My own jury is still out on this, but I’m leaning in that direction. This interview with Faux News is very insightful.
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62916,00.html
If he’s telling the truth, then somebody else is lying, big time and downtown. Is he?
oh, this as well
Yeah, the Fox News interview was insightful. In that Asman skewered Ritter.
Ritter, when he was actually on the ground in Iraq, eloquently spelled out Iraq’s capabilities, deception, and threat. I’ll provide cites, if you’d like.
Now, after four years completely out of the loop, he is saying Iraq doesn’t pose a threat. Or, at least not a threat the U.S. should be particularly concerned about. In light of what we know about threats against America now, that’s astounding to me.
At best his credibility is in question.
Therein lies precisely the same error that Asman makes - lumping Al Qaeda and their goals and interests together with Hussein and his goals and interests. I didn’t see how Asman “skewered” Ritter at all; to me, Ritter clearly exposes Asman as a warmongering, propaganda-spewing knownothing.
Asman and his ilk at FOX are helping to create a climate whereby the ordinary FOX-watchin’ American might be deluded into forgetting (if he ever knew or cared) that Iraq and Al Qaeda are two different beasts entirely, with different appetites and motivations. This sort of amnesia is helpful to W’s war effort but hardly serves the cause of truthfulness.
RTA’s point is tellingly made by simple timing: Our Leader schedules his Ira
aaaaaarrrrgh!
his Iraq speech for Sept. 12, clearly seeking to get a boost from the anniversary emotion, thus subtly but implicitly tying Iraq to 9/11 in the public mind.
If Mr. Ritter is telling the truth about the US subverting the inspectors mission into an intelligence gathering excercise, then the Iraqis have a valid point: they would be well within thier rights to refuse, as would any nation be in refusing to allow a hostile power an intelligence asset.
Mr. Ritter’s main contention seems to be Iraq could not, in the intervening four years, have developed any capacity for WMD’s that require military intervention this minute, that no situation exists that hasn’t been true for the past 11 years. I think he’s right.
All this leads to a distressing and most distasteful conclusion: the Bushistas are doing all this for the elections. It isn’t Iraq that is urgently impending, its November. I would rather think almost anything else. But I dont see how I can.
FACT: Iraq made, had, and used chemical and biological weapons.
FACT: Iraq was working toward a nuclear program.
FACT: Complete and unfettered inspections of Iraq’s weapons programs has never occurred.
FACT: No inspections of any kind have occurred for several years.
FACT: The U.N. Security Council made resolution after resolution on what Iraq must do, in re: weapons of mass destruction, inspections, and countless other things.
FACT: It was the basis upon which the Gulf War was ended - the assurance that Saddam Hussein and his aggression would be contained via the U.N.
FACT: Saddam Hussein never fully complied with any of these Security Council resolutions.
FACT: The U.N. didn’t seem particularly interested in this, completely calling its own credibility into question, until George W. Bush began to hold the organization’s feet to the fire.
FACT: No nation on earth, save Israel, has more to fear from radical Middle Eastern aggressors than the United States of America.
So, go ahead and intellectualize on the matter. If you think it’s intellectualizing to pretend that a person who demonstrably made, used and pursued weapons of mass destruction, and who has thwarted inspections for years, now, magically, isn’t supposed to have them.
That he doesn’t pose a threat to the U.S., or his neighbors.
I’ll say this again, since RTA apparently wants to ignore points he has no answer for:
Asman’s interview was war-mongering? He wasn’t asking responsible journalistic questions? Give me a fucking break!
Go watch ABC or CBS and feel better. Schmucks.
I first saw Scott Ritter being interviewed by Paula Zahn on CNN a couple of days ago. He came across as pretty fired up, but that’s OK if he’s right. Later the same day on CNN he was being interviewed by someone else and just came off as a jerk IMO. The interviewer was asking the type of questions that I would have asked him and he kept accusing her of putting words in his mouth.
The next day I saw a clip from an interview that included both Ritter and Richard Butler. Ritter again came away again looking like a jerk and flat out called Butler a liar to his face over some meeting they had both attended as weapon inspectors years ago.
So all in all, Ritter needs to tone down his rhetoric and quit the martyr bit. It just tends to make his message seem a lot less credible to me although I do tend to agree with some of it.
Milo what Ritter is apparently saying is part of the weapons ‘inspections’ was destruction of anything they found that was a no-no, right? You’ve noted that they found stuff. So, while it’s true that none have gone on for a couple of years, he was starting that period of time w/less than what he’d had at his invasion of Kuwait, plus he’s been under international sanctions re: imports since then.
