by Gary Sacks
Scott Ritter, the former head of the UN weapons inspections team in Iraq, spoke at Deerfield Academy to a packed auditorium Tuesday night October 15th. Mr. Ritter is also a former Marine, an intelligence officer, and a Republican. He spoke of war- plain and simple, "It's not a video game." He said , "War is terminal. War is about death and destruction." He spoke clearly about the Constitution, and how those who fight fight for it and its meanings. "The Constitution is what defines us as Americans", Ritter said. When Ritter was inducted into the Marines, he took the same pledge all members of the Armed Services and our President takes: to protect the Consitution. "Not to protect the president or congress, but to protect the rights in our Constitution."
Scott Ritter spoke of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has produced agents of mass destruction not weapons of mass destruction. To make an agent into a weapon is not easy. For example, Iraq has or had an anthrax sludge, but it would not be effective unless they could make it into a specific aerosol or dust. "Biological weapons are not the issue. The fear factor must be ratcheted down" he pleaded. "Iraq never produced a good chemical weapon." The best example of a weapon of mass destruction is, as Ritter says "US marines with an unlimited supply of ammunition."
Mr. Ritter used the metaphor of going to a doctor who tells you that there is a tumor in your head and there is no option besides cutting off the top of your head, but the doctor shows you no x rays and no MRI. Would you do it? Or would you insist on seeing the evidence? Currently the Bush administration is saying that there is this tumor named Saddam who needs to be cut out . The administration is not showing us the evidence because it isn't there. The President claims that Saddam has weapons but he can show us no proof. Shouldn't we as American citizens speak out and question this commander in chief before he sends our sons to death? Show us the x-rays!!
95% of the weapons Mr. Ritter's inspection team was sent to find were located. There were no weapons in the Presidential palaces. Shortly after Mr. Ritter's team inspected the palaces, the US withdrew the inspectors and bombed the palaces, targeting Hussein's bedrooms and offices.
In his opinion, the Bush administration is pressing for war on Iraq as a case study for Imperialist Unilateralism - exactly what this country rebelled against in 1776. All those in Congress who voted to support the war resolution should be marked with the scarlet A for Accountability, he said. They are more concerned about being re-elected than about upholding what this country was founded upon and what they were elected to uphold. The president used "the politics of fear and ignorance" to bully Congress into voting for the resolution.
Mr. Ritter continued to speak out against the politics of fear and politics of ignorance. "You know sometimes these Presidents of your country lie to you," he said. "Every 4 star general that has fought in that region has come out against the war." The King of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Mr. Mubarek of Egypt, and the leaders of Turkey and now France now plead with Washington to show restraint. Iraq used to be very Western friendly. Women had the right to vote, and there was universal health care. It was a secular rather than a religious state. During Desert Storm, the US bombed the water filtration system and raw sewage got into the water supply, resulting in wide spread dysentery. Since 1991, under US sanctions, medicines are no longer available. Between 350,000 and 1.2 million Iraqi people have died, most below the age of 5. So now, Mr. Ritter says , "There's no love for Saddam among the Iraqi people, and now as the result of the sanctions there is less than that towards the US. If the US attacks Iraq, it will compel the Iraqis to fight for their homeland."
The first question Mr. Ritter was asked by the Deerfield Academy students was, "Does Scott Ritter believe that Saddam Hussein offers a viable threat to the US and its neighbors?" Mr. Ritter's response was, "I don't know . We don't know." Later he said, "Democracy only functions if we the people get involved."
