Scott Ritter In Denver - January 19, 2008

Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, who had the courage to argue before the war that Iraq had destroyed all its weapons of mass destruction, came through Colorado. He spoke in Boulder on Friday to a large crowd (this relayed by a Boulder friend) and then dipped down to Denver yesterday where he spoke at the Oriental Theater in our neighborhood in Northwest Denver. Much of the organizing for this was done by Joanne Cole, business manager for KGNU. In Boulder KGNU partnered with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, in Denver with our little generally geriatric-but-spry peace group, Activate for 08-Northwest Denver Neighbors for Peace.

The gamble was that Ritter's name would be enough of a draw to bring out the masses so to speak. I was a little nervous because an hour before the event we'd sold a whopping 14 tickets. But like magic, 15 minutes before the scheduled start people started pouring in and I would guess that somewhere around 175 people were in the room to hear the Ritter talk.

Ritter is excellent. Underneath his marine exterior, there is a genuine warmth and humanity about the guy. Pretty unusual for a self-proclaimed Republican, but there it was. Ritter wasn't always `working for peace' to put it mildly. He is the same Scott Ritter who addressed the Iraqis with complete contempt when he was a UN inspector -- very colonialist in his language. And he's the same man who was passing along information he learned in Iraq to the Israelis, activities that were probably illegal and if not, certainly unethical.

My sense of him is that of someone who was not a particularly interesting person until he was confronted with the fact that his government - our government - had betrayed him big time. His work as a UN inspector in Iraq made it obvious to Ritter that already by the late 1990s that Iraq had destroyed virtually all of its weapons of mass destruction and that there was no more to be done other than monitor Saddam to assure he didn't start building them again. When the Bush Administration - as one of its key building blocks to invading Iraq - launched the fear campaign not just magnifying but actually ressurrecting Saddam's weapons program - Ritter, knowing it was untrue, took exception and then publicly. My hunch is that he knew he had been used and then discarded. And he fought back. With facts, with his considerable store of knowledge about weapons systems and politics.

And in a very short period of time, understanding what was in store for Iraq, the US and the world, he had the decency to stand tall, and tell the truth as he knows it. Without knowing the details I would imagine that he's paid something of a price for his honesty and political courage in terms of his career in government. Eight years later, he's still at it suggesting that his political transformation was genuine (although he's still a Republican and in an act of confession in the Oriental Theater, admitted somewhat sheepishly that in 2000 he voted for Bush!).

Ritter made two main points:

1. that the so-called surge (additional US troops to Iraq) did not even begin to address any of the underlying problems facing the US Occupation in Iraq regardless of the lull in fighting, and that the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq as soon as possible. Ritter went on to mention how when the war began in 2003 he predicted a 16 year war and was ridiculed. We're now five years into the war in Iraq with a number of commentators now saying the US will be there at least another ten years. Ritter was on the mark.

2. that the Bush Administration's plans to attack Iran are still on, very much so. On this last point he was critical of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear capability. While the NIE report assumed that Iran's nuclear weapons' development program stopped in 2003, Ritter pointed out that prior to 2003 Iran never had a nuclear weapons program to start off with. No evidence of a program has been brought forth.

Ritter also addressed the question (that I put to him) concerning the recent allegations that Iran is supplying the Iraqi Resistance with improvised explosive devices (ied's) and their more powerful varieties, explosively formed penetrators (efps). The Bush Administration has consistently accused the Iranians of supplying these devices to Iraqis. In the recent attempts to get the Colorado state pension fund to divest from companies doing business with Iran - the EFP-Iran connection has been repeated brought up.

There is only one problem with this claim: it is not true.

While the allegation has been repeated made by the Bush Administration, the proof has never been offered. Also a few years ago, the US military uncovered a bomb-making factory in Bagdad used by the resistance. All the elements necessary making of EFP's were there. Many former military people in Saddam's army had received prior training in the west concerning their manufacture.

The IED-EFP-Iran connection became much more important in the aftermath of the NIE report that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program. The administration moved last summer from its public campaign about Iran's nuclear danger to - if you think about it - the more pathetic argument that IED's are killing U.S. military personnel. The US military in Iraq are facing an on-going armed resistance to occupation. Did they think it could be done without casualties?

__________________________________________________________________________