Free Republic

Scott Ritter, formerly the top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, has long argued that claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes were massively exaggerated. His public campaign against the US-led invasion of Iraq made him a hated figure of the American right, which still demonises him as an apologist for the ousted Baghdad regime. Now, at the very moment when the absence of weapons of mass destruction in post-Saddam Iraq should make Mr Ritter feel vindicated, he faces new questions about his relationship with Baghdad after he quit his UN job in 1998. Mr Ritter...

The U.N. oil-for-food program was supposed to help the Iraqi people acquire the food and medicine they needed while U.N. sanctions against Iraq were in place, sanctions that could have been lifted had Saddam Hussein complied with the resolutions that the U.N. Security Council adopted following the first Gulf War. Incredibly, the deposed leader was able to bribe a global network of international power players and turn the oil-for-food program into a massive charade. Saddam orchestrated this operation so successfully that over seven years he may have collected up to $10 billion in illegal cash kickbacks while officials at the...