Scott Ritter on the Situation in Iraq

Nothing missed?

Pitt: You're sure the inspections programs didn't miss anything?

Ritter: From 1994 to 1998 we had monitoring inspectors blanketing the totality of Iraq's chemical industrial facilities, installing sensitive sniffers and cameras, and performing no-notice inspections. We detected no evidence of retained or reconstituted prohibited capability. We had mobile teams roaming Iraq with extremely sensitive detection equipment that shoots lasers across fields, then analyzes the particle content of air passing through the beams. Setting these up down-wind of chemical facilities enabled us to tell exactly what was being pumped out. Even though it wasn't our job, we were able to detect Iraqi air defense installations because the beams would detect nitric acid, an oxidizer used as the fuel for SCUD missiles. Tracing the source revealed Iraqi SA-2 air defense missile systems several kilometers away. It's extremely accurate stuff.

Pitt/Ritter, War On Iraq, p. 33

'We never found any evidence'

Pitt: And your investigations were thorough...

Ritter: We were very effective. Whenever an Iraqi delegation left Iraq, we got a tip off, where they were going, who they were meeting with, what they were buying. We intercepted telexes and other communications. We bugged hotels. We never found any evidence of them trying to acquire prohibited materials. In Iraq I led no-notice teams to these Iraqi front companies, scoured their documents. We found interesting things, such as evidence of at least sixty Frenchmen on the Iraqi payroll operating front companies in France. But when we investigated these companies, we found they had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. Our findings may have been of great interest to the French and others, but not to us. Even with inspectors no longer operating inside Iraq, the capability exists, inherent in the intelligent services of other nations, to readily detect any effort by Iraq to acquire proscribed capabilities.

Pitt/Ritter War On Iraq, p. 36

And Al-Qaeda?

Pitt: This leaves the al-Qaeda to talk about.

Ritter: This one is patently absurd. Saddam is a secular dictator. He has spent the last thirty years declaring war against fundamentalism, crushing it. He fought a war against Iran in part because of Islamic fundamentalism. The Iraqis have laws on the books today that provide for an immediate death sentence for proselytizing in the name of Wahabbism, or indeed any Islam, but they are particularly virulent in their hatred of Wahabs, which is of course Osama bin Laden's religion. Usama bin Ladin has a history of hating Saddam Hussein. He's called him an apostate, somebody who needs to be killed.

Pitt/Ritter, War On Iraq, p. 45

The atomic bomb

Pitt: You've described the American military as the greatest killing machine in history.

Ritter: We can kill more efficiently than anyone else in the world. The question is, what will constrain us? When you start talking about urban warfare and digging people out of a built-up area loaded with civilians, your options are very limited as to what you can do. Understand that we will also take considerable casualties. Our death toll will be in the high hundreds, if not thousands.

Pitt: And in the worst-case scenario...

Ritter: If the whole situation collapsed and we have 70,000 Americans cut off in Iraq facing the prospect of annihilation, we'll nuke. This is a war that has everything bad about it. There's no good end for this war.

Pitt/Ritter, War On Iraq, p.61-62

Who are the promoters?

Pitt: Who in the American government is driving this push so far? You've heard recent comments by Condolezza Rice seeming to lay out only two options: do nothing or go to war.

Ritter: Condolezza Rice isn't a player.

Pitt: She is a mouthpiece. But for whom?

Ritter: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.

Pitt: Why?

Ritter: Because they come from a neo-conservative think-tank environment that has extremely close ties to Israel, and which views Iraq as a threat to Israel and the United States. They've committed themselves ideologically, politically, to Saddam Hussein's removal.

Pitt/Ritter, War On Iraq, p. 62

What is the ideology of neo-conservatives?

Pitt: How would you define neo-conservative? I ask because I know you're a Republican who supported Bush in 2000.

Ritter: I'd define neo-conservatives as those who reject anything outside their ideological framework. I believe conservatives can listen to moderates and at least consider other viewpoints. But neo-conservatives are so committed to their ideology they won't consider anything else. In the case of Iraq, neo-conservatives are those who, in the past decade, have operated in certain think tanksÑthe American Enterprise Institute comes to mindÑwhere they've developed what is, to be honest, a fringe viewpoint on Iraq. After Bush failed to get the mandate he needs in the election to reach out and bring in Democrats and more moderate voices, he had to fall back on his neo-conservative base, which suddenly empowered these fringe thinkers. These people are definitely not representative of mainstream thinking in America. They now have their hands on the reins of government ...

Pitt: And the military ...

Ritter: Especially the Pentagon. Donald Rumsfeld was politically dead. No one thought of Donald Rumsfeld as having any potential. Paul Wolfowitz was seen as a raving lunatic of the far right. Richard Perle is not called 'The Prince of Darkness' without cause. These are three people who seemed destined to spend the rest of their political lives sniping from the fringes, as they'd done for the previous decade. And now , suddenly, they're running the show.

Pitt: Pretty dangerous times.

Ritter: Extremely dangerous.

Pitt/Ritter, War On Iraq, p.63-64