Scott Ritter on Foxnews

“I guess I should have said "whom you believe". I don't want to get on lizs' bad side!”

“fer sure, V... not this cowboy neither!

Back to The Ritter Thing... Scott Ritter reads the speech he gave to the Iraqis on C-SPAN tonight at 8 eastern (5 pacific) then he's scheduled to field some questions.

THAT ought to be interesting.



C-SPAN Daily Alert
Programming Information for Mon. 9/16 - Tues. 9/17, 2002
**********************************************************************

C-SPAN Highlights

Tonight
• Fmr. U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter Reads Speech (8pm) - LIVE
• Washington Journal with Fmr. U.N. Weapons Inspector David Kay (1hr.)
• Pentagon Briefing with Defense Sec. Rumsfeld & Gen. Peter Pace (55mins.)
• Speech by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi (15mins.)

Tomorrow
• Senate Hearing on U.S. Drug Policy in Andean Region (10:15am) - LIVE
• U.S. House: In Session (12:30m) - LIVE
**********************************************************************
C-SPAN 2 Highlights

Tonight
• Montana Senate Debate: Baucus (D) v. Jones (Libertarian) & Kelleher (Green) (8pm) - LIVE
• Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute: Census & Civil Rights (2hrs.)
• Montana Senate Debate: Baucus (D) v. Jones (Libertarian) & Kelleher (Green) (1hr.)
• Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute: Census & Civil Rights (2hrs.)

Tomorrow
• Pentagon Briefing on U.S. Joint Forces Command Millennium Challenge 2002 (9am) - LIVE
• U.S. Senate: Interior Approps.; Homeland Security (9:30am) - LIVE
**********************************************************************”

“Ritter may or may not be in Saddam's pocket but it is clear that Tilt is a C-SPAN whore.”

“Yeah, tilt, you C-Slut!”

“LMAO!

Tilt-Span.”

“Iraq allowing arms inspectors:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25855-2002Sep16.html”

“I've been called worse things by better people!

<haRUMph>

(the details of which are somewhat fuzzy at the moment)



Hey, wasn't that a TIMELY announcement, Rosey? I'll bet the News Hour was hopping tonight, (those Freakin' Pinkoes, LOL). I wonder who's going to be on with Charlie Rose...


While it is true that I care deeply for C-SPAN, it isn't an exclusive relationship, (aHem).”

“I watched the Ritter reading and questioning last night. Seems like he basically convinced the Iraqis to allow arms inspection. He should be credited. It sure wasn't Powell that did the convincing.”

“this is all his friggin fault....schartzcoff shoulda kicked his a$$ and gone into bagdad the first time.”

“If interested in this, check out Scott Ritter on Hannity's Radio show.

”

“Published on Tuesday, July 15, 2003 by the Associated Press
Former U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter Calls for US 'Regime Change'
by Edith Lederer

UNITED NATIONS - Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter released a new book, accusing President Bush of illegally attacking Iraq and calling for "regime change" in the United States at the next election.


Time has shown that the United Nations did a good job disarming Iraq while President Bush went to war based on 'a lie,' former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter told U.N. reporters July 14, 2003. Ritter, shown at a Nov. 20, 2002 news conference, said Washington had never meant to let U.N. inspectors finish the task of disarming Iraq, as assigned to them by the 15-nation Security Council. (Vincent Kessler/Reuters)

Ritter criticized key figures caught up in the U.S.-led war at Monday's U.N. news conference. He said Bush lied to the American people and Congress about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lacked courage; former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was "a moral and intellectual coward."

Ritter, a former U.S. Marine, was a weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He has been a vocal critical of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq.

Ritter said he wrote "Frontier Justice, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwacking of America" to educate people. The 209-page paperback, published by Context Books, has on its cover a picture of Bush in jeans and a cowboy hat, behind the wheel of a truck.

In the book, Ritter notes that the Bush administration's stated reason for launching the war was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. The book argues that there is no evidence that Iraq possesses, produces or concealed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Therefore, Ritter argues that "the United States carried out an illegal war of aggression."

Bush, responding Monday to similar charges about the lack of evidence of illegal Iraqi weapons, insisted: "When it's all said and done, the people of the United States and the world will realize that Saddam Hussein had a weapons program."

