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.
Makes you wonder what happened to make Ritter do a 180.
Probably pictures of Ben Franklin.
No. His story has changed 180 degrees and that change occured years after he no longer had direct access to the situation. It also occured after Iraq hired him to do a film. Unless he's able to show that he found proof of Iraq's innocence in the PI studio or in a cornfield in Iowa, I'd say this is an open and shut case of selling out for cash.
He should just stay there.
Which Ritter should we believe, Scott Ritter #1, who comes with corroborating evidence from other inspectors and dissident testimony, or Scott ritter #2 whose only witness seems to be Hussein?
No.
Follow the money. I know you can do it.
Three words: Swiss bank account
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