Scott Ritter speaks to all the flakes in LA

Gene Expression Weblog ^ | 11/14/02 | Joel G

[spycatcher]

all the flakes in LA

Tonight Caltech's Social Activism Speaker Series brought erstwhile weapons inspector Scott Ritter to campus. Doors opened at 7:30, but I figured it would be popular, and I was the 10th person (or so) in line, shortly after 7. The Green Party, "War For Sale", and "Amnesty International" all set up tables right in front of the lilypond I'm always tempted to push people into, and boy was I tempted tonight.

Some guy selling "Revolutionary Worker" papers came through the line and asked me if I understood that the United Nations was just rubberstamping Bush's war plans. "Of course," I told him, "that's what they're there for!" He smiled approvingly and walked on.

The auditorium (seats 400 or so) filled up fast, and they filled an overflow auditorium and stuck several hundred people more on the lawn with loudspeakers. Caltech is not a political place, by and large, so at first I thought maybe people had come hoping to see John Ritter. But it seems like every flake in the greater Los Angeles area showed up.

After being introduced by a kid with pink hair ("pinko!"), Scott Ritter showed up and expressed his pleasure that Iraq had agreed to accept inspectors. But, he maintained, the new tough resolution was a sham. For starters, it had arbitrary deadlines in it ("Why 30 days to turn in an assessment? why not 60? or 90?" I was unable to point out that either of those would be equally arbitrary.)

Ritter had the answer: because of airplane carrier logistics, the optimum window for attacking Iraq opens around December 15 and closes in March. And so the UN resolution was crafted with those precise dates in mind.

"WE'RE GOING TO WAR!" Whenever the crowd's attention level seemed to have dropped a bit, Ritter would pipe in again, "WE'RE GOING TO WAR," in his folksy "I'm-just-a-marine" drawl. This segued into the anti-war portion of his speech:

War is about one thing and one thing only: death and [sic] destruction. People will die. So look in the mirror and ask yourself, "Am I willing to die for Iraq?" What gives you the right to send people to Iraq to die?

So began an evening of moral equivalence, bad analogy, and faulty logic, all of which the crowd ate up.

Then he started talking about the Constitution: "I took an oath to a piece of paper! ... The Constitution defines who we are as people." His point seemed to be

* GWB's new war powers are unconstitutional,
* we joined the UN via a treaty (per the Constitution), and so
* we should do what the UN says

At this point he began an extended spiel on "Democracy." We, you see, have "failed as a democracy" by not voting on War with Iraq. (This part made little sense to me, and I was partially distracted by making Arrow's Theorem jokes to the friend I'd dragged along). Ritter noted that we'd just had an election, but "was Iraq part of that election? No!" I don't particularly agree with this -- one could argue that the election results constituted tacit endorsement of GWB's Iraqi plans. But Ritter would have none of it:

We're not a democracy!

We're a dictatorship of one!

This brought rousing applause from the crowd.

Next he went into a description of his inspection strategies. He'd done a good job, he assured us, and any assertion that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction seemed to be an affront to his competence. Ritter described repeated patterns of Iraqi lying, UN detective work, and weapons destruction, the general logic of which went like this:

(1) So they lied to us about having VX gas.
(2) But then we found evidence they had VX gas.
(3) Oh, right, we had VX gas, they told us. But only 10 gallons.
(4) But then we found evidence of 50 gallons.
(5) They proved to us that they'd destroyed 48 gallons.
(6) We were satisfied.

In short, they seemed to be satisfied with very little, largely on the basis of self-congratulation regarding their own detective work.

He hadn't spoken about sanctions, so he did that now. Saddam might be "pulling the trigger," he assured us, but the US (and hence you and I, as citizens) were surely responsible too. Imagine, he asked us, that on the way from the airport to Caltech he'd asked his driver to stop at a bank, at which point he'd gone in, robbed it, and shot two people. He [analogous to Saddam] was "the triggerman" but the driver [analogous to us] was legally an accomplice. I leave it to you to pick out the holes in this analogy.

