Posted on 09/08/2002 2:38:49 AM PDT by kattracks
BAGHDAD, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Scott Ritter, a former U.N. arms inspector who rejects U.S. charges that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction, has arrived in Baghdad declaring that his mission is to try to stop any U.S.-led war on Iraq.
Ritter, who arrived in Baghdad late on Saturday, was expected to address the Iraqi parliament on Sunday. He was also due to meet senior Iraqi government officials.
Ritter said the trip was at his own initiative "...as an American citizen concerned about the direction that my country is taking, I think that's the reason why I'm here."
"I'm here to help set in motion a sequence of events that hopefully could prevent a war that doesn't need to be fought," he told CNN.
His trip to Baghdad came amid heightened speculation U.S. President George W. Bush might order a military strike against Iraq to topple the government of President Saddam Hussein, whom Washington accuses of developing such weapons as nuclear, biological or chemical arms.
Ritter, a former U.S. Marine who resigned his U.N. post in 1998 and later accused Washington of using the inspections teams to spy on Iraq, said last month that Baghdad had been fundamentally disarmed after the 1991 Gulf war that drove Iraqi invasion troops out of Kuwait.
On leaving his U.N. job, Ritter at the time accused the United Nations and the United States of not being tough enough on Iraq when it violated Security Council resolutions, but he subsequently became a vocal critic of U.S. policy on Iraq.
"Their (Iraqi) weapons programmes have been eliminated," he told a gathering in Washington last month of opponents to any U.S. strike on Iraq.
"Iraq poses no threat to any of its neighbours. It does not threaten its region. It does not threaten the United States. It does not threaten the world."
He has said Washington and the United Nations should reassess their positions and not insist on 100 percent disarmament.
Arms experts left Iraq on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign in December, 1998. They have not been allowed in since.
Iraq says it has no more weapons of mass destruction and that the United Nations should lift sanctions imposed on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait.
((Hassan Hafidh, Baghdad Newsroom))
© Reuters Limited.
Like Saddam Hussein.
Stay there.
Don't we have laws preventing private citizens from enacting foreign policy for the US?
Actually Miles is one of the less-brain-dead folks in the newsroom there (I met him when I worked there); he's much less political than many of the folks there - unfortunately, he's stuck in a sea of fools.
Oh, I love it - Eason Jordan (CNN high-muckety-muck) is in Baghdad and is due to speak live on CNN at 8A ET.
They're accepting e-mails for Jordan at WAM@cnn.com
Definitely. Even though when Ritter was critical of the Clinton administration's lack of support of the UN inspectors in '98, no one carried his testimony before Congress except C-SPAN.
Follow the $$, as they say. He's either been bought or there's a slight chance he's an intelligence agent and is playing a game "pretending" to be on the side of Iraq.
He was either lying in '98 when he testified before Congress that Iraq posed a clear and present danger and was close to having operational nuclear weapons OR he's lying now when he says Iraq is not a threat and does not have WMD. No one has been permitted to inspect in Iraq for 4 years - there's no way Ritter knows what Saddam has or doesn't have anymore.
Sounds like Ritter is unsure of himsef.
He can't possibbly know the truth. How would he know if Saddam DIDN'T have weapons?
Bush's people have done a piss poor job of explaining a doctrine as to why nations within intermediate missile range of Israel can NEVER have nukes. It is because Israel is Tel Aviv and one bomb over Tel Aviv and it's game over for Israel. Israel can strike back but the Islamic/Pan Arab radical enemies of Israel would be willing to absorb the hit thinking they have more centers of population from which to rise whereas Israel has but one.
So Bush people get your act together, craft a nuclear non proliferation doctrine and enforce it. Quit beating around the, nevermind. Put together a coherent set of reasons for rearranging the table in the ME.
Oh but if you live in a city and there is a nuke fear, fuggitaboutit. One nuke and we will have images f-o-r-e-v-e-r of the burned and disfigured, of the cancer wards and birth defects. It's the ultimate terror weapon.
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