http://www.lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/4/9085
Damn! The media was sure ripping into him, weren't they?
A bit of egg on that so-called liberal media's face now, eh?
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Scott Ritter was widely ridiculed when he argued, six months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that the case for war was ?speculative,? that there was no proof Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The 1984 Franklin & Marshall grad, a former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, was quickly labeled a ?traitor,? a misguided ?apologist for and defender of Saddam Hussein.?
?People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein?s Kool-Aid,? CNN?s Paula Zahn told Ritter, on-air, in September 2002.
MSNBC host Curtis Sliwa suggested Ritter ?turn in his passport for an Iraqi one.?
Few are laughing at him now.
Top U.S. arms inspector Charles A. Duelfer, in a report made public last week, confirmed what Ritter had been saying before the war ? that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either.
Ritter is one of a very select few who were right. But he?s not tooting his own horn saying ?I told you so.?
?I?d be a liar if I said I didn?t feel that,? Ritter said in an interview with the New Era this week. ?I knew I was right all along. I wasn?t guessing.
?But this is not a high school debate where you score points and get to thrust your hand in the air and shout ?Aha!?? Ritter said.
?Our nation went to war. I tried to stop this war. How can I feel any sense of satisfaction?? Ritter said.
Ritter, who is 43, lives near Albany, N.Y., and works as an independent security consultant. He has written three books on the subject.
?To be honest, when I look in the mirror, I ask, ?What more could I have done to get the truth across??? Ritter said.
?I failed. I did not succeed. I was empowered with truth, and somehow I just couldn?t get it across.?
Ritter, a former U.S. Marine, was a weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He angered Iraq repeatedly with unannounced inspections, including one of a palace owned by Saddam Hussein.
He resigned abruptly, however, and accused top U.N. and U.S. officials of undermining the mission by being too soft on Saddam after the Iraqi dictator would no longer cooperate with inspectors.
When Ritter emerged in 2002 as a vocal critic of the Bush administration?s hard line on Iraq, critics jumped on a 1998 article he wrote for the New Republic in which he said Saddam had ?not nearly disarmed.?
In the article, Ritter also claimed Iraq could restart its nuclear program ?within a period of six months.? Thus he was widely discredited in the leadup to the March 2003 invasion when he changed tunes and said ?Iraq is not a threat to the U.S.?
Today, Ritter explains his opposition to the U.S.-led war this way: ?No one was able to provide any factually based data to sustain the notion that Iraq had acquired weapons of mass destruction? between 1998, when he quit the inspections team, and now.
?Iraq was fundamentally disarmed,? Ritter said. ?Iraq posed no direct threat. My assessments from the 1991 to 1998 time period were rock solid. I knew that was the case. I?m glad Charles (Duelfer) reported on that aspect accurately.
?I think the American people need to know that the Iraqi government told the truth. Saddam Hussein told the truth. He said he was disarmed in 1991. He said the last vestiges of his program were dismantled in 1996. That?s exactly what happened,? Ritter said.
But Duelfer contradicts Ritter?s assertion that Saddam posed no threat, citing interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials who said he had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction.
Ritter says Duelfer?s finding is mere speculation, a tool used to provide a rationale for removing Saddam from power.
?You can?t spin the fact that Iraq was disarmed,? he said. ?What you can spin is the notion of intent. That is now what Charles Duelfer has done.
?He?s an honorable man. He?s just implementing a very bad policy. The notion of ?intent? is formed from fragmentary speculation,? Ritter said. ?By putting it out there, he allows those who are desperate to come up with a redefinition of why we are waging war against Iraq to do so.?
He adds that ?history is going to show we made a very bad mistake in removing Saddam Hussein.?
?We are providing the best recruiting poster Osama bin Laden and al Qaida could have ever provided,? Ritter said. ?We legitimized everything Osama bin Laden had been saying about the United States.?
Damn! The media was sure ripping into him, weren't they?
A bit of egg on that so-called liberal media's face now, eh?
Facebook
Twitter