Scott Ritter: Iraq has no "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 The most important thing about this discussion with Scott Ritter, the
former UN/US arms inspector in Iraq,  which comes from ZNet,  is not his
estimate that the Bush administration is planning war on Iraq solely to win
congressional elections.  Ritter didn't operate at a level to know such
things, and his speculation is worth no more than anyone else's.

Ritter's important information, which he knows quite a lot about firsthand,
is that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.  (That helps explain why
the administration is eager to take the risks involved.  From Grenada after
the murder of Maurice Bishop, to Panama, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, the
U.S. targets for the last 20 years have been countries that the U.S.
imperialists believed did not have or had lost the capacity to resist attack
The White House and Pentagon have not been prone to deliberately take huge
risks.

U.S. imperialism may well run into much more resistance than they are
expecting in Iraq -- they are sure to run into this sooner or later as they
did in Vietnam, where they also expected an easy victory once they moved in
massively,  and, on a much smaller scale, in Somalia-- but their problem
won't be the nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction."

In my opinion,  since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait made his regime a
relatively easy political target, the top ruling circles in the United
States  have seen the overthrow of Saddam  as the road to turning Iraq into
a major protectorate and military base in the region, extending U.S.
domination of oil routes and supplies, stabilizing the deteriorating regime
in Saudi Arabia, providing a base for attacking Iran, and dealing a big blow
to the Palestinian people..

The former Bush administration missed its chance at a second term partly
because it failed in the 1991 war to achieve this goal.

Capitalist parties will do just about anything to win elections.  But the
main way they win is by gaining and retaining the political and financial
support of the capitalist ruling class by determinedly advancing their
interests.  That's what Bush is trying to do in Iraq.
>
> Znet
> The Coming October War In Iraq
>
> A Conversation With Scott Ritter
>
> by William Pitt
>
> July 26, 2002
>
> Email This Article To A Friend
>
>
> IRAQ
>
>
> Room 295 of the Suffolk Law School building in downtown Boston was filled
to
>
> capacity on July 23rd with peace activists, aging Cambridge hippies and
>
> assorted freaks. One of the organizers for the gathering, United For
Justice
>
> With Peace Coalition, handed out green pieces of paper that read, "We will
>
> not support war, no matter what reason or rhetoric is offered by
politicians
>
> or the media. War in our time and in this context is indiscriminate, a war
>
> against innocents and against children." Judging from the crowd, and from
>
> the buzz in the room, that pretty much summed things up. The contrast
>
> presented when Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, entered
>
> the room, could not have been more disparate. There at the lectern stood
>
> this tall lantern-jawed man, every inch the twelve-year Marine Corps
veteran
>
> he was, who looked and spoke just exactly like a bulldogging high school
>
> football coach. A whistle on a string around his neck would have perfected
>
> the image.
>
>
> "I need to say right out front," he said minutes into his speech, "I'm a
>
> card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate range who voted for
>
> George W. Bush for President. I'm not here with a political agenda. I'm
not
>
> here to slam Republicans. I am one."
>
>
> Yet this was a lie - Scott Ritter had come to Boston with a political
>
> agenda, one that impacts every single American citizen. Ritter was in the
>
> room that night to denounce, with roaring voice and burning eyes, the
coming
>
> American war in Iraq. According to Ritter, this coming war is about
nothing
>
> more or less than domestic American politics, based upon speculation and
>
> rhetoric entirely divorced from fact. According to Ritter, that war is
just
>
> over the horizon.
>
>
> "You got 20,000 Marines forward deployed in October," said Ritter, "you
>
> better expect war in October."
>
>
> His purpose for coming to that room was straightforward: The Senate
Foreign
>
> Relations Committee, chaired by Democrat Joe Biden, plans to call a
hearing
>
> beginning on Wednesday, July 31st. The Committee will call forth witnesses
>
> to
>
> describe the threat posed to America by Iraq. Ritter fears that much
crucial
>
> information will not be discussed in that hearing, precipitating a war
>
> authorization by Congress based on political expediency and ignorance.
Scott
>
> Ritter came to that Boston classroom to exhort all there to demand of the
>
> Senators on the Committee that he be allowed to stand as a witness.
>
>
> Ritter began his comments by noting the interesting times we live in after
>
> September 11th. There has been much talk of war, and much talk of war with
>
> Iraq. Ritter was careful to note that there are no good wars - as a
veteran,
>
> he described war as purely awful and something not to be trivialized - but
>
> that there is such a thing as a just war. He described America as a good
>
> place, filled with potential and worth fighting for. We go to just war, he
>
> said, when our national existence has been threatened.
