The Coming October War in Iraq: William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday, 24 July, 2002
Room 295 of the Suffolk Law School building in downtown Boston
was filled to capacity on July 23rd with peace activists, aging
Cambridge hippies and assorted freaks. One of the organizers for the
gathering, United For Justice With Peace Coalition, handed out green
pieces of paper that read, "We will not support war, no matter what
reason or rhetoric is offered by politicians or the media. War in our time
and in this context is indiscriminate, a war against innocents and
against children." Judging from the crowd, and from the buzz in the
room, that pretty much summed things up.
The contrast presented when Scott Ritter, former UN weapons
inspector in Iraq, entered the room, could not have been more disparate.
There at the lectern stood this tall lantern-jawed man, every inch the
twelve-year Marine Corps veteran he was, who looked and spoke just
exactly like a bulldogging high school football coach. A whistle on a
string around his neck would have perfected the image.
"I need to say right out front," he said minutes into his speech, "I'm
a card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate range who
voted for George W. Bush for President. I'm not here with a political
agenda. I'm not here to slam Republicans. I am one."
Yet this was a lie - Scott Ritter had come to Boston with a political
agenda, one that impacts every single American citizen. Ritter was in
the room that night to denounce, with roaring voice and burning eyes,
the coming American war in Iraq. According to Ritter, this coming war is
about nothing more or less than domestic American politics, based
upon speculation and rhetoric entirely divorced from fact. According to
Ritter, that war is just over the horizon.
"The Third Marine Expeditionary Force in California is preparing to
have 20,000 Marines deployed in the (Iraq) region for ground combat
operations by mid-October," he said. "The Air Force used the vast
majority of its precision-guided munitions blowing up caves in
Afghanistan. Congress just passed emergency appropriations money
and told Boeing company to accelerate their production of the GPS
satellite kits, that go on bombs that allow them to hit targets while the
planes fly away, by September 30, 2002. Why? Because the Air Force
has been told to have three air expeditionary wings ready for combat
operations in Iraq by mid-October."
"As a guy who was part of the first Gulf War," said Ritter, who
indeed served under Schwarzkopf in that conflict, "when you deploy that
much military power forward - disrupting their training cycles, disrupting
their operational cycles, disrupting everything, spending a lot of money -
it is very difficult to pull them back without using them."
"You got 20,000 Marines forward deployed in October," said Ritter,
"you better expect war in October."
His purpose for coming to that room was straightforward: The Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Democrat Joe Biden, plans to
call a hearing beginning on Monday, July 29th. The Committee will call
forth witnesses to describe the threat posed to America by Iraq. Ritter
fears that much crucial information will not be discussed in that hearing,
precipitating a war authorization by Congress based on political
expediency and ignorance. Scott Ritter came to that Boston classroom
to exhort all there to demand of the Senators on the Committee that he
be allowed to stand as a witness.
Ritter began his comments by noting the interesting times we live in
after September 11th. There has been much talk of war, and much talk
of war with Iraq. Ritter was careful to note that there are no good wars -
as a veteran, he described war as purely awful and something not to be
trivialized - but that there is such a thing as a just war. He described
America as a good place, filled with potential and worth fighting for. We
go to just war, he said, when our national existence has been
threatened.
According to Ritter, there is no justification in fact, national security,
international law or basic morality to justify this coming war with Iraq. In
fact, when asked pointedly what the mid-October scheduling of this
conflict has to do with the midterm Congressional elections that will
follow a few weeks later, he replied, simply, "Everything."
"This is not about the security of the United States," said this
card-carrying Republican while pounding the lectern. "This is about
domestic American politics. The national security of the United States
of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are
using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven
political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason is the day we
have failed collectively as a nation."
Ritter was sledding up a pretty steep slope with all this. After all,
Saddam Hussein has been demonized for twelve years by American
politicians and the media. He gassed his own people, and America has
already fought one war to keep him under control. Ritter's presence in
Iraq was demanded in the first place by Hussein's pursuit of chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, along with the
ballistic missile technology that could deliver these weapons to all
points on the compass.
According to the Bush administration, Hussein has ties to the same
Al Qaeda terrorists that brought down the World Trade Center. It is
certain that Hussein will use these terrorist links to deliver a lethal blow
to America, using any number of the aforementioned weapons. The
argument, propounded by Bush administration officials on any number
of Sunday news talk shows, is that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq,
and the unseating of Saddam Hussein, is critical to American national
security. Why wait for them to hit us first?
"If I were an American, uninformed on Iraq as we all are," said Ritter,
"I would be concerned." Furthermore, continued Ritter, if an
unquestionable case could be made that such weapons and terrorist
connections existed, he would be all for a war in Iraq. It would be just,
smart, and in the interest of national defense.