Ritter said Bush's real goal was to get rid of Saddam Hussein's regime. "What is needed in America is regime change," Ritter writes. "Anything but Bush and (Vice President Dick) Cheney."

At the news conference, Ritter accused France and Germany of failing to get a Security Council or General Assembly resolution calling the war illegal and demanding a U.S. withdrawal.

Ritter had kind words for Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said ElBaradei was "much more honest" than Blix about appraising Iraq's nuclear weapons and the threat they posed.

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press”

“The best this about everyone posting all of these news stories on TT is I get to kick a$$ at NTN trivia when I go out drinking. Thanks to everyone that makes me look smarter than I really am!”

“From: transcript


BLITZER: Let's focus some more on the controversy and the continuing hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Joining us now from Albany, New York, the former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter. He's also the author of a new book just about to come out entitled "Frontier Justice: WMD and the Bushwhacking of America."

No great surprise there, Scott, what you're going to tell us. But tell us right now what you think of this uproar here in Washington over how this one line got into the president's speech? Is it just an honest mistake that happened?

SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: No, it's not an honest mistake. It's part of a larger effort of deception that was, you know, taken by the president, by his administration in regards to justifying this war with Iraq. It's not just the nuclear issue, although that's the one that got the majority of the senators and congressmen to change their vote back in October to support this war. It's about chemical weapons, biological weapons, the entire case that was made that Iraq has an ongoing program dedicated to manufacturing and concealing weapons of mass destruction that threaten the security.

BLITZER: But Scott, reference to the nuclear sale, if you will, of uranium from Niger to Iraq, that occurred in January after the October vote. So it wasn't specifically designed to get senators and congressmen to support the resolution.

RITTER: Will, actually, Wolf, you're wrong on that one. That piece of information, that intelligence was peddled by the CIA, in behind the door briefings, two senators and congressmen in late September, 2002, and it was that information amongst others, including the now what we know to be fraudulent claim that aluminum tubes were going to be used in a centrifuge program, that got many senators, including Dianne Feinstein, who sits on the Intelligence Services Committee or sat on the committee to change their vote. So it was just part and parcel of a larger problem.

BLITZER: Yes, but I was suggesting that the State of the Union address came after the congressional votes in the House and the Senate.

RITTER: Well, the State of the Union address is when the president made his case to the American people, and he perpetrated the fraud to the American people at that time. But this fraud was perpetrated to Congress back in September using the same information. So, you know, this is -- this is a very broad-based issue that needs to be delved into.

BLITZER: Let's get right to the issue at hand, though. Do you have any doubt that Saddam Hussein would have loved to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program?

RITTER: Well, you know, now, you're getting into speculation. What I have said is we have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting the nuclear weapons program. And I tend to believe that (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

BLITZER: Wait a minute, wait a minute. What about the equipment that was just discovered the other day buried in the backyard of a former Iraqi nuclear scientist that had been buried there since before the first war? They were supposed to give all that stuff up, as you well know, as a result of the cease-fire?

RITTER: You're right on one point. As I well know. I led the investigation into Mahdi Obeidi. I interviewed him for many hours, looking for just this material. In fact, had the United States not pulled the plug on the inspections I was trying to carry out in August 1998, we had plans to go to Obeidi's house with ground-penetrating radar, to look for this material.

But I believe you'll find that when you dig deeper into the Obeidi case, he's not telling the whole truth. Obeidi kept that material on his own volition. Qusay and the security services, you know, didn't hand it out. And the bottom line is, it's components of a nonexistent program. Nobody is trying to make the case that what Obeidi had is representative of anything that represents a viable nuclear weapons program worthy of war.

BLITZER: But that was a violation of what the U.N. -- the U.N. cease-fires had called for, hiding that equipment underground.

RITTER: First of all, it's not equipment. It's components. It doesn't constitute a viable centrifuge or centrifuge array (ph), and it's not part of a larger program. Obeidi was in violation for maintaining this. Does the fact that he maintained it represent a larger effort by the Iraqi government? We won't know until the investigation is carried out.

But what I'm telling you is based upon my investigation, which went on for many months and involved dozens of hours. Obeidi did this on his own. This wasn't something that ...

