Go back and read again. Ritter took the money for the documentary in 2000
In 2000, Ritter made a documentary film harshly critical of UN sanctions against Iraq — a film in which he sought to demonstrate that Iraq no longer represented a threat to its neighbors or anyone else. An increasingly activist critic of U.S. Iraq policy, the Bush administration's move to prepare America for war with Iraq prompted Ritter to fly to Baghdad and attack Washington's plans.
....which by some miraculous coincidence, was also the year he switched his story 180 degrees.
If you look at the book Scott Ritter he published in 1999, Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem--Once and For All (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), you find it full of quotes about Iraqis continuing efforts to evade UNSCOM and continue its BW programs,
Iraq undertook a program, run by the office of the president and involving a special MIC (Military Industrial Commission) Unit 2001, either to produce new agent, or test agent that was retained from pre-Gulf War stocks. In 1995, Unit 2001 conducted tests on live human subjects taken from Abu Ghaib prison, using BW and binary CW agent. Around fifty prisoners were chosen for these experiments, which took place at a remote testing ground in western Iraq. The purpose of those experiments was to text the toxicity of available agent to ensure that the biological arsenal remained viable. As a result, all the prisoners died. (p105)
The entire book is devoted to warning of the danger of Saddam's regime. That was Scott Ritter in 1999.
What happened, I think, is that Scott Ritter broke with his superiors in 2000, he says in objection to the sanctions, probably also for reasons of his own personal instability and uncontrolled ego, and became easy pickings for Saddam's agents. |
