Scott Ritter Tells the Complete Story Why We're in Iraq

It Begins with the CIA's Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein

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There is a shocking truth behind the invasion of Iraq, which Scott Ritter reveals in Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (a BuzzFlash premium). Scott Ritter was a top UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 through 1998, frequently serving as the chief inspector. That gives him direct knowledge of what happened in Iraq, historical context for interpreting what happened, and -- another key -- independence from domestic politics, because the UN employed him, not our own executive branch. Those are powerful keys to understanding the mess the U.S. finds itself in today, and telling the truth about it. Before working for the UN, Ritter was a major in the U.S. Marines and a ballistic missile adviser to General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf War. In this unadorned, plain speaking interview, Scott Ritter tells BuzzFlash readers just what got us into Iraq the second time.


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Regime change in Iraq became a centerpiece of the 2000 George W. Bush Presidential campaign regarding foreign policy. This was a domestic political issue. And then it was used further because the American public had been pre-programmed into accepting at face value any negative characterization of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It was used even more after 9/11 as a vehicle to sell a neo-conservative agenda regarding how the United States interacts not only with Iraq and the Middle East, but the entire world. The truth is the Iraq problem has never been about national security or international peace and security. It's always had its roots in the domestic political debate here in the United States of America.


http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/11/int05045.html

......BuzzFlash: In my opinion, there was nothing that anyone could have said that would have stopped the Bush Administration from invading Iraq. It seems that it would have come hell or high water. UNSCOM said that Iraq was, as you said, "fundamentally disarmed." Those memos and reports were given and distributed to the CIA. What do you believe the motives truly were, if in fact Iraq did not pose a threat to its neighbors and to the rest of the world with weapons of mass destruction?

Scott Ritter: It evolved over time. The initial motive, in 1991, was strictly born out of the fact that Saddam Hussein's continued survival after the U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait represented a political problem to George Herbert Walker Bush. In October of 1990, in selling a war with Iraq to the American people, George H.W. Bush said that Saddam is the Middle-East equivalent of Adolf Hitler, who must be dealt with a Nuremberg-like retribution.

That's powerful rhetoric. When you call Saddam Hitler, he becomes the personification of evil. He becomes the devil incarnate. You can't do a deal with the devil. It eliminated any possibility of a diplomatic solution. Saddam had to go. And we had gone to war, and many people in America believed we were going to war to remove Saddam. But when the war ended, and Kuwait was liberated, and American troops came home, Saddam was still in power. This was a political problem -- not a national security problem, but a political problem -- for George Herbert Walker Bush.

All they wanted was for Saddam to go away. It didn't matter if a Sunni general killed Saddam and stepped in, and governed Iraq in the exact same fashion. Saddam would be gone and the political problem would go away. When President Bush was not reelected in 1992, the Clinton Administration was actually working very hard on coming up with a policy that would allow for the lifting of economic sanctions, and a normalization of relations with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat alike, told Clinton that this was impossible – that they had told their respective constituencies that Saddam was Hitler. Saddam was evil. And now Clinton wanted to do business with the devil? That was politically not an option.

.....Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein by Scott Ritter, with introduction by Seymour Hersh,