BLITZER: But Scott, you know the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. You lived there, you talked to these people. Did anything happen like that of a nature like that, Obeidi doing this on his own without getting approval or someone asking him keep this quiet? That was such a brutal regime. The guy wouldn't have had the guts to do that on his own?

RITTER: Actually, again, Wolf, you're wrong. We have several cases of Iraqi scientists who were very proud of the work they did. Remember, Obeidi was competing with Dr. Diah Jaffar Al-Jaffar (ph) over, you know, who was going to be the first to enrich uranium. He was proud of this program, and when he was ordered to turn it over, I think he maintained these components and these blueprints of his own volition, in a very similar manner that Iraqi scientists responsible for designing guidance and control equipment did the exact same thing.

BLITZER: One final question before I let you go, Scott. The two trailers, the semitrailers, the trucks they found that a lot of U.S. intelligence officials believe could only have been used to develop biological weapons, biological warfare, I don't know if you've had a chance to even examine those reports, but what do you make of that evidence?

RITTER: Again, it's not evidence of anything, Wolf. British experts who are very familiar with the Marconi hydrogen generation equipment sold to Iraq in the 1980s have reviewed these laboratories and says it is an exact replication of that. There's only one thing those labs could do, that is to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. Biological experts, who know about manufacturing biological agents say, you can not produce biological agent there.

So the president again has misled the American public and indeed the world. When, a month ago, he was in Poland and said, the fact that we had these two labs is proof that we have weapons of mass destruction. It's proof of nothing more than the president has mislead, has fabricated, we don't have a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq to justify this war. What we have is a quagmire with Americans dying on almost a daily basis and no end in site.

BLITZER: Scott Ritter has got a new book coming out, I believe, next week "Frontier Justice: WMD and the Bushwhacking of America". We'll talk when the book comes out again. Thanks, Scott, very much.

RITTER: Thank you.”

“Ritter should go back to his three's company gig.



Oh wait, I'm thinking of someone else.”

“Didn't Ritter get stormin' Norman all bent out of shape when he refused to acknowledge that a scud had been shot down because he didn't see it personally?

He sounds like a guy that doesn't have a problem standing up to authority and speaks only from what he has gathered as evidence.”

“Any of you Ritter bashers wanna admit he was right?”

“Maybe we should have listened to the French and let the inspections proceed?”

“Phuck the French!



Oh, geezz.

guess we can't use that one....”

“It doesn't make sense to fault them. After all, they were right. They warned us that following Cheney's handpuppet down the road to preëmptive war a colossal blunder.

And here we are.


Of course, there are some people who will lash out at them even more because of this.”

“Right about the weapons.
Wrong about the war.”

“I thought he died of a brain annurism last year?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Saddam was Evil.

Of all the alleged reasons Bush floated, that's the only one he has left. All the others are gone with the wind.

Bush was dead wrong to invade and he simply doesn't have the strength of character to admit it. If he allowed himself to seriously consider the death and destruction he set in motion, he would probably implode. So he continues delude himself. If a single crack appeared in the façade...”

“It's obvious that the ends justify the means......



Because of the presidence set in the last few years, this means I'm going out to put a cap in the guy down the street who I think has a can of mace and some heroin and get a blow job afterwards....”

“Sounds like a busy weekend --


Is that really a 20-year-old "Boondocks"? Nah... I didn't think the guy that drew it was that old, <G>”

“Uhhh... You nuts continue to delude yourself with your thoroughly discredited "Saddam didn't have ties to terrorism" spiel.

Oh and please don't continue to trot out the 9-11 commission staff report to back yourself, as in actuality, if you bother to read the report, it states that Saddam did have ties to terrorists including Al Qaeda.

It's as if you all just blacked out his paying for new homes for the families of suicide bombers.”

“"yes, there were contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there."

Thomas Kean (9/11 commission chairman)”

“"Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime... A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994."

9/11 commission staff report”

“So.... What crazy crap is your boy going to pull if he gets another 'minority mandate' in November?

Sorry, you'll have to 'enlighten' me. I haven't been reading the armageddon books. What's next on the Hit Parade?”

