Posted on 01/19/2003 1:15:49 AM PST by kattracks
ALBANY - Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was secretly prosecuted in Albany County in 2001 after he was snared in an Internet sex sting operation, law enforcement sources told the Daily News.Ritter, who lives in the Albany suburb of Delmar, is now a high-profile critic of President Bush's war preparations.
He was arrested by Colonie Police in June 2001 on a misdemeanor charge after he allegedly had a sexual discussion on the Internet with an undercover investigator he thought was an underage girl, law enforcement sources disclosed on condition of anonymity.
The case was sealed, and Colonie officials declined to release the arrest records, explaining the matter was adjourned in local court in contemplation of dismissal.
The Schenectady Daily Gazette reported yesterday that Albany District Attorney Paul Clyne fired veteran Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Preiser last week for failing to inform him of the case against Ritter.
Clyne said that as a "sensitive" case, it should have been brought to his attention.
Ritter, who has made frequent appearances on network television after speaking to the Iraq National Assembly last year, could not be reached for comment.
Joe Mahoney
A whole lot of talking heads should have asked him that quite some time ago.
Miranda Warning: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.
You can bet that the first call Ritter made was to his lawyer. You can bet the first call Ritter's lawyer was to an assistant district attorney he knew very well.
After 9/11 there was the talk about Atta meeting in Prague with an agent of Saddam Hussein. One night Fox News announced Scott Ritter would be on to discuss a possible link between Iraq and the terrorists. I distinctly recall assuming that Ritter was anti-Iraq and would take the position that it posed a danger to the world and would consider this link possible, etc. My jaw dropped as he began speaking his new point of view.
Now perhaps he changed before that, but that was when I recall the change garnered wide-spread attention.
Methinks you're wasting too much energy trying to debate folks who'll find boogie men under their bed when their mattress has already been tossed on the floor because of previous boogie man theories.
As a fan, and one who is far too naive about how the world works, I'd prefer it if you delved into more of the "what-if" kinda stuff. I always learn something when you're fired up and on a roll.
I already know how to fight. I was married once. She got mad, kicked me out, and stole my millions. I know that drill.
BTW, I'm patterning a character in a screenplay after you and three other FReeper hell-cats. I need some more fodder. I'm running out of juice.
War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know
by William Rivers Pitt, Scott Ritter (Contributor)
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Based on 37 reviews. Write a review. Recommend an item! See more customer buying adviceIn this shocking exposé, William Rivers Pitt and former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter dismantle the myths surrounding Iraq's present weapons capabilities to uncover the neo-conservative forces behind the White House's push for war on Iraq.
During the seven years that U.N. weapons inspections took place in Iraq, Ritter and other inspectors confirmed that Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs had been effectively destroyed. This fact undermines the Bush administration's false premise for waging war on Iraq.
Pitt and Ritter go on to explore the White House's premise for war, demonstrating among many startling revelations, the utter lack of any plausible link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. We learn that Osama bin Laden is in agreement with the Bush administration, and has called for the death of Saddam Hussein. Pitt and Ritter highlight the absurdity of Team Bush's dual aim of bringing down Hussein and forcing democracy on a nation that has been divided for centuries. Ritter enumerates the many ways in which it is impossible for Iraq to pose a credible threat. WAR ON IRAQ closes with a stark forecast for American troops if a ground war ensues and urges the White House to seek a diplomatic solution before it is too late.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A Republican causes discord in a jingoist frenzy, January 3, 2003
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Reviewer: Chris Green (see more about me) from Edgewood, WA USA |
One interesting thing he refers to is the case of weapons inspectors not looking for biological weapons in Saddam's palaces in 1998. The U.S. inspector Dick Spertzel, says Ritter, refused to look for biological weapons in the palaces, even though there was so much talk about the time how we have to find anthrax which Saddam is producing because he's going to kill us all, and so on. Ritter writes that if the Iraqis were hiding any stocks of biological and chemical before December 1998 then those stocks would have lost their viability now.
