To: Old_Sparky who wrote (761046 ) 4/11/2022 9:15:05 PM From: THE WATSONYOUTH Respond to ...I reserve all judgement on this guy...........claims it is only "possible" that Russians struck civilian targets "inadvertently"edit ]Just after the coalition invasion of Iraq had been launched, but prior to troops arriving in Baghdad , British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Parliament of the United Kingdom that the United States and the United Kingdom believed they had "sufficient forces" in Iraq. At that very time Ritter offered an opposing view on Portuguese radio station TSF: "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win ... We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable ... Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added. [19] edit ]Ritter was the subject in two law enforcement sting operations in 2001. [40] He was charged in June 2001 with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl. [41] [42] He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child". The charge was dismissed and the record was sealed after he completed six months of probation. [42] [43] After this information was made public in early 2003, Ritter said that the timing of the leak was politically motivated in order to silence his opposition to the Bush administration's push toward war with Iraq. [41] [42] [44] [45] over communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site. Police said that he exposed himself, via a web camera, after the officer repeatedly identified himself as a 15-year-old girl. [2] Ritter said in his own testimony during the trial that he believed the other party was an adult acting out her fantasy. [46] The next month, Ritter waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was released on a $25,000 unsecured bail. Charges included "unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communications facility, corruption of minors, indecent exposure, possessing instruments of crime, criminal attempt and criminal solicitation". [47] Ritter rejected a plea bargain and was found guilty of all but the criminal attempt count in a courtroom in Monroe County , Pennsylvania, on April 14, 2011. [2] [4] In October 2011, he received a sentence of 1½ to 5½ years in prison. [48] He was sent to Laurel Highlands state prison in Somerset County, Pennsylvania , in March 2012 and paroled in September 2014. [49] edit ]From 2014 until 2017, Ritter was a columnist for HuffPost . [50] Between 2017 and 2020, he was a frequent contributor to The American Conservative . [51] Since 2017, he has also contributed regularly to Consortium News , [52] and since December 2019, Ritter has written op-eds for RT . [53] Since 2022, Ritter has written for New Age in Bangladesh . [54] In 2022, Ritter contributed to Canadian Dimension , [55] The Citizen (Tanzania) [56] and Energy Intelligence . [57]
