Interesting condensed interview with Scott Ritter, you might remember Scott for serving as the chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
So this makes for interesting read
Scott Ritter: Bombs Away?
By Curt Guyette and W. Kim Heron
The Detroit Metro Times
Wednesday 28 November 2007
Arms expert Scott Ritter says the US plans to attack Iran. Metro Times asks why he’s so sure.
"Everything points to April 2008 being a month of some criticality." – Scott Ritter
It
seems that with each passing week there are more stories raising the
specter of George Bush turning Iraq and Afghanistan into a bloody
trifecta by attacking Iran.
In
mainstream daily papers we see pieces like one by Gannett’s John
Yaukey, who wrote in early November that "confrontation could be near"
because "Iran continues to taunt the United States with its aggressive
posturing in Iraq and Lebanon while pushing ahead with its nuclear
research …"
We
are also witnessing what appears to be a chilling rerun of the Iraq
debacle. Confronted with evidence that calls into question the status
of Iran’s nuclear program, the Bush administration is shifting its
rhetoric.
"The
Bush administration has charged that Iran is funding anti-American
fighters in Iraq and sending in sophisticated explosives to bleed the
U.S. mission, although some of the administration’s charges are
disputed by Iraqis as well as the Iranians," the Los Angeles Times
reported in October. "Still, … diplomatic and military officials say
they fear that the overreaching of a confident Iran, combined with
growing U.S. frustrations, could set off a dangerous collision."
Look
beyond daily papers – from Seymour Hersh’s reporting in The New Yorker
to articles in The Nation – and the picture emerges of an
administration that is determined to attack Iran.
John
H. Richardson’s "The Secret History of the Impending War With Iran That
the White House Doesn’t Want You to Know" in the November issue of
Esquire magazine is particularly eye-opening. Richardson, using two
former high-ranking Middle East experts who worked for the White House
as his primary sources, warns that the Bush administration is "headed
straight for war with Iran" and that "it had been set on this course
for years."
"It
was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it
couldn’t wait for the UN inspectors to leave," writes Richardson, who
details the Bush administration’s success at scuttling diplomatic
efforts – notably involving then-Secretary of State Colin Powell – to
reach a peaceful accord with Iran. "The steps have been many and steady
and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse.
We are getting closer and closer to the tripline…."
With
all this in mind, we decided to talk with the man who literally wrote
the book on Bush’s intentions. Nearly a year ago, Scott Ritter’s Target
Iran was published, and he’s been sounding the claxon of impending war
ever since.
A
former Marine Corps intelligence officer, Ritter served as chief United
Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 when he left as a
pointed critic of the Clinton administration’s commitment to weapons
inspection and its Iraq policy. Before the United States’ 2003
invasion, Ritter loudly disputed the Bush administration’s claims
regarding weapons of mass destruction under Saddam’s control and
predicted that, instead of the quick and easy war being promised, Iraq
would turn into a quagmire, though not necessarily of the type he
envisioned. His analyses have been embraced by both the right and the
left at various points. He portrays himself as the straight-shooting
analyst unconcerned by who supports him or whom he offends.
To
learn what he thinks the future holds for Iran, and the consequences of
a U.S. invasion, we recently sat down for a 90-minute phone interview
with Ritter. What follows is a condensed version of that conversation.
Metro Times:
A year ago, when your book Target Iran came out, you were sounding the
alarm about war being imminent. Why do you think that attack hasn’t
occurred?
Scott Ritter:
Let’s remember that this is an elective war, not a war of necessity. A
war of necessity would be fought at the point and time a conflict is
required, if somebody is threatening to invade you, to attack, etc. But
an elective war is one where we choose to go to war. It will be
conducted on a timescale that’s beneficial to those who are planning
the conflict.
As
far as why it hasn’t happened, there’s any number of reasons. One, the
Bush administration has not been able to stabilize Iraq to the level
they would like to see prior to expanding military operations in the
region. Two, the international community has not rallied around the
cause of Iran’s nuclear program representing a casus belli to the
extent that the Bush administration would like. They were hopeful that
there would be more action from the [United Nations] Security Council.
