Scott Ritter: Apologist for a Brutal Regime

The Seattle Times ^ | 4-16-04 | Collin Levey

[veronica]

Former U. N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter has spent the past few years imagining himself a great geopolitical riddle, independent and unfathomable. Like a half-baked military version of Arianna Huffington, he made his fame as a flamboyant dissenter. Now, revelations about a benefactor may force him to stop playing Peter Pan and grow up: It's time for him to decide whether he wants to go down in history as a shill, or a tool.

The big news (if sadly predictable) was the confirmation that the financier of Ritter's Iraq propaganda film "In Shifting Sands" was among an elite cabal that received "oil allocations" from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. The confirmation comes from Shakir Khafaji himself, the Iraqi businessman in Detroit who set up Ritter with a $400,000 "loan" to make his film and also helped him get interviews with members of the Baathist regime.

All this was happening about the time Khafaji was evidently benefiting under a program in which Saddam Hussein's regime gave its external friends and supporters vouchers for Iraqi oil at below-market prices. The vouchers could be flipped for instant wealth without ever touching oil. This systematic perversion of the U.N.'s oil-for-food program was first revealed in the Iraqi press, based on found documents, and the scandal has now reached to the highest ranks of the U.N.

It also sheds a new, though unsurprising light, on Ritter's strange film.

The film, remember, caused a great stir in 2001 for its claim that the Iraqi regime had been "defanged.'" Some wondered aloud if Ritter was acting of his own free will. Three years before, in 1998, the former Marine had quit his job as weapons inspector in an indignant tantrum, saying he could not continue his work if the Clinton administration was not willing to pursue a showdown with the recalcitrant Iraqi regime.

Then he switched on a dime and now, needless to add, wants credit and glory as a prophet for saying that Iraq's WMD programs were a myth or at least severely curtailed. In February, he wrote a self-satisfied told-ya-so piece in the International Herald Tribune. "Not everyone was wrong," he wrote. "I, for one, was not."

What became of Iraq's programs is a mystery that remains to be solved, but it seems increasingly likely that Iraq did, sometime between the mid-1990s and last year's invasion, get rid of a lot of incriminating stuff. Another question that boggles many in the Bush administration and the U.N. is why Saddam didn't say so and come up with easily provided proof.

Now add this further mystery to the pile: Rather than straightforwardly providing times and places of destruction to U.N. inspectors, did the Saddam regime choose instead to rely on the bizarre backdoor method of financing a Scott Ritter film?

Ritter calls what he has been doing since leaving the U.N. "waging peace" and has criticized the current U.S. role in every forum that would have him. He even told a recent interviewer at The Boston Globe that in his opinion, Iraq is worse off without Saddam. His patron, Khafaji, once referred to the former despot as "the Arab Knight."

Ritter has earned himself a special pedestal amidst the smug antiwar crowd: While many of those who carry signs and chant slogans have never even traveled to the part of the world in question, Ritter was there, saw some of the worst of it and turned his back. He said as much once in an interview with Time, noting that he wouldn't reveal the atrocities he saw, for fear it would give ammunition to Saddam's critics.

Aside from the cruelty of the statement, equally telling has been his tone — frequently volatile and defensive. When the interviewer asked him what he thought of comparisons to Jane Fonda, Mr. Peaceful snapped: "If they want an exercise video, then why don't they come here and say it to my face and I'll give 'em an exercise video which will be called 'Scott Ritter Kicking Their Ass.' "

All this is quite hilarious in its way, but in another way it's not so funny. His real failing was his insistence on trying to keep himself at the dramatic center of events (at least in his own mind). Instead of making a film that would only cinch his reputation as a kook, Ritter might have used his access quietly to remind the Iraqis that nobody believed their claims about weapons — they needed to provide proof, and war would be the consequence if they didn't.

Meanwhile, his own credibility in the West would have been enhanced if he hadn't served so clearly as a public apologist for a brutal regime.

Saddam had experienced not a change of heart but a change of tactics. His goal was still to split the Security Council and reward French and Russian efforts to get sanctions lifted. As numerous press accounts have now alleged, the vouchers were handed out widely among the Russian elite, as well as to folks like French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and British Labour MP George Galloway, among others.

All of these folks had a stake in encouraging Saddam in his belief that he didn't have to yield to U.N. demands, that he could wangle his way out short of full compliance. That miscalculation, aided and abetted by Scott Ritter and many others, may have been the single factor that made the Iraq war inevitable.

[Always Right]

Saddam apologists or child molester, not sure which Scott Ritter is worse.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Hoo ha. That's nice. But he forgot to add he likes his special sauce delivered by the youngins.

[veronica]

In Ritter's case, you don't have to choose. It's a package deal.

[avg_freeper]

This is all on top of his being a pervert. Deviants like that have weaknesses that are easily exploited.

[Casloy]

Let's also not forget that he also enjoys picking up underage girls on the internet. He's been arrested twice for it. It's that issue which keeps him from being a darling of the left. The other stuff is of no consequence to the left. Supporting dictators is only an issue when the right does it.

[Homer1]

Ritter needs to be tried for treason

[MizSterious]

But it doesn't mention his pedophilia...

[Anti-Bubba182]

".. Three years before, in 1998, the former Marine had quit his job as weapons inspector in an indignant tantrum, saying he could not continue his work if the Clinton administration was not willing to pursue a showdown with the recalcitrant Iraqi regime.

Then he switched on a dime and now, needless to add, wants credit and glory as a prophet for saying that Iraq's WMD programs were a myth or at least severely curtailed..."

I have often wondered why he "switched". Turning a former UN Inspector would have been a big deal to the Iraqi regime and given his sexual proclivities they could have compromised him that way. Maybe more than money through the film angle was involved.

Maybe there is a video or other material out there.

[etcetera]

Ritter's anger with threat of violence is a defensive mechanism designed to scare off someone who is very close to the truth that Ritter wants to keep concealed.

[rikkir]

Try this one on for size.
During his time as a weapons inspector, the Baathist regime serve him up some 12 and 13 year old girls in an attempt to bribe him to not look so hard. Unknown to him they video tape his little adventure to use as blackmail in case the bribe doesn't work.
Then one of two things happens. He finds out about the video and comes out of Iraq with his pants on fire thinking that Clinton will engage them in war, and wipe out the regime and therefore the tapes, or the regime tells him to leave in a huff (for looks) knowing that the administration, because of their political problems at home (or built in pacifism) wont do anything about it. Poof, inspectors are gone.
Next pres comes in, and magically a movie is made showing the peaceful Saddam has no WMDs, and said videos are FedEx'd to the home of the Ritter family.
You want to bet there are still some copies in Iraq somewhere?