Democracy Now!
Friday, October 21st, 2005

We speak with Scott Ritter, the chief United Nations
weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 about
his new book: “Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of
the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and
Overthrow Saddam Hussein.” It details how the CIA
manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN departments
to achieve the foreign policy agenda of the United
States in the Middle East. [includes partial
transcript]
Here’s another interview with Scott Ritter on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show

11:00 Scott Ritter: “Iraq Confidential” (Nation Books)
A former UN weapons inspector talks about looking for WMDs in Iraq. He also explains how much of the intelligence used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq was discredited by work he and fellow inspectors conducted in the 1990s.

Guests
Scott Ritter, was a top UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. He is a former Marine.

Scott Ritter on the Untold Story of the Intelligence
Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam
Hussein
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In a major article in The New York Times this weekend,
reporter Judith Miller admitted she was wrong when she
wrote several of the key articles that claimed Iraq
had an extensive weapons of mass destruction program
ahead of the 2003 invasion. Miller wrote, “W.M.D. — I
got it totally wrong. The analysts, the experts and
the journalists who covered them — we were all
wrong.” Today we are joined by someone who was not
wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq –
Scott Ritter. He was the United Nations” top weapons
inspector in Iraq at UNSCOM between 1991 and 1998.
Before working at the UN he served as an officer in
the US marines and as a ballistic missile adviser to
General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf war.
Scott Ritter has just published a new book titled
“Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the
Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and
Overthrow Saddam Hussein.” The book details how the
CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN
departments to achieve the foreign policy agenda of
the United States in the Middle East.
Scott Ritter, was the United Nations’ top weapons
inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. Before
working for the UN he served as an officer in the US
marines and as a ballistic missile adviser to General
Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf war. He is author of a
new book, just out, titled “Iraq Confidential: The
Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to
Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now!.
SCOTT RITTER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, what
do you think is the greatest misunderstanding of the
American people right now about what has happened in
Iraq?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, first of all, the reason that
we’re there. They think that this was an accident,
that this was a noble cause, that people like the
president, like Bill Clinton before him, like their
respective administrations, journalists like Judith
Miller just honestly got it wrong. And I don’t think –
you know, here we are today in Iraq and it’s a
disaster. I don’t think anybody’s going to debate that
statement. Some people say though, `We’re working
towards a continuation of this noble objective. We got
rid of Saddam Hussein. That’s a good thing. And now
we’re going to try to build on that good.’ I’m not
going to debate whether or not getting rid of Saddam
Hussein is a good thing or not. But, you know, if you
embrace the notion that the ends justify the means,
that’s about as un-American a notion as you can
possibly get into. We’re talking about solving a
problem. We have yet to define the problem. The
problem isn’t just what’s happening in Iraq but it’s
the whole process that took place in the United States
leading up to the war, this dishonest process of
deliberately deceiving the American public. And it’s
not just George W. Bush. For eight years of the
Clinton administration, that administration said the
same things. The C.I.A. knew, since 1992, that
significant aspects of the Iraqi weapons programs had
been completely eliminated, but this was never about
disarmament
AMY GOODMAN: How did they know this?
SCOTT RITTER: They knew it, (a) because of their own
access to intelligence information and (b) because of
the work of the weapons inspectors. In October of
1992, I personally confronted the C.I.A. on the
reality that we had accounted for all of Iraq’s
ballistic missile programs. That same year they had an
Iraqi defector who had laid out the totality of the
Iraqi biological weapons program and had acknowledged
that all of the weapons had been destroyed. The C.I.A.
knew this. But, see, the policy wasn’t disarmament.
The policy was regime change. Disarmament was only
useful in so far as it facilitated regime change.
That’s what people need to understand, that this was
not about getting rid of weapons that threatened
international peace and security. This has been about,
since 1991, solving a domestic political
embarrassment. That is the continued survival of
Saddam Hussein, a man who in March 1990 was labeled as
a true friend of the American people and then in
October 1990 in a dramatic flip-flop was called the
Middle East equivalent of Adolph Hitler.
JUAN GONZALES: You were involved for quite a long time
with UNSCOM. At what point did you, as you were
working for the United Nations, reach the conclusion
that regime change really was the intent of the
program that – well, the United States intent behind
the program that you were involved with?
SCOTT RITTER: It wasn’t a matter of reaching a
conclusion. When I joined in September of 1991, that
was already the stated policy of the United States
government. I outlined this in the book. The fact that