It took a long time to get the issue shifted from the International
Atomic Energy Agency’s headquarters to the Security Council. And even
when it got shifted to the Security Council, the Council took very
timid steps, not decisive steps. The Bush administration sort of tied
its hands at that point in time. I think you are seeing increasing
frustration today at the slow pace.
Also,
the need to redefine the Iranian threat away from exclusively being
focused on nuclear activity, because now you have the difficulty of
both the IAEA saying there is no nuclear weapons program and the CIA
saying pretty much the same thing. So the Bush administration needs to
redefine the Iranian threat, which they have been doing successfully,
casting Iran as the largest state sponsor of terror, getting the Senate
resolution calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command a terrorist
organization, and creating a perception amongst the American people,
courtesy of a compliant media, that talks about the reason why things
are going bad in Iraq is primarily because of Iranian intervention.
They
have been working very hard to get back on track. I still believe that
we are seeing convergence here. The Bush administration is moving very
aggressively toward military action with Iran.
Metro Times:
Is your conclusion that an attack is imminent based on the
administration’s statements and actions, like labeling Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group, or do you also have sources
within the intelligence community and the military and the
administration telling you what’s going on?
Scott Ritter:
I don’t have any current sources of the sort you just spoke of. I was
plugged in back in 2006 to good quality current information. But I
haven’t been plugged in recently, so I have to use some sort of
analytical methodology as opposed to saying, "Aha, I got it from the
horse’s mouth." But there’s nothing that has occurred that leads me to
believe the Bush administration has changed its policy direction. In
fact there has been much that’s occurred that reinforces the earlier
conclusions that were based on good sources of information. We take a
look at items in the defense budget, the rapid conversion of heavy
bombers to carry bunker-busting bombs on a specific time frame, the
massive purchasing of oil to fill up the strategic oil reserve by April
2008. Everything points to April 2008 to being a month of some
criticality. It also matches my analysis that the Bush administration
will want to carry this out prior to the crazy political season of the
summer of 2008.
Metro Times:
Last year you expressed hope that if Democrats took control of Congress
it might pass legislation that could block the march toward war. Do you
see them stepping up?
Scott Ritter:
No. They just passed a resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Command as a terrorist organization. Unless there is a radical
reawakening in Congress, I don’t see them passing any sort of
pre-emptive legislation of that nature.
Metro Times: But it is now clearer than ever that our invasion of Iraq has been a disaster. How do you explain the lack of opposition?
Scott Ritter:
It’s difficult to explain. First of all you have to note, from the
public side, that very few Americans actually function as citizens
anymore. What I mean by that are people who invest themselves in this
country, people who care, who give a damn. Americans are primarily
consumers today, and so long as they continue to wrap themselves in the
cocoon of comfort, and the system keeps them walking down a road to the
perceived path of prosperity, they don’t want to rock the boat. If it
doesn’t have a direct impact on their day-to-day existence, they simply
don’t care.
There’s
a minority of people who do, but the majority of Americans don’t. And
if the people don’t care – and remember, the people are the
constituents – if the constituents don’t care, then those they elect to
higher office won’t feel the pressure to change.
The
Democrats, one would hope, would live up to their rhetoric, that is,
challenging the Bush administration’s imperial aspirations. Once it
became clear Iraq was an unmitigated disaster, one would have thought
that when the Democrats took control of Congress they would have sought
to reimpose a system of checks and balances, as the Constitution
mandates. But instead the Democrats have put their focus solely on
recapturing the White House, and, in doing so, will not do anything
that creates a political window of opportunity for their Republican
opponents.
The
Democrats don’t want to be explaining to an apathetic constituency, an
ignorant constituency whose ignorance is prone to be exploited because
it produces fear, fear of the unknown, and the global war on terror is
the ultimate fear button. The Democrats, rather than challenging the
Bush administration’s position on the global war on terror, challenging
the notion of these imminent threats, continues to play them up because
that is the safest route toward the White House. At least that is their
perception.
