Scott Ritter: Americans Are Worse Than The Nazis

by John Hawkins | May 14, 2007 10:39 am

At one time, Scott Ritter was a weapons inspector in Iraq with a tough guy reputation. After the weapons inspectors were pulled out in 1998, because the Iraqis wouldn’t cooperate, Ritter talked in blunt terms[1] about the threat that Saddam and his WMDs posed,

“Once effective inspection regimes have been terminated,” he warned in Senate testimony on September 3, 1998, “Iraq will be able to reconstitute the entirety of its former nuclear, chemical, and ballistic missile delivery system capabilities within a period of six months.”

And four months later, writing in the New Republic, Ritter was more specific. “Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production.”

Over time, Ritter’s opinion shifted 180 degrees with no rational explanation for the change. So, what happened? The most likely explanation would seem to be bribery[2],

“Iraq’s intelligence services bought gold jewellery that they planned to give to the wife and daughter of Scott Ritter, the controversial former weapons inspector, as part of a clandestine project to encourage him to work closely with Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to documents discovered by The Telegraph in Baghdad.

According to the documents, which were found in the bombed headquarters of Iraq’s intelligence services, the cost of the presents was approved at the highest level in an attempt to develop “strong relations with them [Mr Ritter’s family] that affect positively on our relations with him”.

The documents say that the gifts should be offered via an intermediary, who was named as Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American businessman and close associate of Mr Ritter.

…The five pages of documents dated between July 18 and September 14, 2000, appear to record a trip to Baghdad made by Mr Ritter, Mr al-Khafaji and a film crew. Their visit took place shortly before Mr Ritter raised :£250,000 to make a highly controversial documentary about Iraq that was critical of American policy towards Saddam’s regime.

Mr Ritter formed a partnership with Mr al-Khafaji to finance the film, Shifting Sands which, according to Mr Ritter, “proved” that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In an interview with the New York Times in 2001, Mr Ritter stated that none of Mr al-Khafaji’s funding came from Saddam’s regime. Of the :£250,000 spent on the film, he said that only :£26,250 went into his own pocket.

While he confirmed that he had received money from Mr al-Khafaji, Mr Ritter said that he had his business associate checked by CIA “sources” via a friend who was a reporter, and was reassured.”

“Of course, Ritter denies taking bribes from Saddam, but who would admit that sort of thing in public? Then there was the sex sting Ritter got caught up in[3],

“The Schenectady Daily Gazette and New York Daily News report Ritter allegedly had an online sexual discussion with someone he thought was an underage girl. The “girl,” however, turned out to be an undercover police investigator, according to the Daily News, whose sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

WTEN-TV, the ABC affiliate in Albany, is reporting that Ritter contacted the “teen-age girl” twice within a three-month period in 2001, and that he underwent court-ordered sex-offender counseling from a psychologist in New York’s capital.

Sources tell the Albany Times-Union that Ritter actually had two run-ins with police. The first occurred in April 2001, as the former Marine reportedly drove to a Colonie business to meet what he thought was a 14-year-old girl. He was reportedly questioned by officers, and released without a charge.

Two months later, the source told the paper, Ritter was caught in the same kind of online sex sting after he tried to lure a 16-year-old girl to an area Burger King restaurant.”

Now, what does this have to do with anything? Well, number one, I want you to see the type of dishonorable man that the left has put up on a pedestal. Number two, I want you to know a little bit about the background of the man that wrote these words on the popular liberal website, Common Dreams[4],

“We’re there to kill them and we do an extraordinarily good job. The British government recently certified as “sound” the methodologies used by the study published in the medical journal The Lancet which estimates the number of deaths (as of 2006) that can be directly attributed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath at 655,000 (Hawkins note: These number have been shown over and over again to be complete piffle and anyone who treats them as legitimate is either uninformed or dishonest.) If anything, this number has grown by leaps and bounds since the study was conducted.

One can point to sectarian violence as a major contributor to this total, but as an American I tend to reflect on the American-on-Iraqi violence, such as the barely mentioned deaths of Iraqi children in a recent air-delivered bomb attack against suspected Iraqi insurgents. I’m sure Dershowitz and those American service members desensitized to their own acts of depravity can explain the deaths of these innocents as “legitimate acts of bellicose reprisal.” I call it murder, even if these deaths occurred in time of war.

…I’m not calling the parents of those who have fallen in Iraq and who continue to voice their blind adherence to the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq bad citizens. I understand their need to come to grips with their loss the best way possible, which is to try and extract some meaning from the sacrifice their family has had to make. But I draw the line when these families allow their suffering to translate into blanket suffering for others. As The American Legion magazine quoted one such individual who advocated in favor of the Bush administration: “Are more servicemen and women returning the way my son did, in a casket, as a result of our words and actions? I believe the answer is yes. The perception of a weak American military, should we lose, will make our enemy stronger than we ever imagined. Because we don’t want to be at war any more doesn’t mean the war is over.”

Thus, in a blind effort to find meaning in her son’s death, this mother is willing to inflict suffering on other American families. This may sound like a harsh indictment, but she indicts herself. The same mother concludes the article with the following quote: “I told President Bush last summer that the biggest insult anyone could hand me would be to pull the troops out before the job is complete. If we’re going to quit, at that point I’ll have to ask, ‘Why did my son die?’ ” The question she should have been asking long before his death was, of course, “Why might my son die?” That she failed to do so, and now seeks to send others off to their death in a cause not worthy of a single American life, is where she and those of her ilk stop receiving my sympathy and understanding.

The American Legion magazine, in its May 2007 issue, belittles those who speak out against the war. “While our forefathers gave us the right and privilege to challenge our leaders,” one father of a fallen Marine writes, “the manner and method that some people have chosen to use at this time only emboldens the enemy.” Reading between the lines, freedom of speech is treasonous if you question the motives and actions of those who got us involved in the Iraq war. Alan Dershowitz can only wish that there had been more “good Germans” speaking out about the policies of Adolf Hitler before the Holocaust became reality.

I yearn for a time when “good Americans” will be able to stop and reverse equally evil policies of global hegemony achieved through pre-emptive war of aggression. I know all too well that in this case the “enemy” will only be emboldened by our silence, since at the end of the day the “enemy” is ourselves. I can see the Harvard professor shaking an accusatory finger at me for the above statement, chiding me for creating any moral equivalency between the war in Iraq and the Holocaust. You’re right, Mr. Dershowitz. There is no moral equivalency. In America today, we should have known better, since we ostensibly stand for so much more. That we have collectively failed to halt and repudiate the war in Iraq makes us even worse than the Germans.”

Ritter is just saying what most liberals believe, but won’t say: they look at the troops as thugs and murderers, consider their own country to be evil, and think that Americans are worse than the Nazis for deposing Saddam Hussein and trying to help the Iraqis form a democracy. Ritter is just saying publicly what people like John Kerry, Kos, Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jane Hamsher, etc., etc., etc., think.

There is a reason that liberals are easily stereotyped as hating their own country and the troops: it’s because they do hate their own country and the troops. And despite their own political instincts which tell them to lie about their feelings, they just can’t help but say so every so often…

Endnotes:
  1. Ritter talked in blunt terms: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/249vnlte.asp
  2. bribery: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/04/writt04.xml
  3. sex sting Ritter got caught up in: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30587
  4. Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/11/1126

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/uncategorized/scott-ritter-americans-are-worse-than-the-nazis/