So, you can’t really assume that everything he had at the beginning of the GUlf War is still around and has been built upon.
To get WOMD, he needs:
raw materials (stockpiles he’d had that were found were destroyed, his abilty to gain more since then has been hampered)
The personnel w/the know how. this may have remained constant. (had it before, has it now).
plus
and, they need to be:
Well, Milo, your use of bombast and capitalization certainly looks like a hard hitting argument.
But…
FACT! (Hey, that is kind of cool!)…
All of what you say may or may not be true but FACT! (kinda grows on you…) it has been true for years and years.
Where is the FACT! that compels us to believe that we must rush over there for war this very instant? Which of your FACT!s has changed drasticly and suddenly to become a matter of the utmost urgency?
Is it your opinion that the coming elections have no bearing on the Bushistas sense of immediacy?
And we’re the shmucks? Au contraire, as they say in Lubbock.
I blew off those points, Milossarian, because for me the answers seem so apparent. But if you insist:
*Of course Ritter spelled out Iraq’s capabilities etc. when he was in Iraq. That was his job. He was a top UN weapons inspector at the time and did many interviews where reporters would ask him about Iraq’s capabilities. His job was to be focused on Iraq’s capabilities etc. and that is exactly what he did. Hardly a smoking gun.
*As far as being completely out of the loop, he certainly seems more knowledgeable than Asman about the situation at hand, does he not? Certainly he’s still an expert in the field - at the top of his game when he left the UN (or was he pushed out?) - and most definitely maintains a program of private research, facilitated (perhaps) by plenty of deep sources, sympathizers in the system etc.
*Nobody, Ritter eagerly included, is saying that Hussein doesn’t have Weapons of Mass Destruction or is actively pursuing WMD. One might naturally assume that he began redeveloping WMD the day after Richard Butler pulled out all the inspectors.
As I recall though it was Al Qaeda who attacked the US, not Hussein. There are many malingering questions about the fate of Al Qaeda and the related jihadist groups, where they hide, who supports them - but few seem to want to talk about that anymore. It’s all about Iraq now, which stinks like some of Bush-the-Elder’s dirtiest laundry.
Now let’s all re-read some of Asman’s questions. “Fair and Balanced” journalism, or war-mongering? (Read carefully, now!)
Gee, if the vice president said that Arabs have a duty to kill Americans on American soil, I think we ought to look for a different vice president. As to who the enemy is. . . .
elucidator:
**
You recognize how ridiculous that is, right? I mean, I know it’s being bandied about quite a bit in your circles, but that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.
There’s no threat of terrorists crashing airliners into buildings! Why, those so-called terrorists have been in the USA for years, and in flight schools for months, and nothing’s happened!
**
Is there someone that believes that we should? I’m not aware of anybody.
**
Way I hear it, the Republicans were going to hold their own just fine in November. So your conspiracy theory doesn’t seem to have a lot of beef to it.
RTA:
**
Um, what’s the entire point of all this?
The Bush Administration says Iraq poses a threat. Ritter, when he was on the ground in Iraq and seeing what they were doing and how they were doing it, said the exact same thing. Now that he’s out of the loop for several years, and has no detailed information from within Iraq (because nobody has it), he’s saying something completely different. Wonder why?
**
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that. If by that you mean that Ritter was once an UNSCOM inspector, and Asman is a journalist who asks questions to people on a variety of different topics, then I suppose you’re right.
**
Cite?
Well, you’re right about the “sympathizers,” as Asman pointed out when talking about Ritter’s embarrassing photo-op for the benefit of Saddam Hussein. Maybe Ritter enjoys being a pawn, though.
Ritter, when he was on the ground in Iraq and seeing what they were doing and how they were doing it, said Iraq was a threat, and was being very deceptive. Now that he’s out of the loop for several years, and has no detailed information from within Iraq (because nobody has it), he’s saying something completely different.
I’ll just keep saying that until it sinks in. No, actually, that’s the last time I’ll say it.
**
And I guess that’s where it will lay. You and yours think that fact doesn’t warrant the Bush administration’s current level of concern. The Bush Administration, and two-thirds of Americans, disagree with you.
**
Bush talked about Al Qaeda and where they are now and what needs to be done about them and what is being done about them with Scott Pelle on 60 Minutes II on fucking Wednesday. You might be able to watch TV better with your foot out of your mouth.
And, I read your excerpts from Asman’s interview with Ritter, and I still don’t see war-mongering. I see valid journalistic questions. Should he not challenge his interviewee’s positions, and see how they respond?