Therein lies the rub: According to Scott Ritter, who spent seven
years in Iraq with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams performing
acidly detailed investigations into Iraq's weapons program, no such
capability exists. Iraq simply does not have weapons of mass
destruction, and does not have threatening ties to international
terrorism. Therefore, no premise for a war in Iraq exists. Considering the
American military lives and the Iraqi civilian lives that will be spent in
such an endeavor, not to mention the deadly regional destabilization
that will ensue, such a baseless war must be avoided at all costs.
"The Bush administration has provided the American public with little
more than rhetorically laced speculation," said Ritter. "There has been
nothing in the way of substantive fact presented that makes the case
that Iraq possesses these weapons or has links to international terror,
that Iraq poses a threat to the United States of America worthy of war."
Ritter regaled the crowd with stories of his time in Iraq with
UNSCOM. The basis for the coming October war is the continued
existence of a weapons program that threatens America. Ritter noted
explicitly that Iraq, of course, had these weapons at one time - he spent
seven years there tracking them down. At the outset, said Ritter, they
lied about it. They failed to declare the existence of their biological and
nuclear programs after the Gulf War, and declared less than 50% of
their chemical and missile stockpiles. They hid everything they could,
as cleverly as they could.
After the first lie, Ritter and his team refused to believe anything else
they said. For the next seven years, the meticulously tracked down
every bomb, every missile, every factory designed to produce chemical,
biological and nuclear weaponry. They went to Europe and found the
manufacturers who sold them the equipment. They got the invoices and
shoved them into the faces of Iraqi officials. They tracked the shipping of
these materials and cross-referenced this data against the invoices.
They lifted the foundations of buildings destroyed in the Gulf War to find
wrecked research and development labs, at great risk to their lives, and
used the reams of paperwork there to cross-reference what they had
already cross-referenced.
Everything they found was later destroyed in place.
After a while, the Iraqis knew Ritter and his people were robotically
thorough. Fearing military retaliation if they hid anything, the Iraqis
instituted a policy of full disclosure. Still, Ritter believed nothing they
said and tracked everything down. By the time he was finished, Ritter
was mortally sure that he and his UNSCOM investigators had stripped
Iraq of 90-95% of all their weapons of mass destruction.
What of the missing 10%? Is this not still a threat? Ritter believes
that the ravages of the Gulf War accounted for a great deal of the
missing material, as did the governmental chaos caused by sanctions.
The Iraqis' policy of full disclosure, also, was of a curious nature that
deserved all of Ritter's mistrust. Fearing the aforementioned attacks,
Iraq instituted a policy of destroying whatever Ritter's people had not yet
found, and then pretending it never existed in the first place. Often, the
dodge failed to fool UNSCOM. That some of it did also accounts for a
portion of that missing 10%.
Ritter told a story about running down 98 missiles the Iraqis tried to
pretend never existed. UNSCOM got hold of the documentation
describing them, and demanded proof that they had, in fact, been
destroyed. He was brought to a field where, according to Iraqi officials,
the missiles had been blown up and then buried. At this point, Ritter
and his team became "forensic archaeologists," digging up every single
missile component they could find there.
After sifting through the bits and pieces to find parts bearing serial
numbers, they went to Russia, who sold Iraq the weapons in the first
place. They cross-referenced the serial numbers with the manufacturer's
records, and confirmed the data with the shipping invoices. When
finished, they had accounted for 96 of the missiles. Left over was a pile
of metal with no identifying marks, which the Iraqis claimed were the
other two missiles. Ritter didn't believe them, but could go no further
with the investigation.
This story was telling in many ways. Americans mesmerized with
stories of lying Iraqis who never told the weapons inspectors the truth
about anything should take note of the fact that Ritter was led to exactly
the place where the Iraqis themselves had destroyed their weapons
without being ordered to. The pile of metal left over from this
investigation that could not be identified means Iraq, technically, could
not receive a 100% confirmation that all its weapons were destroyed.
Along with the other mitigating factors described above, it seems clear
that 100% compliance under the UNSCOM rules was impossible to
achieve. 90-95%, however, is an impressive record.
The fact that chemical and biological weapons ever existed in the
first place demands action, according to the Bush administration. After
all, they could have managed to hide vast amounts of the stuff from
Ritter's investigators. Iraq manufactured three kinds of these nerve
agents: VX, Sarin and Tabou. Some alarmists who want war with Iraq
describe 20,000 munitions filled with Sarin and Tabou nerve agents that
could be used against Americans.
The facts, however, allay the fears. Sarin and Tabou have a shelf life
of five years. Even if Iraq had somehow managed to hide this vast
number of weapons from Ritter's people, what they are now storing is
nothing more than useless and completely harmless goo.
