of such mental machinations are rampant. In Illinois, recent Republican ex-governor George Ryan, whose administration was rife with corruption (with criminal trials currently pending), this month commuted the sentences of all the state's death row inmates, in effect making victims' families pay for his sins. The greater example in recent memory, however, would be the tail end of the Clinton presidency, which during Monicagate found defenders on the Right--mostly men whose own guilty hearts didn't want to condemn a cheating man for fear that some day fingers could just as well point at them.
Of course, the case study for political overcompensating is Bill Clinton himself, who bombed Yugoslavia, which was weeding out terrorists whom we now have to weed out, in order to change the headlines from Lewinsky to something else. The semantics games that were employed at the time utilized words like "genocide," "Serbian butcher" and "preventing a wider conflict"--to no dissent. But now that the focus is on Iraq--which has committed genocide and which will indeed lead to wider conflict if left unchecked and which is run by a butcher--"dissenters" like Scott Ritter have found their voices again.
For personal reasons, Ritter decided he couldn't take the moral high ground on Iraq, and he was ready to sacrifice world security for his sins.
Very nice work Ms. Julia Gorin. Hopefully, we'll find someone or something; which helps explain what went so wrong between October 1997 and the time of Ritter's resignation. Perhaps Ritter, like Clinton, was more interested in his own personal sexual gratification; than the world security matters they were entrusted with.
Another showdown with Saddam Hussein is in the works. Ritter seems deeply troubled that even one US soldier might shed blood over Saddam’s Iraq. Perhaps a forbidden sexual encounter, followed by blackmail, predisposed the breakdown of UNSCOM?
If you find useful reference material, to backup this assertion, please add it on the Was Scott Ritter Compromised By The Amn Al-Khass! thread. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/829655/posts
And this, in itself, has precisely what relevance? The entire article is an example of an ancient logical fallacy: Post hoc ergo propter hoc. (One event follows another, therefore one event has been caused by another.)
Fortunately, not everyone is fooled.
That is, did Ritter consciously decide to adopt an outspoken pro-Saddam viewpoint in anticipation of his predilections becoming public, knowing that such exposure would then damage the pro-dictator crowd?
If so, that is in some sense a noble decision. It doesn't mitigate his crimes, by any means, but he definitely fell on his sword.
I think perhaps it's more likely that the Administration discovered the arrest and forced Ritter to go to the "other side" with the intention of releasing the damning information at a critical stage in the debate. It has definitely been made public at a crucial time.
"My heart's telling me to kill Saddam, or, I don't know, maybe my gut tells me that,'' he said. ''My heart's telling me to do what the Constitution says, but the gut's saying kill Saddam. And my brain has no clue which way to go here. It's just twisted. And I'm honest when I say I get up every morning and I just want to get the hell out of this."-- Scott Ritter, November 2002
Fortunately, not everyone is fooled.
How correct you are. As a Gulf War vet with a keen interest in middle eastern culture, I could not help but notice. I've followed the metamorphous of former UNSCOM inspector, and now peace activist Scott Ritter. Ritter's Iraq message shifts, as his moral compass deviates, a full 180 degrees. The $400,000.00 unjust enrichment, from an Iraqi businessman with close ties to Saddam Hussein raised my eyebrows too. No one does international business trade in Iraq, without Saddam's consent. Ritter's evasiveness with answers makes a reasonable person suspicious.
Ever since Ritter described the Iraqi children’s political prison in the Time Magazine story. Ritter asserts if we knew what went on in that children’s prison; that even Justin Raimondo, (oh, *so cool,* lik'a Doonsbury cartoon with the cigarette hanging from his lip) might demand war with Iraq.
do you have a link?
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