Sorry, but I trust Scott Ritter's assessment of the timing and the motive for the bombing. BTW, what's been accomplished? We've spent $3,763,491.32 so far and still counting.
Wag the Dog"
Just hours before the bombing began, Major Scott Ritter, a U.S. Marine officer who had served in UNSCOM, informed the New York Post that key elements of Butler's report
were essentially dictated by Bill Clinton's National Security Council. According to Ritter, U.S. officials had told him that impeachment was among the considerations dictating the
timing of new inspections in Iraq. "What ¼ Richard Butler did last week with the inspections was a set-up," insisted Major Ritter. "This was designed to generate a conflict that
would justify a bombing." A supplemental report filed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, by way of contrast, contended that Iraq had offered "the necessary level of
cooperation" with international inspectors.
Major Ritter, who resigned his UN position in disgust last August to protest the Clinton Administration's appeasement of Saddam, told the Post, "If you dig around, you'll find out
why Richard Butler yesterday ran to the phone four times. He was talking to his [U.S.] National Security adviser. They were telling him to sharpen the language in the report to justify
the bombing." The inspection exercise itself was entirely pointless, according to Ritter: "UNSCOM knew there were no weapons at the sites they were sending their inspectors to.
We've been doing this for seven years. We know that when the inspectors leave, Iraq shuffles up the deck, moves the weapons. Why then did the U.S. urge these inspectors to
carry out immediate inspections?" Concludes Ritter, "You have no choice but to interpret this as ‘Wag the Dog.' You have no choice."
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