The
last thing they are gong to do is pass a piece of legislation that
opens the door for the Republicans to say, "Look how weak these guys
are on terror. They’re actually defending the Iranians. They’re
defending this Ahmadinejad guy. They’re defending the Holocaust denier.
They’re defending the guy who wants to wipe Israel off the face of the
earth." The Democrats don’t want to go up against that. They don’t have
the courage of conviction to enter into that debate and stare at
whoever makes that statement and say they’re a bald-faced liar. They’re
not going to go that route.
Metro Times: Do you think there is anything that can happen at this point that will stop this attack?
Scott Ritter:
You have to take a look at external influences, not internal ones. I
don’t think there is anything happening inside the United States that’s
going to stop that attack. I do believe that, for instance, if Pakistan
continues to melt down, that could be something that creates such a
significant diversion the Bush administration will not be able to make
its move on Iran.
To
attack Iran, they’re going to need a nice lull period. That’s what
they’re pushing with this whole surge right now. They’re creating the
perception that things are quieting. I don’t know how many people
picked up on it, but one day we’re told that 2007’s been the bloodiest
year for U.S. forces in Iraq, the next day we’re told that attacks
against American troops are dropping at a dramatic pace. So, what’s the
media focus on? The concept of attacks dropping at a dramatic pace. No
one’s talking about the fact, wait a minute, we’ve just lost more guys
than we’ve ever lost before.
They
are pushing the perception that Iraq is now stable. If you have a
situation in Pakistan that explodes out of control, where you suddenly
have nuclear weapons at risk of falling into the hands of Islamic
fundamentalists, that could stop it. If Turkey attacks Kurdistan and
that conflict spins out of control, that could put a halt to it. These
are things that could overshadow even Dick Cheney’s desire to bomb
Iran.
And
there could be some other unforeseen meltdown globally that’s not on
the radar at this time, that, unfortunately, we have to be hoping for
to stop an attack on Iran. And that says a lot, that we have to hope
for disaster to prevent unmitigated disaster.
Metro Times: What’s the motivation?
Scott Ritter:
The ideologues who are in there believe the United States in the
post-Cold War environment needed to fill the gap created by the demise
of the Soviet Union so that no nation or group of nations would ever
again confront us as equals. And in order to do this, they basically
divided the world into spheres of strategic interest and said we will
impose our will. And the Middle East is one such area. There’s a whole
host of reasons to do this.
It’s
not just supporting Israel. It’s not just taking down Saddam. It’s
about geopolitics. It’s about looking down the road toward China and
India, the world’s two largest developing economies, especially the
Chinese, and the absolute fear that this resurgent Chinese economy
brings in the hearts of American industrialists and the need to dictate
the pace of Chinese economic development by controlling their access to
energy. And controlling central Asian and Middle East energy areas is
key in the strategic thinking of the Bush administration.
So,
there’s a lot of complexity at play here. But you say why do they want
to do this? It’s about as Condoleezza Rice continuously says before the
U.S. Congress: It’s about regional transformation, inclusive of regime
change. It turns the Middle East into a sphere of interest that we have
tremendous control over. That’s what’s behind all this.
Metro Times:
And when Bush talks about being an instrument of God, do you think he
really believes that or is that just political posturing, playing to
the religious base?
Scott Ritter:
That’s a question that can only be asked of George Bush. But I find it
disturbing that an American politician who is supposed to be the head
of a secular nation where religion is protected but there is no state
religion, and who has control over the world’s largest nuclear arsenal,
not only openly talks about how God is his final adviser, which pretty
much negates the role of Congress or any other system of governmental
oversight, checks and balances of the executive, but also embraces a
kind of evangelicalism that gives legitimacy to the notion of the
rapture, Armageddon, the apocalypse as a good thing.
