And why are we listening to this guy?
Posted on 03/26/2003 6:34:39 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Former UN weapons inspector says US does not have military means to take over Baghdad, defeat inevitable.
LISBON - The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening.
"We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable," he said.
"Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added.
Stiffening Iraqi resistance as US-led forces close in on Baghdad have prompted questions about the strategy to use precision air power and a smaller, fast moving ground force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Some military analysts have said there are not enough allied troops in Iraq to take control of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein's elite troops are said to be concentrated, and that the planning of the war was overly optimistic.
But British Prime Minister Tony Blair told parliament Wednesday the United States and Britain believe they have "sufficient forces" in Iraq and London was not planning to send reinforcements to the country at this stage.
A combination of bad weather and heavy fighting in central Iraq has slowed the advance of coalition troops marching on Baghdad.
Ritter resigned in August 1998 after accusing both Washington and the United Nations of not doing enough to support the weapons inspectors.
Since leaving the UN weapons inspectors team he has become an outspoken critic of US policies towards Iraq.
He doesn't want his next paycheck from Saddam to bounce.
Not to mention his procurement of high quality marijuana
Now, THERE'S a real power team.....
I have to agree. Nobody outside of Iraq has expressed this opinion. Not even those europeans who specialize in surrender.
New York Daily News report Ritter allegedly had an online sexual discussion with someone he thought was an underage girl. The "girl," however, turned out to be an undercover police investigator, according to the Daily News, whose sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
LMAO
Hey Scott, what do you mean we???
YOU ARE NOT ONE OF US.
Oh well some day just don't go the way you would like them to go. Maybe tomorrow will go the way you want.
Nobody works this hard for a pay-off. Scott Ritter is sinking his career for the rest of his life here. There has to be something more at work here. Methinks Saddam has polaroids of our friend Scotty doing things he should not have been doing with young people he should not have been doing them with.
There is a progression in this sort of obsession:
Step 1 is a predeliction.
Step 2 is initiation
Step 3 is developing a need, where the unnatural has supplanted the natural desire
Step 4 is the degenerate phase.
Our Scotty is clearly in the degenerate phase. The question is, who identified his prediliction and developed it? Who moved him from a non-offending Step 1 to the offending Steps 2 and 3? And wouldn't they have polaroids? Video, these days, I would guess.
I would imagine that our Scotty has been a long term project of the Iraqis, and that they developed it while he was in-country back in the 90's. Now they are pulling the string. Oldest trick in the book. Literally.
I won't try to defend Ritter-the-Turd, but I think that he started off trying to do the right thing during the inspections, pointing out how dangerous Saddam still was even after Desert Storm. IMHO, what pushed him over the edge into what can only be called insanity was the verbal beat-down he got from very influencial dems after his resignation from UNSCOM...namely from Disgraced former Secretary of state Albright and Deleware uber-snob Senator Joseph Biden. Here is a snippet of their comments:
Testifying to the House National Security Committee a few days ago, Ritter declared: "The message is the same: let's cut a deal with Iraq."
Ritter said the U.S. policy had become one of "pretend inspections." Iraq froze all cooperation with inspectors on Aug. 5.
Ritter has a colorful background. He quit the Marines as a captain and intelligence officer in 1991. As a weapons inspector, he clashed on several previous occasions with U.S. intelligence officers. He was accused by Iraq of espionage, an assertion denied by Ritter and U.S. officials.
Albright and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have both felt the sting of taking him on.
Albright suggested last week that Ritter might be a "great American" but one who "doesn't have a clue about what our overall policy has been."
Biden told Ritter at a Senate hearing that decisions on how to confront Iraq were best left to those who "have responsibilities slightly above your pay grade."
"That's why they get paid the big bucks," Biden said. "That's why they get the limos and you don't."
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