The VX gas was of a greater concern to Ritter. It is harder to
manufacture than the others, but once made stable, it can be kept for
much longer. Ritter's people found the VX manufacturing facility that the
Iraqis claimed never existed totally destroyed, hit by a Gulf War bomb
on January 23, 1991. The field where the material they had
manufactured was subsequently buried underwent more forensic
archaeology to determine that whatever they had made had also been
destroyed. All of this, again, was cross-referenced and meticulously
researched.
"The research and development factory is destroyed," said Ritter.
"The product of that factory is destroyed. The weapons they loaded up
have been destroyed. More importantly, the equipment procured from
Europe that was going to be used for their large-scale VX nerve agent
factory was identified by the special commission - still packed in its
crates in 1997 - and destroyed. Is there a VX nerve agent factory in Iraq
today? Not on your life."
This is, in and of itself, a bold statement. Ritter himself and no
weapons inspection team has set foot in Iraq since 1998. Ritter believed
Iraq technically capable of restarting its weapons manufacturing
capabilities within six months of his departure. That leaves some three
and one half years to manufacture and weaponize all the horrors that
has purportedly motivated the Bush administration to attack.
"Technically capable," however, is the important phrase here. If no
one were watching, Iraq could do this. But they would have to start
completely from scratch, having been deprived of all equipment, facilities
and research because of Ritter's work. They would have to procure the
complicated tools and technology required through front companies,
which would be detected. The manufacture of chemical and biological
weapons emits vented gasses that would have been detected by now if
they existed. The manufacture of nuclear weapons emits gamma rays
that would have been detected by now if they existed. We have been
watching, via satellite and other means, and we have seen none of this.
"If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive
proof," said Ritter, "plain and simple."
And yet we march to war, and soon. A chorus of voices was raised
in the room asking why we are going. What motivates this, if not hard
facts and true threats? According to Ritter, it comes down to
opportunistic politics and a decade of hard anti-Hussein rhetoric that
has boxed the Bush administration into a rhetorical corner.
Back in 1991, the UN Security Council mandated the destruction of
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions were placed upon Iraq to
pressure them to comply. The first Bush administration signed on to
this, but also issued a covert finding that mandated the removal of
Saddam Hussein. Even if all the weapons were destroyed, Bush Sr.
would not lift the sanctions until Hussein was gone.
Bush Sr., and Clinton after him, came to realize that talking about
removing Hussein was far, far easier than achieving that goal. Hussein
was, and remains, virtually coup-proof. No one could get close enough
to put a bullet in him, and no viable intelligence existed to pinpoint his
location from day to day. Rousing a complacent American populace to
support the massive military engagement that would have been required
to remove Hussein by force presented insurmountable political
obstacles. The tough talk about confronting Hussein continued, but the
Bush and Clinton administrations treaded water.
This lack of results became exponentially more complicated.
Politicians began making a living off of demonizing Hussein, and
lambasting Clinton for failing to have him removed. The roots of our
current problem began to deepen at this point, for it became acceptable
to encapsulate a nation of 20 million citizens in the visage of one man
who was hated and reviled in bipartisan fashion. Before long, the
American people knew the drill - Saddam is an evil threat and must be
met with military force, period.
In 1998, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Iraqi
Liberation Act. The weight of public American law now demanded the
removal of Saddam Hussein. The American government went on to use
data gathered by UNSCOM, narrowly meant to pinpoint possible areas
of investigation, to choose bombing targets in an operation called Desert
Fox. Confrontation, rather than resolution, continued to be the rule. By
1999, however, Hussein was still in power.
"An open letter was written to Bill Clinton in the fall of 1999," said
Ritter, "condemning him for failing to fully implement the Iraqi Liberation
Act. It demanded that he use the American military to facilitate the Iraqi
opposition's operations inside Iraq, to put troops on the ground and
move on up to Baghdad to get rid of Saddam. Who signed this letter?
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Robert Zoellick,
Richard Perle, and on and on and on."
The removal of Saddam Hussein became a plank in the GOP's race
for the Presidency in 2000. After gaining office, George W. Bush was
confronted with the reality that he and many within his administration
had spent a great amount of political capital promising that removal.
Once in power, however, he came to realize what his father and Clinton
already knew - talking tough was easy, and instigating pinprick military
confrontations was easy, but removing Hussein from power was not
easy at all. His own rhetoric was all around him, however, pushing him
into that corner which had only one exit. Still, like the two Presidents
before him, he treaded water.
Then came September 11th. Within days, Bush was on television
claiming that the terrorists must have had state-sponsored help, and
that state sponsor must be Iraq. When the anthrax attacks came, Bush
blamed Iraq again. Both times, he had no basis whatsoever in fact for
his claims. The habit of lambasting Iraq, and the opportunity to escape
the rhetorical box twelve years of hard-talking American policy, were too
juicy to ignore.