>
>
> According to Ritter, there is no justification in fact, national security,
>
> international law or basic morality to justify this coming war with Iraq.
In
>
> fact, when asked pointedly what the mid-October scheduling of this
conflict
>
> has to do with the midterm Congressional elections that will follow a few
>
> weeks later, he replied, simply, "Everything."
>
>
>
> "This is not about the security of the United States," said this
>
> card-carrying Republican while pounding the lectern. "This is about
domestic
>
> American politics. The national security of the United States of America
has
>
> been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their
position
>
> of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions.
>
> The day we go to war for that reason is the day we have failed
collectively
>
> as a nation."
>
>
> Ritter was sledding up a pretty steep slope with all this. After all,
Saddam
>
> Hussein has been demonized for twelve years by American politicians and
the
>
> media. He gassed his own people, and America has already fought one war to
>
> keep him under control. Ritter's presence in Iraq was demanded in the
first
>
> place by Hussein's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of
>
> mass destruction, along with the ballistic missile technology that could
>
> deliver these weapons to all points on the compass.
>
>
> According to the Bush administration, Hussein has ties to the same Al
Qaeda
>
> terrorists that brought down the World Trade Center. It is certain that
>
> Hussein will use these terrorist links to deliver a lethal blow to
America,
>
> using any number of the aforementioned weapons. The argument, propounded
by
>
> Bush administration officials on any number of Sunday news talk shows, is
>
> that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, and the unseating of Saddam
Hussein,
>
> is critical to American national security. Why wait for them to hit us
>
> first?
>
>
> "If I were an American, uninformed on Iraq as we all are," said Ritter, "I
>
> would be concerned." Furthermore, continued Ritter, if an unquestionable
>
> case could be made that such weapons and terrorist connections existed, he
>
> would be all for a war in Iraq. It would be just, smart, and in the
interest
>
> of national defense.
>
>
> Therein lies the rub: According to Scott Ritter, who spent seven years in
>
> Iraq with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams performing acidly detailed
>
> investigations into Iraq's weapons program, no such capability exists.
Iraq
>
> simply does not have weapons of mass destruction, and does not have
>
> threatening ties to international terrorism. Therefore, no premise for a
war
>
> in Iraq exists. Considering the American military lives and the Iraqi
>
> civilian lives that will be spent in such an endeavor, not to mention the
>
> deadly regional destabilization that will ensue, such a baseless war must
be
>
> avoided at all costs.
>
>
> "The Bush administration has provided the American public with little more
>
> than rhetorically laced speculation," said Ritter. "There has been nothing
>
> in the way of substantive fact presented that makes the case that Iraq
>
> possesses these weapons or has links to international terror, that Iraq
>
> poses a threat to the United States of America worthy of war."
>
>
>
> Ritter regaled the crowd with stories of his time in Iraq with UNSCOM. The
>
> basis for the coming October war is the continued existence of a weapons
>
> program that threatens America. Ritter noted explicitly that Iraq, of
>
> course, had these weapons at one time - he spent seven years there
tracking
>
> them down. At the outset, said Ritter, they lied about it. They failed to
>
> declare the existence of their biological and nuclear programs after the
>
> Gulf War, and declared less than 50% of their chemical and missile
>
> stockpiles. They hid everything they could, as cleverly as they could.
>
>
> After the first lie, Ritter and his team refused to believe anything else
>
> they said. For the next seven years, the meticulously tracked down every
>
> bomb, every missile, every factory designed to produce chemical,
biological
>
> and nuclear weaponry. They went to Europe and found the manufacturers who
>
> sold them the equipment. They got the invoices and shoved them into the
>
> faces of Iraqi officials. They tracked the shipping of these materials and
>
> cross-referenced this data against the invoices. They lifted the
foundations
>
> of buildings destroyed in the Gulf War to find wrecked research and
>
> development labs, at great risk to their lives, and used the reams of
>
> paperwork there to cross-reference what they had already cross-referenced.
>
>
> Everything they found was later destroyed in place.
>
>
> After a while, the Iraqis knew Ritter and his people were robotically
>
> thorough. Fearing military retaliation if they hid anything, the Iraqis
>
> instituted a policy of full disclosure. Still, Ritter believed nothing
they
>
> said and tracked everything down. By the time he was finished, Ritter was
>
> mortally sure that he and his UNSCOM investigators had stripped Iraq of
>
> 90-95% of all their weapons of mass destruction.
