Wie is Ritter, behalve een voormalig wapeninspecteur voor de VN? Is hij een anti-Amerikaanse communistische terrorist? Ritter is een 'former American marine and CIA agent'.

Uitlokking
Ritter in een interview in april dit jaar met Lorna Tychostup van Chronogram over de documentaire van Ritter: 'C[hronogram]: The movie states repeatedly that the US set up situations in order to provoke a conflict. S[ott] R[itter]: But what is clear is that the US has a policy that is more focused on the removal of Saddam Hussein than the elimination of his weapons of mass destruction.'
[...] In short, I believe the US government was manipulating what actually occurred to create a framework for justifying military action. But this was a framework based upon inaccurate information, incomplete information, and outright distortions. So I felt that.... I was in possession of facts that might offer a complete picture, and the best way to get the facts to as wide an audience as possible is to make a documentary that hopefully could be aired on
television.

Liegen en bedriegen
Op een gegeven moment bleek dat Ritter en zijn mede-inspecteurs hun werk zo goed deden dat Irak op militair gebied ongevaarlijk was geworden. 'So that’s when the US manipulated the process. Either by providing false or misleading information, stopping the work of the inspectors, interfering with the work of the inspectors, using the inspectors to deliberately provoke confrontation, crisis and to spy on Iraq for purposes other than set forth by the Security Counsel. That is, for purposes pertaining more towards the elimination of Saddam Hussein than the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.'

No case against Iraq
Over de geluiden dat Irak de afgelopen jaren zijn wapenarsenaal in stilte heeft opgebouwd, zegt hij: 'It certainly pushes the fear button. Fear buttons that are more sensitive since September 11. But there are no facts to back this up. There is no substantive information that remotely suggests that this is taking place. In fact, all information available suggests just the opposite. It is only rhetoric that we have to build a case against Iraq. No facts.'

Misleidende informatie
Toch gaat er oorlog komen. Bush wil het en Nederland hobbelt achter hem aan. Ritter: 'The fact of the matter is, with all due respect for the American public, by and large they are ignorant. They accept at face value the information they receive in the media, they don’t question it and wade through the smoke and as a result we get misleading poll figures that the government bases political decisions on. We’re going to go to war because President Bush looks at poll figures that say 75 to 80 percent of the American public support him going to war. Support that is derived from bad data, bad information.'

Ritter: olie is niet de reden
Volgens Ritter is olie niet de reden dat 'we' Afghanistan hebben aangevallen en Irak gaan aanvallen: 'Look. It’s much more complicated than that because it is not about any one thing in particular. Oil is a major, major issue. It runs our economy. It runs the economy of the world. It’s got big money associated with it. Any time you’ve got big money associated with anything, it plays a dominant role. [...] We wouldn’t be in Afghanistan because of oil, I can tell you that much, We’re in Afghanistan because that is where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were.'

Div
* Scott Ritter in een debat op CNN, 11 october 2002.
* Stapels artikelen met en over Scott Ritter op wat mogelijk zijn eigen website is.
* Ritter is ook schrijver van boeken. Een van zijn boeken heet War on Iraq: '1. There is no basis for war. 2. Removing Saddam Hussein is pointless given the political environment in Iraq. If the first basis is removed (i.e., reintroduction of arms inspectors) the second will become Team Bush's focus. The resulting conflict will not be a televised in-and-out affair like the Persian Gulf War; there will be heavy casualties on both sides, a complete destabilization of the Middle East, and a terrible backlash of terrorist attacks on the U.S.--exactly the kind of Islam vs. the West that al-Qaeda wants.
[...] Ritter enumerates the many ways in which it is impossible for Iraq to pose a credible threat. WAR ON IRAQ closes with a stark forecast for American troops if a ground war ensues and urges the White House to seek a diplomatic solution before it is too late.'
 

DaanSpeak
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