Ex-Marine, Top Analyst (Scott Ritter) Calls For Humane Foreign Policy

Ex-Marine, Top Analyst Calls For Humane Foreign Policy
by Paul J. Nyden

Speaking to an audience of 350 at West Virginia State University Monday evening, former Marine and top intelligence analyst Scott Ritter gave an impassioned plea for the U.S. to adopt a more humane foreign policy.

“I am a hyper-patriot. I love my country,” Ritter said. “We live in a nation that espouses freedom.

“‘The Power of Pride’ is a very popular bumper sticker today. But this is not a nation built on pride. This is a nation built on the Constitution of the United States of America.

“What does ‘God Bless America’ mean? What does that tell all the other people in the world?” Ritter asked.

“There is nothing that makes us inherently better than any other human being. The definition of ‘hubris’ is to believe that 300 million Americans can dictate what happens to 6.8 billion other people on the earth.

“We have to learn to peacefully co-exist,” Ritter said.

“‘We the people’ means the Constitution does not belong to the president, to the Congress or to the Supreme Court. It belongs to the people,” Ritter said.

The Constitution also imposes obligations on citizens to inform themselves, study current events, become active politically and vote in elections, he added, noting only 38 percent of all adults vote in national elections today.

Ritter said he believes today’s federal government an “oligarchy, not a representative democracy; 98 percent of Americans cannot afford to run for political office. Power is concentrated in the hands of a few.”

Ritter, who was a top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, repeatedly said “evidence” for “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion was fabricated.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/26/4840/