Here’s
a man who speaks of World War III and the apocalypse and he has his
hand on the button and he talks to God. I don’t know, if it’s a show,
its a dangerous show, if its real, we should all be scared to death.
Metro Times:
Even going back to before the start of the Iraq war, the national
mainstream media just seemed to be beating the drum for it. Why do you
think that is?
Scott Ritter:
Again, only they can really answer that question, but I think it is
clear the mainstream media, while not outright fabricators, are not
there to tell the truth, they’re there to win over ratings. They will
package their programming in ways that sells well to an audience. And
we are dealing with a complacent American audience, where in-depth
reality stories are trumped by reality TV. I don’t see the programming
director saying, "Look, we’re going to spend an hour explaining to the
American people why Ahmadinejad’s speech wasn’t that big of a deal." Or
they can say, "Hell, no; in three minutes we can lead with a story
saying he’s a Holocaust denier and win everybody’s attention."
Metro Times:
Do you think the resolutions in 2001 and 2002 authorizing Bush to use
military force against Iraq give Bush the authority to attack Iran
without first obtaining congressional approval?
Scott Ritter:
I’d like to believe it didn’t, but unfortunately when you take a look
at it, and I’ve had constitutional scholars take a look at it, the
feeling is that, yeah, because of the terrorist threat, if you take a
look at the fine print on both of those resolutions, it gives the
president authorization to use military force to take out groups,
organizations, individuals, etc. who are linked to the events of 9/11.
And the president has continued to make the case that Iran is linked to
the attacks.
Metro Times: Do you think an attack on Iran would be an illegal war of aggression and a war crime under international law?
Scott Ritter: It depends on what triggers it. If Iran engages in an action that legitimizes a military response, the answer is no.
There
are two conditions that we are legally allowed to engage in military
operations. Militaries are bound by the charter of the United Nations’
Article 51, legitimate self-defense, and a Chapter 7 resolution passed
by the Security Council authorizing military force to be used. If we
attack Iran void of any of these, especially when it can be shown that
we have hyped up a threat in defense of pre-emption – I think the
Nuremberg Tribunals from 1946 have set a clear precedent with Judge
Jackson condemning German generals to death for invading Denmark and
Norway in the same premise of pre-emption. It is quite clear this is
illegal. Unfortunately the Nuremberg Tribunals don’t have any weight
when it comes to prosecution of the law.
The
international community has not agreed upon a definition of what
pre-emptive aggression is, and what the consequences of such are. Let’s
keep in mind if we attack Iran we’re guilty of no more than what we’re
already guilty of in attacking Iraq. Hyping up a threat where one
doesn’t exist, going to war void of any legitimacy, violating
everything we claim to stand for. Yet we don’t see any war crimes
tribunals being convened for the Bush administration over Iraq.
Metro Times:
One of the scenarios that’s been raised has Israel launching the first
strike, prompting a response from Iran that would then pull us in.
Scott Ritter:
I think Israel is capable of doing a one-time limited shot into Iran.
One has to take a look at the distances involved and the complexity of
military operations … the lack of friendly airspace between corridors
into and out of Iran. It’s nice to talk about an Israeli attack, but
the reality is far different. Israel had trouble dominating Hezbollah
right on its own border with air power.
I
think Israel could actually go into Iran and get their butts kicked. It
may not go off as well as they think it’s going to go off. It is too
long of a distance, too much warning for the Iranians. The Iranians are
too locked-in; they’re too well prepared. It doesn’t make any sense.
Israel doesn’t have the ability to sustain a strike. Like I said, they
might be able to pull off a limited one-time shot. But I think the
fallout from that would be devastating for the United States. As much
as we’ve worked to get an Arab alliance against Iran, that would just
fall apart overnight with an Israeli attack. No Muslim state will stand
by and defend Israel after it initiated a strike against Iran. It just
will not happen. And the United States knows this. I just think it’s
ludicrous to talk about an Israeli attack.
