Saturday, January 29, 2005
RITTER THE FLIPPER
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in 1999:
I have grown convinced that there has been a total breakdown in the willingness of the international community to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein is well on the road to getting his sanctions lifted and keeping his weapons in the bargain. A resurgent Iraq, reinvigorated economically and politically by standing up successfully to the United States and the United Nations, will be a very dangerous Iraq—one that sooner or later will have to be confronted by American military might.
And Scott Ritter in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald:
The White House’s acknowledgement last month that the US has formally ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq brought to a close the most calamitous international deception of modern times.
This decision was taken a month after a contentious presidential election in which the issue of those weapons and the war in Iraq played a central role. George Bush was unwavering in his conviction that Iraq had such weapons.
Ritter screamed that Saddam had those weapons, and now seeks to blame people who listened to him. Maybe Bush shouldn’t have listened to Ritter; few do, these days, apart from undercover cops posing as Burger King jailbait.