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Scott Ritter

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William Scott Ritter, Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is noted for his early career as a intelligence officer, as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, and more recently as an opponent to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.


Military background

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 in which he participated.

In January of 1998, his inspection team into Iraq was blocked from some weapons sites by Iraqi officials, Ritter was accused of being a spy, and was expelled from Iraq by its government. When the United States failed to do anything about this breach of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1154, Ritter resigned from UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) on August 26, 1998. [1]

In his letter of resignation, Ritter 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. Ritter later said, in an interview, that he resigned from his role as a United Nations weapons inspector over inconsistencies between Resolution 1154 and how it was implemented.

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." [2]

After Ritter was expelled from Iraq in August 1998, before UNSCOM was withdrawn, he spoke on the PBS show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.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

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. [3]

The Washington Post said of Ritter's resignation: "Yesterday's resignation by Scott Ritter, perhaps the most determined and couragious of the U.N. weapons instpectors ... stands as a damning indictment of U.S. policy on Iraq" (Washington Post, August 27, 1998). The New York Times said: "Scott Ritter, a former top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq who is rightly sounding an alarm about developments in Baghdad (New York Times, October 5, 1998).

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 position "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." [4]

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 'hawk' to a 'dove'. Ritter, however, maintains that his position has remained consistent. He simply demands strict adherence to the law and to the facts at issue, whether the issue be Iraq's inspection compliance to which it agreed, the United Nations implementing the consequences of Resolution 1154, or the Bush administration giving an accurate assessment of the danger Iraq posed before starting a war.

However, Ritter's comments do not explain why he changed his view that Saddam could reconstitute his WMD capability in a matter of months (the view he held while a weapons inspector). After resigning as a weapons inspector, Ritter claimed Saddam was disarmed and no longer a threat. Colum Lynch in the Washington Post called Ritter's change a "bizarre turnaround." [5] CNN's chief Eason Jordan says Ritter's "chameleon-like behavior is really bewildering." [6] The Weekly Standard drew a parallel between Saddam's money funding Ritter's film to Saddam's bribes of journalists. [7]

Documentary

In 2000 Ritter 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.'" [8]

The documentary was financed in part by Detroit businessman Shakir al Khafaji. Al-Khafaji, who gave Ritter $400,000 to produce his film, has admitted that Saddam's regime awarded him oil vouchers worth more than one million dollars under the Oil-for-Food programme run by the UN.[9]. For his part, Ritter never knew about Al-Khafaji's illegal business dealings and says he would be "extremely upset" if the allegations against Al-Khajafi were true.


In 2001, Ritter was arrested near Albany [10]. 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. [11]

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. [12] It is claimed by WTEN-TV that according to unamed sources, Ritter underwent court-ordered sex offender counseling from an Albany psychologist.[13]

Following the dismissal of charges in the state jurisdiction, federal law enforcement officials looked into possibility Ritter violated federal law, but no charges were made. [14] Ritter says that the prosecutor telephoned him and apologised. [15]

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, [16] 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 signed-off on preparations to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and that these preparations would be completed by June of 2005. On the same occasion, he also made reference to the Iraqi elections, saying that the United States had manipulated the 2005 parliamentary election, changing the percentage of United Iraqi Alliance votes from 56% to 48%. [17]

Ritter reiterated and clarified his statements about Iran in a March 30 article published by Al Jazeera. [18]

On October 21st, 2005, Ritter was interviewed 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.

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. [19] (transcript) [20] (mp3)

Ritter has also made the following two statements regarding military intervention in Iran.

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.

The EU-3 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)
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References

Criticism of Ritter

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