I
think what we’re looking at is an American attack. It’s the only viable
option both in terms of initiation and sustainment of the strike.
Israel might be drawn in after that. There’s no doubt in my mind the
Iranians will launch missiles against Israeli targets, either directly
or through proxies, and that Israel will suffer. This is something I
try to warn all my Israeli friends about. If you think Saddam Hussein
firing 41 missiles was inconvenient, wait until the Iranians fire a
thousand of them. It goes well beyond an inconvenience; it becomes a
national tragedy. And then the escalation that can occur from there.
I
think right now what the Bush administration is conceiving is a limited
strike against Iran to take out certain Revolutionary Guard sites and
perhaps identified nuclear infrastructure. Not a massive, sustained
bombardment, but a limited strike. But we were always told in the
Marine Corps that the enemy has a vote and no plan survives initial
contact with the enemy. So we may seek to have a limited strike, but if
the Iranians do a massive response, things could spin out of control
quickly.
Metro Times:
What do you foresee as some of the possible consequences? No one is
talking about putting troops on the ground in Iran are they?
Scott Ritter:
A while back there was talk about having forces move in on Tehran via
Azerbaijan. But I think those plans have gone to the wayside. If Iran
is successful in shutting down the Straits of Hormuz, it will force our
hand and we’ll have to put the Marines in to secure the Straits. If the
conflict drags on and air power is not sufficient to break the will of
the Iranian resistance, the Army may have to activate its option to put
a reinforced corps into Azerbaijan and punch down the Caspian Sea
coast. But these are definitely not the leading options at this point
in time.
Metro Times: When you say a "limited strike," what might that look like in more detail?
Scott Ritter:
Iran is a big country. There are a number of target sites we have to
look at. To give an example, to take out a number of air defense sites
during the Gulf War, a sortie required over 100 aircraft. It’s not just
one airplane coming in, firing a missile and going out. You have to
secure a corridor, you have to put a combat air patrol over it, you
have to have air-to-air refueling, you have to have aircraft protecting
the refuelers, and then you have to have the strike aircraft
themselves. You have to have pre- and post-reconnaissance. When you
replicate this, let’s say, over 20 targets, we don’t have enough
airplanes to do it all at once. So, it’s something that will occur in
phases. What you look at is maybe a three- to five-day bombardment
where we take out sites, radar sites and air defense sites the first
day, the second we pound the nuclear sites, the third day we take the
Revolutionary Guard Command sites, the fourth and fifth days we do
follow-up strikes to make sure all targets are destroyed, then we’re
done. That’s probably what we’re looking at.
Metro Times: How much damage could be done to the Iranian nuclear program?
Scott Ritter:
No damage would be done to it. Remember, the problem the Iranians face
isn’t the manufacture of this equipment. They’ve already mastered that.
And if you think for a second machine tools that are used to
manufacture enrichment equipment are going to be stored out in the open
where we can bomb them, you’re wrong. They’ve been dispersed. The
Iraqis were masters of this. We spent a lot of money blowing up
concrete, but we never got the machine tools, because they were always
hidden. They were always evacuated the day before – they’d take it to
palm groves or warehouses that we didn’t know about, or hidden in
narrow streets. And we never detected that, and we never got them. The
Iranians are even better. They’ve been mastering the technology of
deep-earth tunneling, so they can hide things underground that we can’t
reach with our conventional weapons. So I just think it is absurd to
talk about bombing these sites, because all we’ll do is blow up
buildings that can be rebuilt.
A
couple of sites are more sensitive; I think the uranium conversion
facility at Isfahan, that’ll be a major blow. It’s a site that can be
rebuilt however. It was a facility put in by the Chinese, but the
Iranians have the blueprints. It’ll take time, but they can rebuild it.
At the best we are talking about retarding an Iranian program. But
what’s worse is if we bomb them, we may retard it, but we might also
make it a militant program. Meaning that if their objective is only
nuclear energy and suddenly they’re being attacked and the world is
doing nothing, we may push the Iranians into weaponization even though
that is something they don’t want to do. That’s not in the cards right
now. But our attack will have little or no impact on anything. That’s
for certain.