>
>
>
> The fact that chemical and biological weapons ever existed in the first
>
> place demands action, according to the Bush administration. After all,
they
>
> could have managed to hide vast amounts of the stuff from Ritter's
>
> investigators. Iraq manufactured three kinds of these nerve agents: VX,
>
> Sarin and Tabou. Some alarmists who want war with Iraq describe 20,000
>
> munitions filled with Sarin and Tabou nerve agents that could be used
>
> against Americans.
>
>
> The facts, however, allay the fears. Sarin and Tabou have a shelf life of
>
> five years. Even if Iraq had somehow managed to hide this vast number of
>
> weapons from Ritter's people, what they are now storing is nothing more
than
>
> useless and completely harmless goo.
>
>
> The VX gas was of a greater concern to Ritter. It is harder to manufacture
>
> than the others, but once made stable, it can be kept for much longer.
>
> Ritter's people found the VX manufacturing facility that the Iraqis
claimed
>
> never existed totally destroyed, hit by a Gulf War bomb on January 23,
1991.
>
> The field where the material they had manufactured was subsequently buried
>
> underwent more forensic archaeology to determine that whatever they had
made
>
> had also been destroyed. All of this, again, was cross-referenced and
>
> meticulously researched.
>
>
> "The research and development factory is destroyed," said Ritter. "The
>
> product of that factory is destroyed. The weapons they loaded up have been
>
> destroyed. More importantly, the equipment procured from Europe that was
>
> going to be used for their large-scale VX nerve agent factory was
identified
>
> by the special commission - still packed in its crates in 1997 - and
>
> destroyed. Is there a VX nerve agent factory in Iraq today? Not on your
>
> life."
>
>
> This is, in and of itself, a bold statement. Ritter himself and no weapons
>
> inspection team has set foot in Iraq since 1998. Ritter believed Iraq
>
> technically capable of restarting its weapons manufacturing capabilities
>
> within six months of his departure. That leaves some three and one half
>
> years to manufacture and weaponize all the horrors that has purportedly
>
> motivated the Bush administration to attack.
>
>
>
> "If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof,"
said
>
> Ritter, "plain and simple."
>
>
> And yet we march to war, and soon. A chorus of voices was raised in the
room
>
> asking why we are going. What motivates this, if not hard facts and true
>
> threats? According to Ritter, it comes down to opportunistic politics and
a
>
> decade of hard anti-Hussein rhetoric that has boxed the Bush
administration
>
> into a rhetorical corner.
>
>
>
>
>
> This lack of results became exponentially more complicated. Politicians
>
> began making a living off of demonizing Hussein, and lambasting Clinton
for
>
> failing to have him removed. The roots of our current problem began to
>
> deepen at this point, for it became acceptable to encapsulate a nation of
20
>
> million citizens in the visage of one man who was hated and reviled in
>
> bipartisan fashion. Before long, the American people knew the drill -
Saddam
>
> is an evil threat and must be met with military force, period.
>
>
>
> "An open letter was written to Bill Clinton in the fall of 1999," said
>
> Ritter, "condemning him for failing to fully implement the Iraqi
Liberation
>
> Act. It demanded that he use the American military to facilitate the Iraqi
>
> opposition's operations inside Iraq, to put troops on the ground and move
on
>
> up to Baghdad to get rid of Saddam. Who signed this letter? Donald
Rumsfeld,
>
> Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Robert Zoellick, Richard Perle, and on
and
>
> on and on."
>
>
> The removal of Saddam Hussein became a plank in the GOP's race for the
>
> Presidency in 2000. After gaining office, George W. Bush was confronted
with
>
> the reality that he and many within his administration had spent a great
>
> amount of political capital promising that removal. Once in power,
however,
>
> he came to realize what his father and Clinton already knew - talking
tough
>
> was easy, and instigating pinprick military confrontations was easy, but
>
> removing Hussein from power was not easy at all. His own rhetoric was all
>
> around him, however, pushing him into that corner which had only one exit.
>
> Still, like the two Presidents before him, he treaded water.
>
>
> Then came September 11th. Within days, Bush was on television claiming
that
>
> the terrorists must have had state-sponsored help, and that state sponsor
>
> must be Iraq. When the anthrax attacks came, Bush blamed Iraq again. Both
>
> times, he had no basis whatsoever in fact for his claims. The habit of
>
> lambasting Iraq, and the opportunity to escape the rhetorical box twelve
>
> years of hard-talking American policy, were too juicy to ignore.
>
>
> The dearth of definitive proof of an Iraqi threat against America began to
>
> go international. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld appeared before NATO not long
>
> ago and demanded that they support America's looming Iraq war. Most of the
>
> NATO nations appeared ready to do so - they trusted that America's top
>
> defense official would not come before them and lie. But when they tried
to
>
> ask questions of him about the basis for this war, Rumsfeld absolutely
>
> refused to answer any of them. Instead, he offered this regarding our
utter
>
> lack of meaningful data to support a conflict: "The absence of evidence is
>
> not the evidence of absence."
