Been awhile since I've read a lot here and don't know if anything like this has been posted. Similarly, I haven't checked my hotmail box till today and found this, sent by an old old friend. Please excuse the added brackets; it would take way too much time to clean & dust this thing. I think the content will remain easy to discern:
>NO to The Coming October War in Iraq
>
> Dear Friends --
>
> There's increasingly specific evidence that the
> Cheney-Bush-Wolfovitz-etc
> gang is planning to start a huge and dishonest war
> with Irag in October.
> Scott Ritter, a military man to the hilt, and a
> conservative Republican, was
> a key figure in the UN teams that searched Iraq for
> military weapons,
> factories, supplies, and his evidence now shows in
> how many ways the Bush
> people have been lying about the situation in Iraq.
>
> A big majority of European governments believe
> Scott Ritter (read below),
> and our Senate and major media should HEAR him.
> Please write to your senators
> at once, and to Sen. Joe Biden, whose committee
> hearings begin next Monday,
> urging that Scott Ritter MUST be called as an expert
> witness, for extensive
> questioning.
>
> Read and believe. The Cheneys and Perles really
> are moving America toward
> Empire, fascism in the disguise of patriotism, and
> oligarchy---rule by the
> privileged few.
> The Coming October War in Iraq
> By William Rivers Pitt
> 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 milit
> ary 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."
>
>
> -------
>
>
> On the web: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
> foreign.senate.gov
>
>
> -------
>
>
> William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA.
> His new book, 'The Greatest
> Sedition is Silence,' will be published soon by
> Pluto Press.
>
>
> © : t r u t h o u t 2002 |