Not willing to stop at one bad analogy, he demanded to see GWB's evidence for Saddam's WMD. Imagine, he asked this time, that you went to the doctor who told you you had a brain tumor and that he needed to cut open your head on the spot. And further, when you asked him to see the X-ray, he assured you that he didn't need to show it to you. This, he maintained, was what GWB was doing to us. I leave it to you to pick out the holes in this analogy.

At long last he brought out the "U" word -- unilateralism. Why, unilateralism is a rejection of "international law!" In fact, it's outright "imperialism." And Scott Ritter will be damned if he's going to let us become an empire! [Wild applause.]

Finally, we descended into utter bogosity: "why do they hate us?"

Because we consume their resources. Our "consumer attitude" is a threat to their existence. [True, but not in the way Ritter meant it.] We're removing hope [huh?] of a better life, and they have no choice but to blow up buses because that's the only option we give them.

And with that, we opened up the floor to an amazing Q&A session. People lined up at the microphones, and one of them -- a fat guy in a nice suit -- had a certain air about him. "Watch him," I told my friend, "that guy's crazy."

The first guy thanked Ritter for his courage, and then asked -- on behalf of his "conservative neighbors" -- about Ritter's film deal. Ritter gave a fairly convincing explanation of where the money came from and some associated FBI investigations, and I decided not to hold this particular incident against him.

Next someone asked about Iraq's purchases of nerve gas antidotes, and whether that meant Saddam had nerve gas. Well, Ritter told him, we were good inspectors, and he didn't have any in 1998. But it only takes 6 months to produce, so he guessed Saddam might have some now.

An old lady wearing a strange hat and lots of buttons started giving a speech: "You are a true patriot..." and then started talking about "spontaneous [sic] demonstrations we have every week." There was limited time for Q&A, so people started shouting at her, "QUESTION! QUESTION!" She kept on with her speech and finally people shouted her down.

Someone asked what role oil plays, and -- surprisingly -- Ritter said he thought it played very little role: "This is not about oil, it's about ideology." He was very very very focused on American Unilateralism. The next person asked "why Iraq," and Ritter reiterated his view that Iraq was a "case study for American Unilateralism."

Since it had been a while since we'd had any real loopiness, the next person asked, "what about American weapons of mass destruction?" The whole audience laughed. Clearly, our possession of such weapons is the same as the Iraqi's, and we've just discovered a new glaring hypocrisy! Ritter made some astonishingly naive assertions about nuclear strategy, included in which were the propositions

* The Soviets pursued nuclear weapons only because we already had them, and
* If we got rid of all nuclear weapons, then no one would want any anymore.

This naivete brought, as expected, overwhelming applause.

An old woman approached the microphone and argued: "I do believe the major factor is oil!" (She was quickly shouted down with "QUESTION!", though Ritter praised their "agreement to disagree" as healthy for democracy.)

Next someone asked Ritter how his story had changed since 1998. "It hasn't changed; it's evolved."

Ritter was asked about his address to the Iraqi "parliament." Well, he told us, Bush and Blair were getting together in early September to discuss war plans, and were going to send out Condi and Cheney and Powell and Rumsfeld on the Sunday shows to pitch war to the nation. And he had to do something to pre-empt them. So he went to Baghdad and used his "bully pulpit" and convinced the Iraqis to take back inspectors. And on Sunday morning, Bush's people had to deal with him, dadgummit!

The next question was about sanctions, to which Ritter (who supports lifting them, obviously) responded, "You can't have a policy that results in the deaths of innocents." I though about pointing out that raising speed limits from 55 to 65 resulted in the deaths of innocents, but I decided it wouldn't be productive.