The dearth of definitive proof of an Iraqi threat against America began
to go international. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld appeared before NATO
not long ago and demanded that they support America's looming Iraq
war. Most of the NATO nations appeared ready to do so - they trusted
that America's top defense official would not come before them and lie.
But when they tried to ask questions of him about the basis for this war,
Rumsfeld absolutely refused to answer any of them. Instead, he offered
this regarding our utter lack of meaningful data to support a conflict:
"The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."
Scott Ritter appeared before NATO some days after this at their
invitation to offer answers to their questions. Much of what he told them
was mirrored in his comments in that Boston classroom. After he was
finished, 16 of the 19 NATO nations present wrote letters of complaint to
the American government about Rumsfeld's comments, and about our
basis for war. American UN representatives boycotted this hearing, and
denounced all who gave ear to Ritter.
Some have claimed that the Bush administration may hold secret
evidence pointing to a threat within Iraq, one that cannot be exposed for
fear of compromising a source. Ritter dismissed this out of hand in
Boston. "If the administration had such secret evidence," he said, "we'd
be at war in Iraq right now. We wouldn't be talking about it. It would be a
fait accompli." Our immediate military action in Afghanistan, whose ties
to Al Qaeda were manifest, lends great credence to this point.
Ritter dismissed oil as a motivating factor behind our coming war
with Iraq. He made a good defense of this claim. Yes, Iraq has the
second-largest oil reserves on earth, a juicy target for the
petroleum-loving Bush administration. But the U.S. already buys some
68% of all the oil produced in Iraq. "The Navy ships in the Gulf who work
to interdict the smuggling of Iraqi oil," said Ritter, "are fueled by Iraqi
oil." Iraq's Oil Minister has stated on camera that if the sanctions are
lifted, Iraq will do whatever it takes to see that America's oil needs are
fulfilled. "You can't get a better deal than that," claimed Ritter.
His thinking on this aspect of the coming war may be in error. That
sort of logic exists in an all-things-being-equal world of politics and
influence, a world that has ceased to exist. Oil is a coin in the
bargaining, peddled as influence to oil-state congressmen and American
petroleum companies by the Iraqi National Congress to procure support
for this baseless conflict. Invade, says the INC, put us in power, and
you will have all you want. There are many ruling in America today, both
in government and business, who would shed innocent blood for this
opportunity.
Ritter made no bones about the fact that Saddam Hussein is an evil
man. Like most Americans, however, he detests being lied to. His work
in Iraq, and his detailed understanding of the incredible technological
requirements for the production of weapons of mass destruction, leads
him to believe beyond question that there is no basis in fact or in the
needs of national security for a war in Iraq. This Marine, this Republican
who seemed so essentially hawkish that no one in that Boston
classroom would have been surprised to find wings under his natty blue
sportcoat, called the man he cast a Presidential vote for a liar.
"The clock is ticking," he said, "and it's ticking towards war. And it's
going to be a real war. It's going to be a war that will result in the deaths
of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans and tens of thousands of
Iraqi civilians. It's a war that is going to devastate Iraq. It's a war that's
going to destroy the credibility of the United States of America. I just
came back from London, and I can tell you this - Tony Blair may talk a
good show about war, but the British people and the bulk of the British
government do not support this war. The Europeans do not support this
war. NATO does not support this war. No one supports this war."
It is of a certainty that few in the Muslim world support another
American war with Iraq. Osama bin Laden used the civilian suffering in
Iraq under the sanctions to demonstrate to his followers the evils of
America and the West. Another war would exacerbate those
already-raw emotions. After 9/11, much of the Islamic world repudiated
bin Laden and his actions. Another Iraq war would go a long way to
proving, in the minds of many Muslims, that bin Laden was right all
along. The fires of terrorism that would follow this are unimaginable.
Scott Ritter wants to be present as a witness on Monday when the
Foreign Relations Committee convenes its hearing, a hearing that will
decide whether or not America goes to war in Iraq. He wants to share
the information he delivered in that Boston classroom with Senators who
have spent too many years listening to, or propounding, rhetorical and
speculative fearmongering about an Iraqi threat to America that does not
exist. Instead, he wants the inspectors back in Iraq, doing their jobs. He
wants to try and keep American and Iraqi blood from being spilled in a
military exercise promulgated by right-wing ideologues that may serve
no purpose beyond affecting the outcome of the midterm Congressional
elections in November 2002.
"This is not theory," said Ritter in Boston as he closed his
comments. "This is real. And the only way this war is going to be
stopped is if Congress stops this war."
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On the web: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
foreign.senate.gov
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William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. His new book,
'The Greatest Sedition is Silence,' will be published soon by Pluto
Press.
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