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.
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I don't even think Hanoi Ritter has been bought and paid for or is being black-mailed. I just think he is a Bush-Hating, New-World-Order, U.N.-Loving ego-maniac that became addicted to the camera and is using his celebrity to promote his self-interest propaganda!
Geezzzz!! ...and obviously you are one of these "most people'?
The rest of your "most people" are over at DU!!
...maybe you can catch a plane flight and join your brother Hanoi Jane Ritter in kissing Saddam's ugly ass!!
. Who paid for the trip and is anybody looking into Ritter's finances?
If he were telling the truth there wouldn't be any reason for Saddam to keep inspectors out of Iraq.
Saddam and Rittter are trying to make inspection the issue when in fact it isn't an issue on the table anymore in the Bush Administration. Saddam is going, inspections or no inspections, and sooner than he thinks. Ritter would be smart to get on board his Iraqi paid for return flight before it is to late.
But the distinction between Saddam and the members of the nuclear club can be made easily. From this thread yesterday:
Saddam is a brutal military dictator (his first job was as an assassin); he has taken over weaker neighbors in search of power prestige, and resources; he has rattled his sabre towards America repeatedly; he pays $25,000 to the families of terrorists to reward them for killing innocent civilians; he has used WOMD against Iran and against his own people; he believes in the superiority of his brethren over the rest of the world; he is trying to develop nuclear and chemical weapons in violation of the resolutions that ended the Gulf War; he refuses to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq unless he has had a chance to hide them...
in short, he's an evil tyrant who needs to be removed from power before millions are decimated trying to remove him in a global war. Saddam (and Iraq, and the soon-to-be-destabilized Middle East) can avoid war by his ouster, replacing him with a popular-election Republic that will not allow terrorists to stand unmolested in their land. The free flow of oil at market prices will be necessary, as Iraq will need an economic recovery from this shake-up (Marshall Plan, anyone?).
And from the US Department of State's webpage:
Saddam Hussein's Anfal Campaign in the 1980s against the predominantly Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq was characterized by gross violations of human rights. It included the worst ever chemical weapons attack against a civilian population, mass summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary jailing and warehousing, forced displacement, and destruction of some 2,000 villages (4,000 destroyed since 1975), including schools, mosques, farms, and power stations. The campaign resulted in the death of at least 50,000 to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds, according to Human Rights Watch reports. During the 1991 Iraqi repression of the post-Gulf war Kurdish insurrection, thousands of Iraqi Kurds died, 500,000 became refugees along northern Iraq's "no-fly zone" bordering Turkey, and 1.2 to 1.4 million other refugees fled to Iran.
Saddam Hussein launched about 40 gas attacks against Iraqi Kurdish villages and targets in 1987-88 with thousands killed, including the largest attack in March 1988 on Halabjah, a Kurdish town of 45,000 in northern Iraq, causing 3,500 to 5,000 deaths, according to Human Rights Watch. Chemical agents used were a "cocktail" of Mustard gas (which affects skin, eyes, and the membranes of the nose, throat, and lungs), and the nerve gases Sarin, Tabun, and VX.
An excerpt of a quarterly report (shown below) indicates Iraqi aircraft bombed the headquarters of the "sabotage bands" (Iraqi code word for Kurdish resistance) in Iraq's Kurdish villages of Sayw Sanan (Saywan) and Balakajar in a chemical strike on 22 March 1988, killing 50 and wounding 20 others. This Iraqi state document contains the first official direct reference to a chemical attack carried out by Iraqi forces.
The idea that Saddam could be trusted with nuclear weapons (or any WOMD) is easily refuted.
What I am curious about though, is I once heard that Ritter was a Marine (now ex-Marine). I just wonder what happened. Is he an example of what the Marine Corps produces? Time was I had a good deal of confidence in our military. Ritter really undermines that. I s'pose it's a logical error to assign to the group the characteristics of the one.
Do other Marines and ex-Marines still claim him as one of their own?
Or receiving death threats to himself or his family?
Ritter watched Butler be booked on innumerable Cable Talk Shows and then watched as Ritter himself was booked on the same shows. Not only did neither of them make any money doing this (even with their books that they tried to hawk on the shows) but after a while, everyone stopped calling.
What can one do when one's only expertise is no longer in demand? Switch sides and negotiate a good deal?
Is that why these "quasi-journalists / political-hacks" switch sides (even back and forth like David Brock) as in Blinded By the Right.
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