Finally, my much anticipated fatman got to the mic, and he didn't disappoint:

Why isn't it mentioned that the mideast is supposed to be a nuclear-free zone. Isn't there a double standard against Israel? [my ears perked up at this point] I read the British papers, and I wonder why the papers here don't report on the Radical Zionist Agenda of Paul Wolfowitz and others in the administration!

Amazingly, this comment brought loud applause! (I was at this point waiting for someone to shout out "kill the Jews").

Ritter backed away from this guy, but he didn't really call bullshit on his ludicrous anti-Semitism. Then he closed with the assertion that immediately after 9/11, Americans were sold the idea of Saddam (rather than Osama bin Laden) as the 9/11 mastermind. While I'm sure that there are people who believe this, I read a lot of news and I can't remember any suggestions that this was the case (other than the supposed Atta-Iraq connection). And so we ended. The flakes shuffled out, and I came back to my office to turn 13 pages of scribbly notes into this. :)

[daylate-dollarshort]

Ahhh, LA...the perfect venue for this tripe!!

That whacky tobaccy's gonna git ya!!

[SwinneySwitch]

Traitor Scott urged the Iraqi parliament on Sunday to let the UN inspectors back in. Then, on Tuesday, the parliament "unanimously" recommended that Saddam defy the UN threats of "serious consequences" and reject the resolution demanding the readmission of weapons inspectors.

What a waste of time!

[Howlin]

Exactly!

[Howlin]

Flakes, indeed.

His attendance must have been mandated by a physician!

[mhking]

I bet Ritter was right at home among the clueless lefties.

[luv2ndamend]

[MissAmericanPie]

That was before he went on Saddam's payroll, sitting in the Cayman Islands, and before he was paid 400,000 to produce a pro-middle east film.

[Humidston]

Thanks for going into the belly of the beast, Spycatcher. I hope you had a clothespin to put on your nose while you suffered fools to give us this excellent report!

[Dog Gone]

Fascinating report. Thanks.

[ravingnutter]

Then he closed with the assertion that immediately after 9/11, Americans were sold the idea of Saddam (rather than Osama bin Laden) as the 9/11 mastermind. While I'm sure that there are people who believe this, I read a lot of news and I can't remember any suggestions that this was the case (other than the supposed Atta-Iraq connection).

FYI... maybe you have not seen the following lawsuit on Find Law

Ashton, et al. v. al Qaeda, et al.: Complaint (PDF) Lawsuit claiming a 9/11 link between Iraq and al Qaeda. Sept. 3, 2002

The file is in slow loading .pdf format, but it is an interesting read. Some excerpts:

39. Upon information and belief, there have been numerous meetings between IRAQI Intelligence agents and high-ranking AL QAEDA terrorists to plan terror attacks. Once such meeting occurred in 1992, when ZAWAHIRI (EGYPTIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD leader and AL QAEDA officer) met with IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agents in Baghdad, IRAQ over several days. An IRAQI serving with the TALIBAN who fled Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, was captured in Kurdistan and has corroborated this meeting and confirmed that IRAQI contacts with AL QAEDA began in 1992.

During the early 1990s, Sudan’s Sheikh Hassan al-Tourabi of the Islamic National Front arranged meetings between BIN-LADEN and IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials. BIN LADEN met with FARUQ AL-HIJAZI, an IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agent in the Sudan who would later head IRAQI INTELLIGENCE for SADDAM HUSSEIN. BIN LADEN again met with IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officers in 1994 and 1995 in the Sudan. At these meetings, BIN-LADEN and IRAQI INTELLIGENCE secret service director FARUQ AL-HIJAZI agreed to work together on terrorist projects directed against the U.S.

55. From 1996 until 2001, BIN LADEN with the financial and logistical support of OMAR and others in the TALIBAN and IRAQ and IRAQI INTELLIGENCE, created, supplied and operated at least five training camps in order to create an “Islamic Foreign Legion” capable of attacking their enemies throughout the world. These camps trained men from 15 nations in guerrilla warfare, terrorist activities, rocket warfare, demolition and bombing, including the use of mines, grenades, TNT, nitroglycerine and plastic explosives. Classes were also given in “how to kill a policeman” and “traps, murder and terrorist moves.”

