Scott Ritter

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has provided valuable and important information to the American public on issues relating to the Iraq War and to American policy on Iran. His urgent expressions of restraint over the "weapons of mass destruction" issue have been abundantly validated by subsequent events.

But I'm guessing that his ability to play a role in public policy discussions is at an end: Scott Ritter Charged In Child-Sex Sting by Mary Claire Dale Huffington Post 01/14/10.

This remains to be established in court, of course. But it sounds bad.

Tags: scott ritter

Iran War update

Josh Marshall's growing TPM media operation has been providing some helpful video summaries on the significance of the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear program. This one is called "Inside the Iran Bamboozle". Notice that Josh manages to say straightforwardly that Cheney and Bush have been trying to prepare the country for war against Iran. Good for him!



It's certainly worth noting that Seymour Hersh was telling the public about this developing NIE over a year ago, TPM also provides a video of a recent CNN interview with Hersh.

Notice that Hersh says this report has been circulating at the "highest levels" in Cheney's government for at least a year and "probably longer". All the while they were working up a case for war against Iran, for a long time based on the alleged nuclear weapons threat.



Here are links to some of Hersh's New Yorker articles on Iran:

The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb? 04/17/06

Last Stand: The military’s problem with the President’s Iran policy 07/10/06

The Next Act: Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more? 11/27/06. This is the article in which Hersh discusses the CIA findings that Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Hersh reported that the White House (meaning at least Cheney) didn't want to hear that. They wanted propaganda to justify war:

The White House’s dismissal of the C.I.A. findings on Iran is widely known in the intelligence community. Cheney and his aides discounted the assessment, the former senior intelligence official said. "They’re not looking for a smoking gun," the official added, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. "They’re looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission."

The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism? 03/05/07. Talks about Iran as a political factor in Iraq.

Shifting Targets: The Administration’s plan for Iran 10/08/07

One aspect of this story that shouldn't get entirely lost is the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei has said that the possession and use of nuclear weapons is against the Islamic religion. (See Fishing for a Pretext to Squeeze Iran by Juan Cole Truthdig.com 03/13/06) Sure, he could be faking, and he could always issue a new declaration based on changed circumstances. It would be foolish and reckless to take the assurance at face value.

But it's also foolish and potentially reckless to just ignore counter-indications, as well. If Iran hawks are pointing to President Ahmadenijad's religious fanaticism as evidence that Iran would be undeterrable with a nuclear weapon, shouldn't the talking heads chattering about this on TV at least take into account that Khamenei, the actual holder of the highest power in the Iranian theocracy especially when it comes to foreign policy and issues of war and peace, is explicitly condemns the possession of nuclear weapons as un-Islamic.

Robert Scheer writes today in It Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One Truthdig.com 12/05/07:

The whole episode shows that our democratic system retains at least some essential checks and balances, but it also is depressing to see that, in this instance at least, the fanatical leader of a theocracy seems to have a higher regard for truth than does the president of the world’s greatest experiment in representative democracy.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office as Iran’s president in August of 2005, two years after Iran’s nuclear weapons program ended, has now been vindicated in his claims that Iran has abandoned the weaponization program. Not so Bush, who has summarily dismissed the intelligence community’s findings and, using his favorite tactic in dealing with debacles, is sticking to his original story. A story, as in the case of the earlier Iraq threat inflation, that too many in the mass media and Congress, including some leading Democrats, have bought.

Scheer's Truthdig site also features a podcast on the NIE and its significance by Scott Ritter, Scott Ritter on the NIE Report and War With Iran 12/04/07. Ritter has cast himself as a prickly Paul Revere warning about the danger of the Cheney-Bush administration launching an unnecessary war against Iran.

This is the PBS Newshour report on the NIE, which includes prowar comments by Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond, one of the most hardcore torture supporters in Congress: U.S. Policy on Iran Under New Scrutiny after Weapons Report 12/04/07. Unfortunately, the Democratic "balancing" guest, West Virigina Sen. Jay Rockefeller, discussed the issue mildly and blandly, while torture-lover Bond pimped the administration's line with enthusiasm, repeatedly talking about how Iran had been actively supporting efforts to kill "our troops", and twice mentioned the charge, based on a dubious translation, that Iran wants to "wipe Israel off the map". Or, in Bond's formulation, "the leader has promised to wipe Israel off the map." (See the Juan Cole article linked above on the translation issue.)

The Newshour also reported on the story in Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Program in 2003, Report Finds 12/03/07. That report features David Kay, who wrote one of the reports that confirmed that Iraq had no WMDs at the time of the 2003 invasion.

And our Dear Leader is still ready to plow ahead with his anti-Iranian policy, apparently unchanged by the NIE's information, at least in what he says in this TPM video of his statement today. His demand that Iran "come clean with the international community" is very reminiscent of his pre-Iraq War posturing.



Tags: david kay, iran war, josh marshall, nonproliferation, nuclear nonproliferation, robert scheer, scott ritter, seymour hersh

Inspecting Iraq for WMDs and Clinton's Desert Fox operation

Doing a bit of review, I see that I have drafts scattered here and there that I haven't posted yet. So I'm going to do a bit of catch-up.

Scott Ritter is providing a fresh account of his experience with the end of the Iraqi WMD inspections in 1998 as part of this article, A Farewell to Arms Control Truthdig.com 07/05/07.

I should mention that former UN weapons inspector Ritter was one of the informed people who turned out to be right about the wrongheadedness of invading Iraq. And so therefore our "press corps" doesn't consider him one of the people to be taken seriously. No, our press barons haven't learned very much from the Iraq War experience.

I haven't read Ritter's book on the inspections or combed through the details of the 1998 end of the inspections to know if he's providing new information here. I do know that Saddam's government blocked UN inspectors at some point that year on the grounds that American intelligence had infiltrated the inspection teams. This was true, and the US government admitted that later. It became common in the runup to the 2003 invasion for Bush and others to say that "Saddam kicked out the inspectors" in 1998 but that was also not true. The inspectors decided on their own to withdraw, although I'm unclear whether the UN ordered it or whether Ritter as the head of the team ordered it on his own authority. According to this account, it was President Clinton who order the UN team out:

President Bill Clinton had the gall to claim that Saddam Hussein had refused to cooperate with weapons inspectors in December 1998, evicting the WMD sleuths from Iraq on the eve of the 72-hour bombing campaign known as Desert Fox. Clinton knew full well that his administration had deliberately created a provocation against the Iraqis, seeking to inspect a Baath Party headquarters, and once it became clear the Iraqis would accede to this outrageous demand, it was Clinton, not Saddam, who ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, seeking to cover his tracks with a bombing campaign that ostensibly targeted "WMD sites," but which in reality was a thinly disguised assassination attempt against the Iraqi president. A leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton, continues to uphold the fiction of her husband’s policy in Iraq, much to the detriment of truth. (my emphasis)

We don't hear that much any more about Operation Desert Fox, although it was a significant military operation. And it's a significant part of the story of the ongoing US conflict with Iraq. I'm not sure how they managed to pick the name "Desert Fox", which is the well-known nickname of the German Field Marshal Ernest Rommel in the Second World War. (Rommel did late in the war join the July 23, 1944, anti-Hitler plot and was allowed to commit suicide rather than be executed for his role in it.)

Tags: iraq, operation desert fox, scott ritter