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Scott Ritter

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William Scott Ritter, Jr. (born July 15, 1961) was a U.S. Marine and a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He has been a noted critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy in regard to Iraq and reported to the CIA that no Weapons of Mass Destruction could be found in Iraq.

Ritter was born into a military family in 1961. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a B.A. in Soviet History and departmental honors. He joined the Marine Corps in 1984, where he served for twelve years as an intelligence officer. He initially served as the lead analyst for the Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force concerning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq War. During Desert Storm, he served as a ballistic missile advisor to General Norman Schwarzkopf. Ritter later worked as a security and military consultant for the Fox News network.

Weapons Inspector

Ritter served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq in UNSCOM from 1991. He was chief inspector in 14 of the more than 30 inspection missions that he particpated in.

In January of 1998 his inspection team into Iraq was blocked from some weapons sites by Iraqi officials and he was accused of being a spy and following this incident Ritter resigned from UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) on August 26, 1998.

In his letter of resignation, he said the Security Council's reaction to Iraq's decision earlier that month to suspend co-operation with the inspection team made a mockery of the disarmament work. He said later in an interview that he resigned from his role as a United Nations weapons inspector because he felt "the investigations had come to a standstill, were making no effective progress, and in order to make effective progress, we really needed the Security Council to step in in a meaningful fashion and seek to enforce its resolutions that we're not complying with."

After he was expelled from Iraq in August 1998, before UNSCOM was withdrawn, he said on the PBS show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program.

In the PBS interview, Ritter said:

You had this (aggressive) statement on the one hand, but on the other hand, this administration's saying, wait a minute, we can't go forward with aggressive inspections because they will lead to a confrontation with Iraq, but let's understand the confrontation is because Iraq will not comply with the law passed by the Security Council. So we weren't allowed to do our job out of fear of a confrontation in which the United States would not be able to muster the required support of the Security Council to respond effectively or to respond in a manner which they had said they would respond in Resolution 1154.

On September 3, 1998, several days after his resignation, Ritter testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations on U.S. policy and said that he resigned his postion "out of frustration that the United Nations Security Council, and the United States as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq."

Criticism of Ritter

Some commentators have alleged that after Ritter had resigned his position as weapons inspector, the he did a "turnaround" and changed from being a 'hawke' to a 'dove' but Ritter himself maintains that his position had remained consistent because he has always favoured effective inspection and arms control .

Documentary

In 2000 he made a documentary In Shifting Sands: The Truth About Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq.

Associated Press reported:

"Scott Ritter, a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer, says in the 90-minute documentary that he did not provoke the confrontation the Americans wanted in March 1998, but fellow inspector Roger Hill (an Australian) did have a confrontation in December of that year. Days later, chief U.N. inspector Richard Butler declared that Iraq was not cooperating with weapons inspectors and the United States and Britain launched airstrikes against Iraq in punishment. U.N. inspectors pulled out of the country ahead of the bombing raids, and Iraq has barred them from returning for over 2 1/2 years. Butler, who was Ritter's boss, called the allegations 'completely false' and accused Ritter of making 'a propaganda film.'"

The documentary was financed in part by Detroit businessman Shakir al Khafaji. Al-Khafaji, who gave Ritter $400,000 to produce his film, and who has admitted that Saddam's regime awarded him oil vouchers worth more than one million dollars under the scandal-ridden Oil-for-Food programme run by the UN.

Legal problems

In 2001, Ritter was arrested near Albany . News reports say Ritter had brushes with police on two occasions, both involving allegations of intent to meet underage girls after chatting on the internet.

Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Preiser agreed to charge Ritter with a misdemeanor with a view to dropping the charges if no further allegations against him arose in the following six months. Preiser asked for court records to be sealed without informing the District Attorney about the case. Albany County District Attorney Paul Clyne was upset a disposition should be made on a sensitive case like this without his input and he fired Preiser. It is claimed by WTEN-TV that according to unamed sources, Ritter underwent court-ordered sex offender counseling from an Albany psychologist.

Following the dismissal of charges in the state jurisdiction, federal law enforcement officials looked into the possibility Ritter violated federal law, but no charges were made. Ritter says that the prosecutor telephoned him and apologised.

National Review editor James S. Robbins has suggested that Saddam Hussein's regime used knowledge of Ritter's activities as leverage to convince Ritter to change his public stance toward Iraq, but these speculations have not been substantiated by any evidence. Ritter himself says all charges were dismissed.

Statement on U.S. Iran Policy

On February 18th, 2005 Scott Ritter told an audience in Washington that George Bush had ordered preparations to bomb Iran and that these preparations be completed by June of 2005. He also alleged on that occassion that the United States had rigged the 2005 parliamentary election to prevent the United Iraqi Alliance from winning an outright majority.

He reiterated and clarified his statements about Iran in a March 30 article published by Al Jazeera.

On October 21st, 2005, he was interviewd by Amy Goodman of the radio and TV show "Democracy Now!" and qualified his earlier statements about U.S.A. policy toward Iran, as they had been reported by some sources. He said "I was very clear, based upon the information given to me, and it's 100% accurate, that in October 2004, the President of the United States ordered the Pentagon to be prepared to launch military strikes against Iran as of June 2005. That means have all the resources in place so that if the President orders it, the bombing can begin. It doesn't mean that the bombing is going begin in June. And a lot of people went, “Ah, you said they were going to attack in June.” Absolutely not." (transcript) (mp3)

Ritter has also said that "The real purpose of the EU-3 intervention - to prevent the United States from using Iran's nuclear ambition as an excuse for military intervention - is never discussed in public." He added: "The EU3 would rather continue to participate in fraudulent diplomacy rather than confront the hard truth - that it is the United States, and not Iran, that is operating outside international law when it comes to the issue of Iran's nuclear programme."

See also

Bibliography

  • Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Hardcover), 2005. Foreword by Seymour Hersh. ISBN 1560258527
  • Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America (Context Books, 2003) ISBN 1893956474
  • War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know (with William Rivers Pitt). Context Books, 2002. ISBN 1893956385
  • Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem - Once and For All (Simon & Schuster, 1999) ISBN 0684864851 (paperback: Diane Pub Co, 2004; ISBN 0756776597)

External links

References

Criticism of Ritter

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