>
>
> Scott Ritter appeared before NATO some days after this at their invitation
>
> to offer answers to their questions. Much of what he told them was
mirrored
>
> in his comments in that Boston classroom. After he was finished, 16 of the
>
> 19 NATO nations present wrote letters of complaint to the American
>
> government about Rumsfeld's comments, and about our basis for war.
American
>
> UN representatives boycotted this hearing, and denounced all who gave ear
to
>
> Ritter.
>
>
> Some have claimed that the Bush administration may hold secret evidence
>
> pointing to a threat within Iraq, one that cannot be exposed for fear of
>
> compromising a source. Ritter dismissed this out of hand in Boston. "If
the
>
> administration had such secret evidence," he said, "we'd be at war in Iraq
>
> right now. We wouldn't be talking about it. It would be a fait accompli."
>
> Our immediate military action in Afghanistan, whose ties to Al Qaeda were
>
> manifest, lends great credence to this point.
>
>
> Ritter dismissed oil as a motivating factor behind our coming war with
Iraq.
>
> He made a good defense of this claim. Yes, Iraq has the second-largest oil
>
> reserves on earth, a juicy target for the petroleum-loving Bush
>
> administration. But the U.S. already buys some 68% of all the oil produced
>
> in Iraq. "The Navy ships in the Gulf who work to interdict the smuggling
of
>
> Iraqi oil," said Ritter, "are fueled by Iraqi oil." Iraq's Oil Minister
has
>
> stated on camera that if the sanctions are lifted, Iraq will do whatever
it
>
> takes to see that America's oil needs are fulfilled. "You can't get a
better
>
> deal than that," claimed Ritter.
>
>
> Ritter made no bones about the fact that Saddam Hussein is an evil man.
Like
>
> most Americans, however, he detests being lied to. His work in Iraq, and
his
>
> detailed understanding of the incredible technological requirements for
the
>
> production of weapons of mass destruction, leads him to believe beyond
>
> question that there is no basis in fact or in the needs of national
security
>
> for a war in Iraq. This Marine, this Republican who seemed so essentially
>
> hawkish that no one in that Boston classroom would have been surprised to
>
> find wings under his natty blue sportcoat, called the man he cast a
>
> Presidential vote for a liar.
>
>
>
> "The clock is ticking," he said, "and it's ticking towards war. And it's
>
> going to be a real war. It's going to be a war that will result in the
>
> deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans and tens of thousands
of
>
> Iraqi civilians. It's a war that is going to devastate Iraq. It's a war
>
> that's going to destroy the credibility of the United States of America. I
>
> just came back from London, and I can tell you this - Tony Blair may talk
a
>
> good show about war, but the British people and the bulk of the British
>
> government do not support this war. The Europeans do not support this war.
>
> NATO does not support this war. No one supports this war."
>
>
>
> It is of a certainty that few in the Muslim world support another American
>
> war with Iraq. Osama bin Laden used the civilian suffering in Iraq under
the
>
> sanctions to demonstrate to his followers the evils of America and the
West.
>
> Another war would exacerbate those already-raw emotions. After 9/11, much
of
>
> the Islamic world repudiated bin Laden and his actions. Another Iraq war
>
> would go a long way to proving, in the minds of many Muslims, that bin
Laden
>
> was right all along. The fires of terrorism that would follow this are
>
> unimaginable.
>
>
> Scott Ritter wants to be present as a witness on Monday when the Foreign
>
> Relations Committee convenes its hearing, a hearing that will decide
whether
>
> or not America goes to war in Iraq. He wants to share the information he
>
> delivered in that Boston classroom with Senators who have spent too many
>
> years listening to, or propounding, rhetorical and speculative
fearmongering
>
> about an Iraqi threat to America that does not exist. Instead, he wants
the
>
> inspectors back in Iraq, doing their jobs. He wants to try and keep
American
>
> and Iraqi blood from being spilled in a military exercise promulgated by
>
> right-wing ideologues that may serve no purpose beyond affecting the
outcome
>
> of the midterm Congressional elections in November 2002.
>
>
>
> "This is not theory," said Ritter in Boston as he closed his comments.
"This
>
> is real. And the only way this war is going to be stopped is if Congress
>
> stops this war."
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>
>
> On the web: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
>
> http://foreign.senate.gov/committee/
>
>
> William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. His new book, 'The
>
> Greatest Sedition is Silence,' will be published soon by Pluto Press.
>
> -
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