57. In February 1997, BIN LADEN publicly expressed his support for IRAQ in its conflict with the United States stating:

“The hearts of the Muslims are filled with hatred towards the United States of America and the American president for American conduct towards IRAQ.”

59. IRAQ upon information and belief, agreed to supply arms to AL QAEDA and provide AL QAEDA with access to and training in the use of chemical and biological weapons and agreed to instruct AL QAEDA terror trainers at its Salman Pak camp in Baghdad that contained a Boeing 707 used to practice hijacking. IRAQ also agreed to supply AL QAEDA terrorists with new identities and passports from Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.

60. AL QAEDA agreed to provide protection from political opponents to IRAQ and SADDAM HUSSEIN, and to commit assassinations and other acts of violence to create instability in regions of IRAQ, particularly Kurdistan, to assist the regime of SADDAM HUSSEIN. AL QAEDA further agreed to provide trained terrorists, assassins and martyrs to carry out terror attacks in concert with IRAQ against their common enemies, including the United States.

64. Between April 25 and May 1, 1998, two of BIN LADEN’s senior military commanders, MUHAMMAD ABU-ISLAM and ABDULLAH QASSIM, visited Baghdad for discussions with SADDAM HUSSEIN’s son -- QUSAY HUSSEIN -- the “czar” of IRAQI INTELLIGENCE.

65. QUSAY HUSSEIN’s participation in those meetings highlights the importance of the talks in both symbolic and practical terms. Upon information and belief, as a direct result of these meetings, IRAQ again made commitments to provide training, intelligence, clandestine Saudi border crossings, financial support and weapons and explosives to AL QAEDA.

66. IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials met with BIN LADEN in Afghanistan several more times. A second group of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives from Saudi Arabia were then trained by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE in IRAQ to smuggle weapons and explosives into Saudi Arabia and other countries, which they later accomplished in an effort to carry out future terrorist acts of violence. A third group of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives received a month of sophisticated guerrilla operations training from IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials later in the Summer of 1998.

67. Despite philosophical and religious differences with SADDAM HUSSEIN, BIN LADEN continually sought to strengthen and reinforce the support he and AL QAEDA received from IRAQ. In mid-July 1998, BIN LADEN sent Dr. AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI, the Egyptian co-founder of AL QAEDA, to IRAQ to meet with senior Iraqi officials, including Iraqi vice president TAHA YASSIN RAMADAN. Upon information and belief, the purpose of this meeting was to discuss and plan a joint strategy for a terrorist campaign against the United States.

69. During the July 1998 visit ZAWAHIRI toured an IRAQI military base and nuclear and chemical weapons facility near al-Fallujah in IRAQ and upon information and belief, observed training by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials of AL QAEDA operatives at the al-Nasiriyah military and chemical weapons facility in IRAQ.

79. Following the December 1998 air strikes on IRAQ, SADDAM HUSSEIN dispatched FARUQ AL-HIJAZI to Kandahar, Afghanistan in order to meet with BIN LADEN and plot their revenge.

81. To demonstrate IRAQ’s commitment to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA, HIJAZI presented BIN LADEN with a pack of blank, official Yemeni passports, supplied to IRAQI INTELLIGENCE from their Yemeni contacts. HIJAZI’s visit to Kandahar was followed by a contingent of IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided additional training and instruction to BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives in Afghanistan. These Iraqi officials included members of “Unit 999,” a group of elite IRAQI INTELLIGENCE officials who provided advanced sabotage and infiltration training and instruction to AL QAEDA operatives.

82. At that meeting, upon information and belief, BIN LADEN, AL QAEDA and IRAQ agreed to join efforts in a detailed, coordinated plan for a protracted terrorist war against the United States.