P’raps you’ve watched one too many ABC or CBS love-fests.
Scott Ritter has zero credibility. What he is saying now is so utterly contrary to what he was saying 4-5 years ago that he was either lying then or is lying now. Either way, he’s a liar.
New low, Milo. You know as well as I that there is no evidence tying Iraq to 9/11. If there were such evidence, there would be no such place as Baghdad. Truly shabby.
I see. So, you have been reading lots of analysis of the coming elections that have Republicans comfortably ahead? How very interesting. Would you share a few of those with us?
I don’t know, it doesn’t look to me like Milo is claiming that Iraq was connected to 9/11 in that statement. Seems to me he’s simply showing how ignoring a growing threat comes back to bite you in the ass. Some of the arguements I’ve heard here and elsewhere concerning Iraq have sounded distressingly similar to saying “Sure there’s a pretty good chance he has WoMD, but that’s no reason to act now.” Iraq is an openly hostile(to the US) regime that has been found on numerous occasions to be in possesion of WoMD(Bio and Chemical) and attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. They invaded another nation and were defeated, with one term of this defeat being the allowance of UN oversight of there NBC capabilities. They have not adherred to those terms at all. While I’m not convinced we should invade Iraq, it seems to me we have plenty of justification.
I don’t understand Ritter. He’s clearly off his rocker. I saw the interview Butler and him, and Ritter came completely unglued. He kept denying he said things, and Butler would calmly say, “I have the documents. Would you like to see them?” Then Ritter would splutter and yell. He called Butler a liar to his face. Butler replied, “It’s sad to see you reduced to this” or words to that effect.
And what the hell was he doing in Baghdad??? Talking against his country to the Iraqi government and people? That’s got to close to treason at a time like this.
The fact is, when Ritter was an arms inspector, he was absolutely militant in accusing Iraq of hiding weapons. His fights with Butler back then were exaclty the opposite - Ritter was screaming that he needed more power, and that the Iraqis were being uncooperative. He was accusing his own bosses of being soft on Iraq. He was going all over the place preaching the dangers of Iraqi weapons.
He was even saying this after his job was over, for a while. He wrote letters after the inspectors pulled out, warning of the danger of Iraqi WMD.
Now all of a sudden he KNOWS that Iraq doesn’t have them. Even though no inspectors have been in the country for four years. He is CERTAIN. He’s all over the media. He’s in Baghdad. I don’t get it.
But I hope the FBI is checking to see if he’s living within his normal means.
How many countries who, literally or figureatively, hate our guts? Of those, how many actually have the dreaded WMD or are perfectly capable of making them? If the answer to those questions is “one - Iraq”, thats one thing. But we know that isnt so. We are far from being universally loved and admired, to say the least. And the technology needed to produce these horrors isn’t above that availabe to Gabon or Upper Volta.
Now, to me, the most important contention that Mr. Ritter is making is the use of the inspectors as intelligence gathering agents. If this is true, then the Iraqi’s are entirely on firm ground to deny access again, a valid pretext they wouldn’t have if we hadn’t given it to them. A valid pretext that they shouldn’t have.
So far, very little of this conversation has dealt with the issue of Mr. Ritters veracity (save for a couple of flat pronouncments otherwise). He strikes me as obnoxious, self-righteous and not a guy I want to go fishing with. But I don’t think he’s lying.
From the cite given above:
"As for Iraq accusing weapons inspectors of being spies, Diamond might have mentioned that this accusation has proven to be correct. The Washington Post reported in 1999 (1/8/99) that “United Nations arms inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in American efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime.”
USA Today was clearly aware of the spy story, since the paper wrote an editorial excusing it. Headlined “Spying Flap Merely a Sideshow” (1/8/99), the paper argued that “spying on Saddam Hussein is nothing new and nothing needing an apology. But the Clinton administration suddenly is scrambling to explain why it did just that.” The paper added that the information gathered “no doubt found uses other than just weapons detection. That may not be playing by the books, but it’s understandable and probably inevitable.” "
Richard Butler disputes that. He says it was an unfounded Iraqi claim, pure propaganda, and there is no credible evidence to support it.
Now, I fully expect that the inspectors were debriefed fully by U.S. intelligence, so that the government could get a good picture of Iraq’s industrial infrastructure, and also to make sure that the inspectors didn’t miss something. This would be SOP.
The claim, however, is that the inspectors were actually agents who weren’t looking for weapons of mass destruction, but were in fact there for the sole purpose of spying on Iraq. Do you have any evidence to support that?