Speech on War UN Weapons Inspector Bombs Bush Policy

Author: Jon White

With Washington on the brink of war, Scott Ritter, former chief inspector of the United Nations Special Commission to disarm Iraq, addressed a spill-over crowd Monday evening in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall. In his passionate speech, he sought to "inject a shadow of doubt over the urgency of the [Iraqi] threat" to the United States. Ritter avowed, "I demand a certainty of knowledge that Iraq poses a threat to American democracy before military action is taken."
Ritter insisted that the United States exhaust every dialogue and all diplomatic options available before confronting Iraq militarily. He told members of the College and local community that debate must take place before the American people endorse the Bush administration's war aims. Ritter said he believes that this debate has not happened, that it has not been encouraged and that the president has not presented Americans with an accurate assessment of Saddam Hussein's actual threat.
With a razor thin line separating the United States from war with Iraq, Ritter's perspective and his visit were timely. Within the next weeks, Congress will decide whether to give Bush the broad authority to wage war with Saddam Hussein. The president told the United Nations on Sept. 12, "The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The just demands of peace and security will be met — or action will be unavoidable."
Bush insists that with its assumed possession of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq jeopardizes U.S. security. Bush has outlined a bold new foreign policy of "pre-emptive" military action that he plans to inaugurate in ousting Hussein. The Bush administration has also attempted to forge links between the terrorist organizations that perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraqi regime.
Ritter, who described himself as a "card-holding member of the Republican party," decried the president's imminent war plans as unilateralist and perilously in violation of international law.
"If we go to war today, we will be a rogue nation," Ritter warned. He said that the United States must invoke U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction represent a clear and present danger to the U.S. and world community, before acting. He adamantly believes that Washington has produced insufficient evidence to demonstrate that Iraq constitutes such a threat as to make military action unavoidable. "We, the people of the United States, do not have the facts," Ritter asserted.
As a former member of the Marine Corps, Ritter expressed his belief that the Bush administration has committed a grave error in downplaying the destruction a war would inflict. "War is deadly serious business. It should not be taken lightly," Ritter expounded. "It is about burning and sucking the life out of human beings."
"Those undergoing the true test of patriotism are our servicemen. Before we ask them to defend this thing we call American democracy, we must have debated and we must know that we have exhausted all means," Ritter urged.
According to Ritter, there is no U.N. resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein. "I loathe this man. He's a criminal and criminals must be tried by a due process of law." Yet Ritter believes, despite the personal death threats he received from Hussein's secret police while serving as a weapon's inspector, that the United States must return to U.N. agreements and produce evidence of Saddam's menace.
Ritter questioned the capability of Hussein's weapons program. He said that at the conclusion of the Persian gulf war in 1991, Iraq had ballistic missiles capable of delivering biological and chemical agents. Iraq was also within six months of possessing a nuclear weapon at the time. Yet as chief inspector of the U.N. commission set up to ensure that Iraq fully disarmed itself following the gulf war, Ritter said that the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) operated the "most intrusive on-site weapons inspection program" in history, and that by 1996, UNSCOM had accounted for 95 percent of Iraq's weapons programs.
Ritter, however, exposed UNSCOM and the United States as corrupt in their methods of ensuring Saddam's disarmament. He said that the U.S. broke sensitive site agreements in raiding the B'aath party headquarters in Baghdad and by gathering information on Hussein's personal wherabouts. Neither activity was sanctioned by U.N. agreements, nor were Clinton and the first President Bush's instructions to the CIA to kill Hussein. The United States "cheated the arms process" Ritter observed and he said he believes that this cheating of the arms process occurred so that the United States could achieve its primary goal since the end of the gulf war: regime removal.
This policy of regime removal has been a massive failure, according to Ritter. In 1991, then-Secretary of State James Baker said that economic sanctions on Baghdad remain in place until Hussein was removed from power, hopefully by a coup from within Iraq. The first President Bush and President Clinton engaged in a policy of "passive regime removal," said Ritter, one that only tightened Hussein's grip on power, while devastating the Iraqi people. Sanctions are responsible anywhere from 350,000 to 1.5 million deaths in Iraq, he claimed.
"President Bush knows there won't be a coup in Iraq. He wants active regime removal, not disarmament," Ritter said. The reason Bush desires to upend Hussein is simple in Ritter's view: If Hussein does comply with U.N. weapons inspection teams, Washington will have to lift its sanctions even though Hussein remains in power. "Iraq has agreed to inspections. If it deviates, we can presume ill intent," Ritter argued. He continued, "We have to give [Hussein] the chance to demonstrate if he's a pariah leader or if he'll comply."
Ritter also debunked the concept that the president cannot reveal intelligence information proving to the American people that Iraq is re-arming. Ritter said that the precedent for sharing sensitive intelligence information extends back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President John F. Kennedy revealed spy-plane pictures of Soviet ballistic missile sites under construction in Cuba.
In conclusion, Ritter said that if the United States goes to war and American men and women lose their lives, we cannot blame the government. Doing so would be irresponsible, Ritter said, "when we are the government." That a president might skew facts to draw the nation into war "is a prospect that does exist. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution should resonate in everybody's mind," Ritter concluded. He urged "debate, discussion and dialogue" in liberal arts tradition over Iraq.
Ritter himself has drawn criticism from several fronts in objecting American policy. The Bush administration has attempted to brand him a traitor, while the press has made much of a supposed link between funding for his book on Iraq and Iraqi organizations sympathetic toward Hussein. On Monday, Ritter decried these rumors as "right-wing character assassination."
"My personal finances are none of your damn business," he told skeptics in the audience in response to a question posed by an audience member. He insisted that he has not taken excessive royalties in publication and that the funding sources for his are legitimate. Ritter also asked why the Bush administration seeks to stifle debate on foreign affairs. "If someone steps out, why are they called a traitor?" he asked.
Ritter's provocative and forceful speech met with an enthusiastic standing ovation. Speaking in a blunt manner, Ritter's unrestrained style proved attention-grabbing. Professor of Political Science David Rosenberg observed: "Scott Ritter's presentation at the lectern must have been quite a change for many Middlebury students. He looks and speaks just like a 12-year Marine Corps veteran, which he is."
Professor of Sociology Marc Garcelon elaborated on the substance of Ritter's speech: "I hope and I pray that millions of American citizens will follow Mr. Ritter
's example and speak out against the disastrous policies of the current administration and work instead for a rebirth of constitutional democracy in the United States and a turn away from unsustainable imperial policies," he wrote in an e-mail.
Garcelon said of Ritter's accusation that President Bush has not shared accurate information with the American public "a red flag that should alert both members of Congress and the public at large."
Michael Stahler '03.5 said he was impressed by Ritter's appeal to the audience to be active in government. "People need to be participating more in government," Stahler commented. "It will be interesting to see if in light of Sept. 11 and the debate on Iraq that people do care about the upcoming elections," Stahler continued.
The third high-profile speaker to visit Middlebury this year, Ritter's drew an audience that overflowed the Concert Hall, as well as an adjacent classroom where his talk speech was broadcast live. Students and professors were turned away as capacity proved too limited.