Metro Times: So what do you think the United States should be doing to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?
Scott Ritter:
I think that is the wrong question. That presumes Iran is seeking
nuclear weapons. There’s no evidence of that whatsoever. So rather than
pose a question that legitimizes a certain point, I think the question
should be, "What should the United States be doing in regards to Iran?"
I think we should be seeking to normalize relations with Iran. We
should be seeking stability in the region. This concept that the United
States gets to dictate to sovereign people the makeup of their
government is absurd. First of all, the theocracy in Iran, while not a
model, for instance … it’s an Iranian problem, not an American
problem. The day of the exportation of the Islamic revolution is long
gone. The Iranians are not seeking to convert by the sword anybody.
It’s a nation that has serious internal problems. Economic. Huge
unemployment. It’s a nation that recognizes these problems. And they
are in desperate need of not only political stability but also the
economic benefits that come with this stability.
The
Iranians want a normalization of relations with the United States that
would be inclusive of peaceful coexistence with Israel. They’ve said
this over and over and over again.
So
what the United States should be doing is exploiting the olive branch
that is being held out by the Iranians. We should be engaging them
diplomatically. We should be terminating economic sanctions and seeking
to exploit the leverage that comes with having American businesses
working inside Iran to try and change them from within. We should be
doing everything to get Iran to be a positive player in the region,
especially considering the debacle that’s unfolding in Iraq. Having the
Iranians working with us to engender stability as opposed to being at
cross-purposes.
The
same can be said in Afghanistan and the entire central Asian region. We
keep putting our hopes on allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Saudi
Arabia, which produced 14 of the hijackers who slaughtered Americans on
9/11. Pakistan, which was the political sponsor of the Taliban and
al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and continues to have ties to radical Islamic
terror organizations. These are our allies? And we call Iran the enemy?
We’ve got it backward. The Iranians are actually the ones we should be
working with to oppose dictatorships like Pakistan and irresponsible
governments like Saudi Arabia’s.
Metro Times:
Even under Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? It seems like
before him, just after 2001, there was a window where the Iranians were
seeking rapprochement and doing things perhaps quietly and not
well-known to Americans to stabilize things.
Scott Ritter:
You have to remember that Ahmadinejad doesn’t make any policy. He is
more than a figurehead, but constitutionally he’s hampered by the
reality that the power resides with the theocrats. It’s the theocrats
we need to be engaging, not Ahmadinejad. You engage the people who make
the decisions. In the end we should be sending people to talk to the
National Security Council, the Guardian Council, the representatives of
the supreme leader. That’s where the power is, that’s where the
decisions are made. Ahmadinejad is in reality just a minor
inconvenience. The bottom line is, not only doesn’t he account for
much, his words haven’t created a problem at all. Half the things we
claim he said, he never said at all. And the other half we put out of
context and exaggerate.
I’m
not here to defend what the guy says. But the notion that just because
a man dared question a 100 percent interpretation of the history of the
Holocaust as put forward by Israel – and again, I’m not saying he’s
right to do that – I’m just saying that because he dared do that, he’s
suddenly evil incarnate and we need to go to war against this guy? No.
At worst he’s a joke. He’s a guy whose words mean nothing, have no
power, have no relevance. It’s the supreme leader that matters. And,
yes, today the supreme leader continues to want to seek to normalize
relations with the United States.
Metro Times: You are getting ready to go to Iran at the start of December. What’s the purpose of that trip?
Scott Ritter:
I’ve been trying to get there for some time now to talk with Iranian
government officials trying to ascertain firsthand what’s going on in
Iran. We get a lot of rhetoric here at home, we get the media saying a
lot of things that are derived not so much from on-the-ground truth in
Iran but rather from talking points put out by the White House. I think
it is imperative that if we are going to have a national debate,
discussion and dialogue about Iran, that we get all sides of the story.