“Well, to begin with if Bush is trying to bring about Armageddon he's not doing a very good job of it. He certainly wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq!”

“That remains to be seen.


But you have to admit, it's not looking like the sort of thing that engenders world peace. Take the worldwide reaction to the goings-on at Abu Ghraib as one minor example.

Out in the real world, things seem to be going in the opposite direction. OH, that's right.... George says we're not supposed to pay any attention to anything going on in the rest of the world... I forgot.


Hear no evil; see no evil...”

“That's the point Tilt. Armageddon (taken in context of the whole of revelation, Armageddon itself only refers to where the final battle takes place) begins with the move toward a total world peace, a nice happy understanding between cultures.”

“I should point out that that is the interpretation of the authors of the books you allude too.”

“Is it just me?, or is it socialist in here?”

“C'mon Bison that evidence is selective and silly. The commission found no cooperation between Iraq and Al-Qeda. Sudan harbored Bin Laden and remained close to him. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had more contacts with Al-Qeda than Iraq did.

Heck we (the US) had more to do with the Al Qeda leadership and with Bin Laden's family.

As for giving money to the families of suicide bombers - this refers to suicide bombers in Israel, West Bank and Gaza, - they got tons of money out of other Arab countries, most notably Saudi Arabia. And, of course, these suicide bomers - as ugly and dangerous as they were - were no threat to the US.”

“Maybe we should bust Rumsfeld, after all he was meeting him and glad handing with him after Saddam used chemical weapons.”

“Wouldn't it be interesting if Saddam's lawyer called Rummy as a witness.”

“You don't really think they will let Hussein's lawyer call any of the administration as witnesses, do you? I think Sadaam will go the way of Noriega.”

“I didn't say there was any chance of it; I just said it would be interesting, LOL

Bush, Inc. would've been better off if Saddam had fought back like his sons... Quick and less messy (from a public relations POV, anyway). We got a taste of that at his last hearing.

US policy types and the Iraqi gov't (installed or elected) will be walking a fine line. They don't want to give Saddam a platform, yet they want be seen as giving him an open and fair trial.

He's simply too high profile to drop into a black hole like Noriega (our other CIA asset gone wrong).”

“you mean "ONE of our other CIA assets gone wrong"”

“We are evil. We should be ashamed of our selves. We are worth nothing. We are evil. We should be ashamed of ourselves. We are worth nothing.”

“Speak for yourself Nigal.

(Seriously though, it is not a choice between pretending the CIA or other US government agents have never done anything sleazy or evil and saying that the US sucks.

US foreign policy has incredible high points, like defeating Japan and Germany in WWII and leaving those countries free and democratic and low points like working to overthrow democratically elected governments and helping to install dictators. For example, in Iran, and that has come back to bite us.

There have been destructive elements in the US military and intelligence agencies for a long time. Sometimes they get the upper hand, sometimes they don't. One weird plot that was endorsed by the Joint Cheifs of Staff and rejected by the Kennedy administration is here (original documents scanned and uploaded into the web]: http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-i.htm”

“yep. Definitely more than two ---




Not us, Nigal... them, LOL

(and the people who voted for them to some extent, I guess.... and the people who continue to cover for them.... hmmm.

but that's just being an accessory after the fact)”

“Nigal, you got me thinking - so I should say that I think US foreign policy is far more moral than what we would see from most other countries if they had our power. That doesn't mean we are perfect.”

“A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident. (Proverbs 14:16)

Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. Proverbs 9:7-8”

“Scott Ritter certainly wasn't right when he tried to pick up 14-year-old girls on the Internet -- twice.
Bush's other WMD critic, Jack McGeorge, caught on the Internet trolling for dominatrixes (dominatrice?).
Bush's other WMD critic, Joseph C. Wilson IV, turns out his Niger report was predetermined before he left the USA, an inside job at the CIA pulled off by his wife.
Finally, Britain's intelligence report that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger, is confirmed by Senate Intelligence report. Funny, who runs Niger's nuclear program but France, it turns out. Our good friends who tried to stop us from overthrowing the murderous dictator.”

“Which good friend is that?

Saddam?


It's difficult to separate Reagan's "good friends" from the "murderous dictators".”

“I miss Ferdinand Marcos.”