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Posted on 10/30/2005 8:02:05 AM PST by thinking4me
..transcript of an October 19 public conversation sponsored by The Nation Institute at the New York Ethical Culture Society The conversation was based on revelations in Ritter's new book, Iraq Confidential
MR. HERSH: What I'm going to do is just ask Scott a series of questions. I've read his book a couple of times,
So, Scott, to begin, before we even talk about how we got to where we are, my own personal view is we have two options in Iraq. Option A, we can get all our troops out by midnight tonight, and option B, we can get them all out by tomorrow night at midnight. And so I wonder where you sit on that, what's your view?
MR. RITTER: Well, I view that Iraq is a nation that's on fire. There's a horrific problem that faces not only the people of Iraq but the United States and the entire world. And the fuel that feeds that fire is the presence of American and British troops. This is widely acknowledged by the very generals that are in charge of the military action in Iraq. So the best way to put out the fire is to separate the fuel from the flame. So I'm a big proponent of bringing the troops home as soon as possible.
Today's the best day we're going to have in Iraq. Tomorrow's going to be worse, and the day after that's going to be even worse. But we also have to recognize that one of the reasons why we didn't move to Baghdad in 1991 to take out Saddam was that there was wide recognition that if you get rid of Saddam and you don't have a good idea of what's going to take his place, that Iraq will devolve into chaos and anarchy. Well, we've done just that. We got rid of Saddam, and we have no clue what was going to take his place. And pulling the troops out is only half of the problem.
We also have to deal with three critical issues that have emerged since we invaded:
--A, the Shia, and I'm not talking about the mainstream Shia of Iraq. I'm talking about this political elite that's pro-Iranian that has conducted a coup d'etat. They're running the government today.
--B, the Sunni. We took a secular bulwark against the expansion of radical anti-American Islamic fundamentalism, and we've radicalized them. And if we just pull out and leave the situation as it is, we've turned the Sunni heartland into a festering cesspool of anti-American sentiment. It's the new Afghanistan, the new breeding ground for Al Qaeda.
--C, the one that nobody talks about in the media is the Kurds. We somehow have given the Kurds this false sense that they're going to have an independent homeland, and yet our NATO ally, Turkey, has said this will never happen. And if we allow the Kurds to move forward towards independence, we're compelling the Turks to radical military intervention at a time when Turkey has just been invited to enter into the fifteen-year negotiation with the European Union about becoming a member of the European community. If the Turks move against the Kurds, that negotiation's over which means that Turkey has been rejected by Europe and will be heading towards the embrace of radical anti-American Islam. So it's not just about getting the troops out. We have to recognize that there are three huge ongoing issues in Iraq that affect the national security of the United States, and we need a policy to address these. But keeping our troops in Iraq is not part of that policy.
MR.HERSH: How do you get them out, how quickly? ..... MORE - CLICK ON THE LINK
Well, I mean, I'll start off, and I want to highlight that point that Clinton wasn't so good. You know, there's a lot of talk today in the Democratically controlled judiciary committee about going after the Bush Administration for crimes, for lying to Congress, and etc. And I'm all in favor of that, bring on the indictments, but don't stop at the Bush Administration. If you want to have a truly bipartisan indictment, you indict Madeleine Albright, you indict Sandy Berger, you indict every person on the Clinton Administration that committed the exact same crime that the Bush Administration has committed today. Lying during the course of your official duty: That's a felony, that's a high crime and misdemeanor. That's language in the Constitution that triggers certain events like impeachment. So let's not just simply turn this into a Bush-bashing event. This is about a failure of not only the Bush Administration but of the United States of America, and we have to look in the mirror and recognize that, well, all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole, a failure that not only involves the executive, but it involves the legislative branch, Congress.
Congress has abrogated its responsibilities under the Constitution, and they've abrogated it for years. Then there's the media, and, yes, we can turn this into a media-bashing event. But you know what? The media only feeds the American people the poison they're willing to swallow. And we the people of the United States of America seem to want our news in no more than three-minute chunks with sound bites of thirty seconds or less, and it can't be too complicated. So what we did is allowed ourselves during the decade of the 1990s to be pre-programmed into accepting at face value without question anything that was negative about Saddam Hussein's regime, and this made selling the war on Iraq on the basis of a lie the easiest task ever faced by the Bush Administration.
"Violence does not and cannot exist by itself; it is invariably intertwined with the lie." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"All warfare is based on deception." -- The Art Of War, Sun Tzu
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- James Madison, while a United States Congressman
will the real conservatives in Congress now stand up and help put an end to the very expensive betrayal? The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves as I type this.
Scott WHO? Oh, the 'dumb as dirt' traitor........
Hey Scott;
Go back to savaging underage girls, and taking money from Saddam.
Perv
Hey troll, is that your typing in blue or Scott's?
How many innocent millions were killed in southeast Asia after we left?
Is this the start of Hersh's new program, "Traitor to Traitor"?
He's not a troll...but thinking4me wants to expose the bank cartel...
Gotta keep one eye out for those Rothschilds, right?
Scotty-boy is real credible in light of his 180-degree change in his views as soon as money from islamic third-parties started rolling in. He stayed under a rock for 2 years after his arrest in a child-molestation charge (thank God the cops intervened before he could actually do it). Scott needs to go back under that rock.
What very expensive betrayal might that be?
Yep them and Halliburton.
Forget about Ritter, Soros and Marc Rich and the 2000 other companies from Europe who stole food from babies.
IB4TZ
I don't think anyone takes Hersh seriously. As far as Ritter, well....
Wonder how he explains his association with Shakir Al-Khafaji ...oil for food scandal...(12 million barrels), a well-connected Detroit-area businessman who led a delegation of anti-war Congressional Democrats to Baghdad in September 2002 and who funded an anti-sanctions documentary produced by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
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I watched a few mionutes of this. When Ritter had asserted that he knew better than everyoone else, congress, 2 administrations, and the media I gave up and turned it off. Lone voices are usually kooks.
One pervert interviews another. You can guess which is which.
The "bank cartel"? Where is that mentioned in this story or anything thinking4me has posted? Hmmm, methinks I've found thinking4me's alt-username.
I think someone checked his/her freeper page. I noticed that too.
Somehow the Madison quote might just perhaps fit.
Feel free to humor me with specifics.
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