84. IRAQ maintains an advanced chemical and biological weapons program and is one of only three countries in the world producing a highly developed weaponized anthrax. Some time during or after 1998, IRAQ agreed to help BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA develop a laboratory in Afghanistan designed to produce anthrax.

85. In addition to the al-Nasiriyah and Salman Pak training camps, by January 1999, BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA operatives were being trained by IRAQI INTELLIGENCE and military officers at other training camps on the outskirts of Baghdad.

86. In January 1999, IRAQ began reorganizing and mobilizing IRAQI INTELLIGENCE front operations throughout Europe in support of BIN LADEN and AL QAEDA. HAQI ISMAIL, believed to be a member of the IRAQ’S MUKHABARAT Secret Service, left IRAQ to train in an Afghanistan AL QAEDA camp. ISMAIL was believed to be a liason between IRAQ, the TALIBAN and AL QAEDA and was rewarded with a position in the TALIBAN Foreign Ministry.

103. On July 21, approximately six weeks before the September 11 th attacks, IRAQI columnist Mulhalhal reported that BIN LADEN was making plans to “demolish the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.”

104. Mulhalhal’s July 21 article further informed that BIN LADEN would strike America “on the arm that is already hurting.” Upon information and belief, this references a second IRAQI sponsored attack on the World Trade Center. This interpretation is further bolstered by another reference to New York as “[BIN LADEN] will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra everytime he hears his songs.” (e.g., “New York, New York”) identifying New York, New York as a target.

105. Mulhalhal further indicated, “The wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same in the heart of a believer.” (Emphasis supplied) This appears to be a reference to the use of commercial aircraft as a weapon. The information was reported in an IRAQI newspaper who’s editor-in-chief serves as secretary to UDAY HUSSEIN’S Iraqi Syndicate of Journalists. The article expressed IRAQI admiration and support for BIN LADEN’s plans and its appearance in the newspaper would clearly have to be endorsed by SADDAM HUSSEIN himself.

106. All IRAQI news media is strictly controlled and censored by the government of SADDAM HUSSEIN and is under the direct oversight of UDAY HUSSEIN. Various members of IRAQI intelligence work at and control the content of each and every newspaper published inside IRAQ.

107. The information contained in Mulhalhal’s published statements were known prior to the events of September 11 th , and that Mulhalhal has ties to IRAQI intelligence, demonstrates foreknowledge of the planned attacks by BIN LADEN and indicates support by IRAQI co-conspirators.

110. According to U.S. and foreign intelligence officials, in the spring of 2000, IRAQI INTELLIGENCE agents met with September 11 th pilot hijackers ZAID SAMIR JARRAH and MARWAN AL-SHEHHI in Dubai, UAE in order to advance the hijacking of U.S. aircraft to commit terrorist acts. Not long after the meeting, AL-SHEHHI entered the United States on May 29 and JARRAH entered on June 27, to begin preparations for attacks.

133. Instruction documents on an artillery weapon known as the “Super Gun” were found in AL QAEDA camps when they were captured by U.S. forces in the winter of 2001-2002. IRAQ is the only state known to have purchased and assembled the super gun, a weapon so large it must be constructed in segments. It has a range of several hundred miles.

[BushRep]

Scott Ritter has issues.

Did anyone see him on O'Reilly when questioned about his financial dealings with the Iraqi regime?

The leftist ought to be booted out of here on the next flight out and told to consider himself lucky.

[Ajnin]

AAAAAhahahaha! Nice pic!

[CARepubGal]

With proceeds going to Marine families? Cool! Turkeys courtesy of a Turkey!

[VOA]

But...But...This is what Ritter said after he left his job in 1998:

Thanks for the beautifully relevant post...

[Darlin']

FOFLOL. You're thinking. :)

[Sparta]

Is that Ritter's Presidential Candidate poster for the Green Party in '04?