Hopefully,
I’ll have an opportunity to meet with Iranian government officials, and
have a chance to speak with some religious officials, and maybe even
have a chance to talk about hypotheticals, not only what the current
situation is, but how the Iranians would like to see this thing
resolved and what mechanisms might need to be employed and maybe come
back with some ideas that people in Congress might be interested in.
Metro Times: You’ve been to Iran before, haven’t you?
Scott Ritter:
Yes. And having been to Iran, I can tell you that it is the last nation
in the world we should be saying these are people we have to fight.
When you visit Iran and you see the Iranian people and you get the
chance to talk to them, you realize that these are peaceful people.
These are highly educated people. They are more like us than we can
possibly imagine. They are very Western in their approach, although
they reject the term Western because they say think those in the West
are Neanderthals compared to the Persian culture. But they are very
modern in their approach. They are a very modern people.
I
always say the best way to stop a war with Iran would be to issue every
American a passport and roundtrip ticket and money for a two-week stay
and let them go there and when they came back they’d say there’s no way
we should bomb this place. Once you’ve been to Iran you realize just
how utterly useless the concept of militaristic confrontation is.
Metro Times:
I think it is fair to say you are perceived as a champion of the left
at this point. But 10 years ago, when you were criticizing the Clinton
administration for undermining efforts to root out Saddam’s weapons,
you were being heralded by the right. Saddam accused you of being an
American spy. And you were criticized for being too close with the
Israelis and sharing information with them. But when you go to Iraq
prior to the war there, people on the right are calling you a traitor.
The FBI put you under surveillance. What do you make of all that?
Scott Ritter:
What I make of it is my consistency and the inconsistency of those who
seek to gain political advantage by manipulating the truth. When the
right embraced what I was saying, they didn’t embrace the totality of
what I was saying. They only embraced that aspect that was convenient
for their political purposes. I would say today that the left is guilty
of the same thing. I’m only convenient to the left when that which I
espouse mirrors what they are pursuing. It will be interesting to see,
if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, how popular I will be in
certain circles, because I can guarantee I will go after her with all
the vengeance I go after the Bush administration.
It’s
not about being Republican, it’s not about being Democrat, it’s about
being American. It’s about doing the right thing. And in the 1990s the
right thing was to implement the [United Nations] Security Council
resolutions calling for the disarmament of Iraq. That was the law. That
was what I was tasked with doing, and the Clinton administration was
not permitting the task to be accomplished.
By
holding them to account, if that suddenly made me popular with the
right, then so be it. It’s not something that I sought; it wasn’t the
purpose of what I was doing. But when the complexity of my stance
became inconvenient to the right, when they found out it wasn’t just
about taking down the Clinton administration, but rather criticizing an
American political position that put unilateral policy objectives and
regime change higher up in the chain of priorities than disarmament,
suddenly it wasn’t convenient anymore to be saying, "Hey, we like this
guy."
One cannot be held accountable for the words and actions of those who seek to selectively embrace what you say.
Metro Times: When Bush talks about World War III, how likely is the scenario that an attack by us would escalate into that?
Scott Ritter:
I don’t know about likely, but what I say is that I can sit here and
spin scenarios that have it going in that direction. And these aren’t
fantastic scenarios.
Metro Times: Would that be having Russia or China coming in?
Scott Ritter:
No, no, no. It would be something more like the destabilization of
Pakistan to the point where a nuclear device gets in the hands of
Islamic fundamentalists who are aligned with al-Qaeda and there’s some
sort of nuclear activity on the soil of the United States of America.
That’s more what I’m looking at. I don’t think the Russians or the
Chinese would become involved. They don’t need to. All they have to do
is sit back and wait and pick up the pieces – because it is the end of
the United States as a global superpower. That’s one thing I try to
tell everybody. The danger of going after Iran is that it is just not
worth it. What we can lose is everything, and what we gain is nothing.
So why do it?
