Former inspector says Iraq war based on lie

We need to acknowledge a couple of “absolute truths” right up front, according to former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

First, Iraq has been disarmed since the summer of 1991, he said, and the U.S. intelligence community knew it. Since then it has been the policy of the U.S. government not to disarm Saddam Hussein, but to remove him from power, Ritter said. Each of the last three administrations had a plan to do just that.

But even people willing to concede these fundamental anti-war principles may not come away unscathed from Ritter’s speech at The Met theater on Thursday. The former Marine intelligence officer and self-proclaimed conservative Republican believes each American shares in the blame for allowing the Bush administration to drag the nation into an illegal and unnecessary war based on a lie.

He takes exception to anyone who says it does not really matter, that Saddam Hussein needed to be removed anyway.

“That’s saying the ends justify the means, and it’s un-American,” Ritter said in a recent interview. “To say you are a citizen of the United States of America means living under a Constitution and a system of due process.”

If the Bush administration’s objective all along was to remove Saddam, it should have been honest about it, Ritter said.

“The notion that emerged in 2002 that Iraq was sitting on stockpiles of illegal weapons was absurd,” he said. It is a position perhaps few would expect from a man remembered for a 1992 standoff outside the Iraqi Agriculture Ministry during which his team of UNSCOM inspectors waited in vain for Saddam to open his weapons production archives.

Since then, Ritter has been labeled a spy by Saddam, glorified by Republicans for his criticism of the Clinton administration and vilified by them for his condemnation of the current war. In 1998, citing Saddam’s resistance to inspection and the United Nations’ lack of resolve, Ritter resigned.

“The situation that existed in 1997 and 1998 prevented me from doing my job, but to put the blame on the Iraqis alone would be wrong,” he said.

The Iraqis believed the CIA was using weapons inspections to spy with the purpose of removing Saddam from power, Ritter said, and they were correct.

“Whenever we went to a site that was purely technical in nature, we had complete and total cooperation,” he said, adding that the team was blocked when it attempted to enter sites that would compromise Iraq’s national security and sovereignty.

“As we progressed in our investigation, it became clear there was no proof of weapons or that Iraq had the capacity to produce new weapons,” he said.

The economic sanctions extended by the United Nations in 1991 after the Gulf War at the behest of the United States were not intended to force Saddam to give up illegal weapons, he said, but to destabilize his regime with disastrous consequences for the Iraqi people.

Ritter also dismissed the recent report by a presidential commission that U.S. intelligence was “dead wrong” about weapons of mass destruction.

“It was not an intelligence failure, it was an intelligence success,” he said.

The CIA’s mission was to maintain the ruse that Saddam was armed until he could be removed, he said, citing statements by retired Gen. Anthony Zinni and others that President Bush came to the presidency determined to remove Saddam.

He believes Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be brought to trial for their “fraud” on the American people, and that former Secretary of State Colin Powell is “a discredited and despicable figure” for shilling their lie before the United Nations.

“There will never be a thorough investigation,” Ritter said. “To do so would be a damning indictment of not only the president but our entire system,” including the media, which he views as complicit for not asking the tough questions.

For his criticism of the U.S. rationale for war, Ritter has been the subject of much criticism. In a September 2002 interview on CNN, anchorwoman Paula Zahn told him, “People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein’s Kool-Aid.” Others charged that his 2000 trip to Iraq to film a documentary critical of U.S. foreign policy was financed by an Iraqi-American businessman sympathetic to Saddam.

Ritter’s response has been that as a Marine he has served in the defense of his country and its Constitution and would do so again.

“But when I see an administration, especially a Republican administration, violate the Constitution, I must speak up,” he said. “Conservatism isn’t just thumping your chest and saying, ‘I support the troops.’ “

Thursday’s lecture is endorsed by the Spokane Chapter of Veterans for Peace, 82.3 FM Thin Air Community Radio, City Yoga and the Support the Truth – Start the Peace Committee.