The Betrayal of Scott Ritter
By Fred Hiatt
Sunday, September 6, 1998; Page C07
It's no surprise to find the Clinton administration treating any problem as a
public-relations challenge, looking to spin instead of solve, vilifying critics
instead of debating them.
Even so, turning the dogs loose on Scott Ritter is a new low.
Ritter is the former Marine reserve major and Gulf War veteran who spent
the past seven years leading U.N. teams hunting for the biological and
chemical weapons that Iraq's Saddam Hussein is attempting to conceal.
On Aug. 26 he resigned from that post, charging the United Nations and
the United States with retreating from their stated commitment to disarm
the dictator.
"The illusion of arms control is more dangerous than no arms control at all,"
he said.
The administration responded by turning on this 37-year-old who, to
further what the administration had claimed was a top foreign policy goal,
had sacrificed comfort and personal safety for the better part of the
decade.
First came leaks about an FBI investigation of Ritter for sharing
confidential information with other governments -- something he freely
admits he did, as part of his job and at the direct order of his U.N. bosses.
Then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lashed out. Ritter "doesn't
have a clue about what our overall policy has been," she told CNN.
Claiming great success for Iraq policy on behalf of "the United States --
and, I must say, me personally," Albright nonetheless didn't have enough
confidence in that policy to sit by as Ritter testified to Congress. She urged
a House committee chairman to squelch one such hearing, while Senate
Democrats did their best to prevent Ritter's testimony.
When Senate committees nonetheless invited Ritter to present his views,
administration ally Joseph Biden really went to work. Biden, ranking
Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, depicted "old
Scotty-boy" as a spoiled child who was demanding that President Clinton
and Albright declare war because he hadn't gotten his way.
"But in terms of whether the secretary of state has no more to consider
than you do as the arms inspector -- you didn't get in, didn't get my job
done, get me in! . . . Scott Ritter, I'm ready to go! That's not how it
works," Biden said mockingly. "That's why they get paid the big bucks.
That's why they get the limos and you don't. . . . Their job's a hell of a lot
more complicated than yours."
Not all Democrats, it should be noted, were willing to go down that road.
Virginia Sen. Charles Robb, for one, a fellow former Marine, called Ritter
"tough . . . principled . . . uncompromising . . . You have acquitted yourself
extremely well."
But the administration's belittling of Ritter isn't just shabby and politically
stupid. It's dangerous -- because, unfortunately, Ritter does have a clue.
Not some face-in-the-mud foot soldier, Ritter was a senior official of the
U.N. arms inspection operation, responsible for assembling and leading
inspection teams. A half- dozen times, he was pulled away from such
inspections on orders from Albright or other top administration officials.
Once, in August, he believed the team was about to uncover ballistic
missile components. On another occasion, they were pursuing biological
weapons they believed had been tested on live human subjects.
Ritter believes the administration derailed these and other inspections
because it did not want its bluff called. Now that Saddam Hussein has
kicked the inspectors out of Iraq, and the Security Council has not acted,
it's hard to argue with his interpretation.
Six months ago, Clinton said that if Saddam Hussein defied the U.N.
inspectors "and we fail to act . . . he will conclude that the international
community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on
and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some
day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal."
What has changed since Clinton made those remarks? Without
inspections, how will the United States or the United Nations know what
Saddam Hussein is up to? How will they prevent his rearmament? What
will they do if he rearms?
So far, Albright's chief response to such questions has been to point to
continuing diplomacy and to economic sanctions that remain in place. But
without inspectors, even the sanctions aren't much use, for there will be no
one to prevent Saddam Hussein from using his U.N.-approved oil
revenues -- as he already has tried to do -- to buy weapons components
overseas.
No one can doubt the difficulty of the challenge posed by Saddam Hussein
-- difficulty aggravated, as Ritter said, by two years of confrontations
followed by concessions that have served only to embolden him. Whether
to use force, how to marshal support at home and abroad for its use --
these are tough questions that, as Albright suggests, are beyond Ritter's
responsibility.
What Ritter does know is Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
And, according to his Senate testimony, it would take the Iraqi leader only
six months to reconstitute his chemical weapons capability and the ballistic
missiles to deliver them.
So far, since Saddam Hussein booted the inspectors, one month has
passed.
>>>Sicking the FBI on Scott Ritter = they seem to use the FBI
>>>as if they were their private Gestapo |