in April, 1991, the United States helps draft and then
votes in favor of a Chapter 7 resolution 687 that
creates the weapons inspections, call upon Iraq to
disarm and in Paragraph 14 says if Iraq complies,
economic sanctions will be lifted. This is the law. A
few months later, the president, George Herbert Walker
Bush and the Secretary of State say economic sanctions
will never be lifted against Iraq, even if they comply
with their obligation to disarm, until which time
Saddam Hussein is removed from power. It’s the stated
policy of the United States government. What we
weren’t quite aware of is just to what extreme they
would go in undermining the credibility and integrity
of the United Nations inspection process to achieve
this objective.
AMY GOODMAN: Something that has been repeated over and
over again is that Saddam Hussein kicked out the U.N.
weapons inspectors. Can you tell us what happened?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, there are several periods of time,
but the most dramatic is the December 1998 period
right before Bill Clinton got on national TV, talked
about the threat of W.M.D. and said he is launching an
air campaign, 72 hours of bombardment called Operation
Desert Fox. No, Saddam did not kick the inspectors
out. Actually, what was happening at that point in
time is that the Iraqi government was complying with
every single requirement set forth by the Security
Counsel and the inspectors. They were cooperating with
the inspectors, giving the inspectors access in
accordance to something called the `modalities of
sensitive site inspections.’
Public perception is that the Iraqis were
confrontational and blocking the work of the
inspectors. In 98% of the inspections, the Iraqis did
everything we asked them to because it dealt with
disarmament. However when we got into issues of
sensitivity, such as coming close to presidential
security installations, Iraqis raised a flag and said,
“Time out. We got a C.I.A. out there that’s trying to
kill our president and we’re not very happy about
giving you access to the most sensitive installations
and the most sensitive personalities in Iraq.” So we
had these modalities, where we agreed that if we came
to a site and the Iraqis called it `sensitive,’ we go
in with four people.
In 1998, the inspection team went to a site. It was
the Baath Party headquarters, like going to Republican
Party headquarters or Democratic Party headquarters.
The Iraqis said, “You can’t come in – you can come in.
Come on in.” The inspectors said, “The modalities no
longer apply.” The Iraqis said, “If you don’t agree to
the modalities, we can’t support letting you in,” and
the Iraqis wouldn’t allow the inspections to take
place.
Bill Clinton said, “This proves the Iraqis are not
cooperating,” and he ordered the inspectors out. But
you know the United States government ordered the
inspectors to withdraw from the modalities without
conferring with the Security Council. It took Iraqis
by surprise. Iraqis were saying, “We’re playing by the
rules, why aren’t you? If you’re not going play by the
rules, then it’s a game that we don’t want to
participate in.” Bill Clinton ordered the inspectors
out. Saddam didn’t kick them out.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Your point that this kind of deception
occurred under both Democrats and Republicans would at
least suggest that what’s happened in Iraq is not just
a question of a bunch – of a cabal of zealots in the
White House right now that are conducting this – that
are hijacking policy but that there are deeper
interests involved in the United States and the kind
of policy that we’ve had in Iraq. You get into some of
that in the book. Could you talk about that a little
bit?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, I don’t want to sound – I’m not
somebody who’s into conspiracy theories, and I’m not
somebody who’s out there saying this is about global
oil. The tragedy of Iraq is that it’s about domestic
American politics. This is a president, George Herbert
Walker Bush, who in 1990, traps himself rhetorically
by linking Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler. Once you
do that, once you speak of a Nuremburg-like
retribution, you can’t negotiate your way out of that
problem. Now it’s either deliver Saddam Hussein’s head
on a platter or you failed. He tried to during the
Gulf War. I was part of a team that was targeting
Saddam. We didn’t succeed.
Now the C.I.A. says, “Don’t worry, Saddam will be gone
in six months. All you have to do is contain him, put
these sanctions in place and keep him bottled up and
he’ll collapse.” Six months later Saddam Hussein is
still there. His continued survival became a political
embarrassment that had to be dealt with.
This was inherited by Bill Clinton. The irony is that
Bill Clinton – and I’m very critical of Bill Clinton,
but you know, in the period between his election in
1992 and his being sworn in, his administration
reached out to the Iraqis in saying, “Look, this is a
ridiculous policy, let’s figure out how we can get
sanctions lifted and get you back into the family of
nations.” But when politicians in Congress, both
Democrat and Republican, found out about this, they
said, “You can’t do this. We have told our
constituents this man is Hitler, and we can’t
negotiate with the devil.”
We were trapped by this policy. And this cabal we
speak of, the neoconservatives, they may not have
originated this policy but they exploited eight years
of Clinton administration’s ineffective policy of
dealing with Saddam. Saddam’s survival for eight years
empowered the neoconservatives to use regime change as
a rallying cry for the Republican Party. [break]
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Ritter was one of a Number of  ‘Those Who Knew’ the Inside Reality that Should Have Been Listened To and Not Criticized!!

For Everything Ritter Said Than, and Since, Has Now Proven Right!!!

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