Posted on 02/01/2003 4:15:21 AM PST by 76Tiger
No reason to attack Iraq, ex-weapons inspector tells packed house in Saugerties
By Aimee J. Frank, Correspondent February 01, 2003
It was standing room only at the Frank D. Greco Senior Citizens Center in Saugerties on Friday for the talk by former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter. FREEMAN/Bob Haines
SAUGERTIES - He's made a name for himself stating Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction and opposing a possible U.S. military strike against Iraq, but "I stand before you as someone who is not a pacifist," Scott Ritter told a packed house Friday night.
"I believe that, in fact, if we set out our political beliefs, I would be in opposition to most of the people in this room," Ritter told some 300 people who jammed the Frank D. Greco Senior Citizens' Center to hear the former U.N. weapons inspector and ex-Marine.
But Ritter, speaking at an event sponsored by the Saugerties Committee for Peace and Social Justice, an anti-war group, said it is "a documented fact that, by 1996, 90 to 95 percent of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capability was eliminated, including 100 percent of the factories used by Iraq to produce these weapons."
Indeed, weapons inspectors who went to Iraq this winter found no smoking guns, but they encountered difficulty accessing some sites, and President Bush maintains that Saddam continues to possess chemical and biological weapons. Bush says military action may be the only way to prevent Saddam from using these weapons, and statements out of the White House in recent days suggest a U.S. military offensive against Baghdad could be only weeks away.
Ritter said on Friday that Bush merely is using the purported existence of these weapons as an excuse to remove Saddam from power.
"It has been American policy since 1991 (when the United States and its allies launched the Persian Gulf War against Iraq) to achieve regime removal in Iraq, to eliminate Saddam Hussein," Ritter said. "And this unilateral policy of regime removal has taken priority over disarmament."
Ritter agrees with Bush that Saddam is a ruthless dictator but said removing the Iraqi leader is "not a cause worthy of the sacrifice of American life."
Ritter was well-received by the audience and received a standing ovation at the end of his half-hour talk.
He took questions from after his speech, but not before a moderator instructed the audience that all inquiries had to be about Iraq. That was an apparent attempt to avoid questions about Ritter's arrest in June 2001 in an Internet sex sting.
Ritter, an Albany County resident, has declined to discuss the incident, but newspaper and broadcast reports in the Capital District over the past two weeks have said he allegedly tried to lure to a restaurant a 16-year-old girl he met on the Internet. The girl turned out to be an undercover police officer, and Ritter was arrested when they met.
Ritter has said he is prohibited from discussing the case because the charges were dismissed and the records were sealed. But he has suggested that the arrest suddenly being brought to the media's attention was part of an attempt to silence him.
"It's a shame that somebody would bring up this old matter, this dismissed matter, and seek to silence me at this time," he said last week.
Among those posing a question to Ritter after his speech on Friday was Manna Jo Greene, a Rosendale resident who plans to travel to Iraq next week as a way of protesting a possible U.S. attack.
Her question: What can be done to prevent this war?
"This war will be stopped ... when President Bush realizes that he loses more politically by going to war than he does by not going to war," Ritter replied.
Since his resignation as a weapons inspector in 1998, after seven years of service, Ritter has published two books and produced a film about U.S. policy toward Iraq and has lectured widely. He routinely tells audiences that Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction and poses no threat to the United States.
The crowd in Saugerties on Friday was so large that it spilled outside the Senior Citizens' Center. There also was a police presence, because protesters were expected, but no demonstrators showed up and no problems were reported.
©Daily Freeman 2003
Methinks Ritter has confused Bush with Clinton- it was Clinton who was politically driven to run things according to the polls. But Ritter is confused about a lot of things.
Earth to Ritter - The 3000 or more murdered on 9-11. What were they, chopped liver?
I live a few blocks from where the Ritter talk was given. Saugerties is a relatively small town and after 25+ years of living here, one knows many people and faces. None of us that attended recognized more than a handful of the Ritter fan club as locals.
One of the funniest incidents occured when a cameraman from one of the Albany TV stations (I won't identify which one) was filming an interview with one of Ritter's adoring fans outside of the senior center. After a minute of listening to his Regurgitated Ritter Rhetoric, the cameraman shutoff the camera on his own, lowered it from his shoulder, and loudly proclaimed "This is bulls--t". That started quite a commotion, with this Ritter butt-boy claiming how the media was biased against Ritter as he frantically asked if anybody else heard the BS comment. We were too busy rolling on the ground laughing to catch any more of the confrontation, and left shortly thereafter.
Wow!
They used up all dozen folding chairs & had to drag a few extras out of the cafeteria!
If he has it, I'm for attacking Iraq. If he doesn't I'm against it.
As for the crowd, I figured as much. I'll bet every nit-wit in the region was there.
Thanks. Roughly speaking, there were 300-330 people in or about the senior center. Of that number, about 1/3 were wildly supportive of Ritter, and another 1/3 joined in applause. The remaining 1/3 or so were mostly silent, not applauding or reacting, so I assumed that they were there to listen as good little moderates or silently oppose Ritter and avoid a pointless conflict with his supporters.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.