Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Scott Ritter Was Right (And Almost All the Knowledgeable Commentators Wrong)



(If throwing a contribution Pottersville2's way won't break your budget in these difficult financial times, I really need it, and would wholeheartedly appreciate it. Anything you can afford will make a huge difference in this blog's lifetime.)


Scott Ritter was one of my heroes during the rush to judgment on the necessity to attack Iraq.

He's still one of the smartest guys around on these issues and events, and The New York Times has almost apologized to him.

Almost.

Ritter’s opponents on Iraq still aren’t willing to grant that he knew something they didn’t. The way they see it, Ritter, whose position on W.M.D.’s swung significantly after he left the country in 1998, was like the stopped clock that finally managed to tell the correct time. “Oh, no, he wasn’t pres­cient, I can’t agree with that,” said Richard Butler, who was Ritter’s boss under the United Nations in Iraq. “When he was the ‘Alpha Dog’ inspector,” Butler said, referring to Ritter’s own description of his aggressive tactics, “then by God, there were more weapons there, and we had to go find them — a contention for which he had inadequate evidence. When he became a peacenik, then it was all complete B.S., start to finish, and there were no weapons of mass destruction. And that also was a contention for which he had inadequate evidence.”

History will record, though, that Ritter was right, while those who showed him nothing but contempt were flat wrong. While he wasn’t the only one saying that the war’s pretense was false or that its aftermath could be calamitous, Ritter was almost certainly the most determined dissenter and the one with the most on-the-ground intelligence. And if his views on Hussein’s regime careened from one extreme to the other, at least he demonstrated a capacity to evolve in his thinking — something few policy makers or commentators showed themselves able to do at the time. No doubt his very existence continues to discomfit those who insisted on Hussein’s lethality, and whose explanation for why they were wrong — that the intelligence was fabricated, essentially — has always been undercut by the fact that Ritter was never taken in.

I asked him if the war in Iraq, which in a matter of weeks would effectively end, had turned out as he thought it would, or if it could have been worse. He considered the question.

“It could have been worse,” he said finally. “We could have won. We could have felt empowered to move on to Syria and Iran, and then we would have been totally screwed.

“But if we’re just going to get into the realm of reality,” Ritter went on, “how much worse do you want it? We’re bankrupt, morally and fiscally, because of this war. The United States is the laughingstock of the world.”

7 comments:

One Fly said...

He was my hero as well Susan. It's unfortunate he is flawed and sits in jail for awhile but like the man he is he admitted it and took it like one.

These dirty bastards are still in charge and history for the most part has been rewritten.

Cirze said...

I thought it was more than mildly ironic at the time (after hearing about W's boys trooping into the White House at all hours escorted by the Secret Service to the Lincoln Bedroom for fun and frolic, and then one even being given a reporter's pass to ask softball questions of the would-be sports hero President) that Scott Ritter was caught in one of the police-state activities that never seem to sweep up the real evil doers. (Not that I don't think pedophiles are bad people in general.)

But, hey, both sides are equally guilty. Right?

S

One Fly said...

Yes and there's that part of it as well. The headline should have been "Gannon Ignored BY Big Whore Media". We talked about that recently and I know I saw/read or heard he had made something like 130-40 after hour visits to the White House.

I think Ritter was targeted long before he was ever arrested. Nobody gave a shit then and give less of a shit now.

I'll be back in Colorado Thurs noon.

opit said...

It was Cheney's "right hand man" Scooter Libby who went to jail for 'blowing' Valerie Plame Wilson and therefore the Brewster Jennings operation surveying intel for the CIA nuclear threat desk. If yellowcake was so scarce, why was there so much of it in Iraq to be shipped off to Canada ?
It has been a fixed position surviving administrations of any president that the people without WMD are 'the real threat.' This facilitates the operation of the NPT TRAP, where people are bullied for failing to prove a negative, an impossibility....certifying past a scintilla of doubt that they are helpless to resist WMD in kind.
http://www.transcend.org/tms/2010/05/the-npt-and-the-nuclear-power-trap/ http://www.payvand.com/news/04/dec/1186.html http://www.lobelog.com/irans-civilian-nuclear-program-a-primer/

opit said...

It isn't just the White House - or Vatican - that has institutional pedophilia while blaming homosex for what is more commonly a hetero phenomenon, especially of the religiously mindwashed and hatemongered. http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2013/03/child-abuse-ring-in-lambeth.html

Cirze said...

You've provided some great links for "true" information about these situations, Opit.

Mine and my readers' thanks go out to you.

S

opit said...

TY Suzan For years I advised people to check out the wargame Post Saddam Iraq : Desert Crossing ( still classified after all these years ) which has been called 'the Bible for Iraq'. It lays out the operation to destabilize governments in an arc of oil bearing nations in the middle east and Africa - as per the PNAC website and US military policy to 'rewrite the political map'. Despite the official sounding 'commitment' to 'international justice' the policy of using BIAs ( Bilateral Immunity Agreements ) certifies plainly a commitment to emasculate the law - prudent since it carries a death sentence. Yet Congress` 2002 American Servicemembers Protection Act and 2006 Military Commissions were not really the devastation of anti-torture law : that had happened under Bill Clinton because of Kosovo.
Post-Saddam Iraq
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB207/ ( may have to Search as URL was changed at least once )
New State Department Releases on the 'Future of Iraq' Project http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/index.htm
Bremer's 100 orders - The true scale of Iraq's rape and destruction http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/index.htm
Iraq Military Agreement - Raed Jarrar - English Translation
Iraq Military Agreement http://www.afsc.org/Iraq/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/71012
Another Search would be to check the website/video Leading to War and the poorly known The Panelist : The Real Winner in Iraq Was Monsanto.
Many of my files are currently locked : DMCA complaint. You might be interested in Uranium Dust, however. http://oldephartte.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page.html