He points out how the U.S. used UNSCOM's video and listening devices to spy on the Iraqi government on matters unrelated WMD. He writes that Butler led the way in seeking an excuse for the U.S. to disrupt the inspections. He violated the Sensitive Sites agreement of 1996 by sending in 12 inspectors in November 1998 to a Ba'ath party headquarters in Badghad, the Iraqi's compromising by only allowing in four as was called for by the Sensitive sites agreement. The headquarters was not covered in that agreement. This was cited as proof of Iraqi obstructionism and two days before Operation Desert Fox began, Butler received a phone call from deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN Peter Burleigh and withdrew even though the security council was supposed to tell him when to withdraw. Thus Saddam did not kick out the inspectors as current propaganda has it.
He refers to one incident where a lady inspector caught some of Saddam's bodygaurds tyring to run away from headquarters with suitcases and as they started to translate the documents contained within they though it was decisive evidence of biological weapons work but it eventually turned out to be related to testing for poison in Saddam's food. Yet Richard Butler is fond of repeating this story today as decisive proof of Iraq's Biological weapons research.
As for Khidre Hamza, who has been getting so much attention in the media, Ritter says that he is a fraud, not Saddam's former bombmaker but only a mid-level bureaucrat in the nuclear program. He defected in 1994 says Ritter but the intelligence community rejected him as misrepresenting himself. He wasn't a designer of weapons, certainly not the head of the program. Ritter says that Hamza's alleged "smoking gun" document about Saddam getting a nuclear bomb was dismissed as a forgery by the late Hussein Kamal back in 1995.
As for Saddam and Bin Laden, he says that the evidence points to Mohammed Atta being in Florida at the time he was supposed to be in Iraq. Bin Laden views Saddam as a secular dictator, the devil incarnate and Saddam has spent his career butchering fundamentalists, particularly of the Wahabi school. An alliance between them is unlikely. He says that there is no evidence that Salman Pak camp south of Bagdhad is used to train terrorists. It was set up in the 80's with the help of British special forces as a training camp for hostage rescuing. After that it was turned over to the department of External threats to deal with Islamic fundamentalists infiltrating into Iraqi Kurdistan from Iran.
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15 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
Derails the drive to war, October 24, 2002
| Reviewer: Will Podmore (see more about me) from London, Britain |
Ritter worked for seven years in the UN's Special Commission, Unscom, charged with destroying all Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities. He states, "We can say unequivocally that the industrial infrastructure needed by Iraq to produce nuclear weapons had been eliminated." "We eliminated the nuclear program, and for Iraq to have reconstituted it would require undertaking activities eminently detectable by intelligence services."
Similarly, Iraq has no chemical weapons capability. In 1996, Unscom destroyed Iraq's chemical weapons facilities. The weapons it did produce, VX gas and the nerve agents Sarin and Tabun, have only a 5-year life, so any stocks would now be harmless goo. Iraq has not been able to recreate these facilities. "The manufacture of chemical weapons emits vented gases that would have been detected by now if they existed. We've been watching, via satellite and other means, and have seen none of this. If Iraq was producing weapons today, we'd have definitive proof, plain and simple."
And Iraq has no biological weapons capability. In 1995, Unscom destroyed the factories and equipment producing biological weapons, which last only three years. Subsequently, "we never found any evidence of ongoing research and development or retention." Nor does Iraq have the means to deliver the WMD that it doesn't have. "Iraq doesn't have the capabilities to do long-range ballistic missiles."
Ritter sums up, "Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed."
He also shows that there is no link, rather mutual enmity, between Iraq and Al Qa'ida, that forced regime change would not lead to democracy, that invading Iraq would be far harder than evicting its forces from Kuwait, and that Bush's contempt for the UN could destroy it. Most worryingly, he points out that the Pentagon plans to use nuclear weapons if the US attack on Iraq starts to fail.
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Required reading for Americans, January 11, 2003
| Reviewer: Tucker Lieberman (see more about me) from Providence, RI United States |
Yes, it's a very short book, and very basic. But that's exactly what most Americans need now. I didn't know many basic historical facts about the country my President is about to invade--now I know them. Anyone who wants to begin educating themselves, and isn't allergic to left-wing propaganda, should pick up this book.
Learn why Iraq doesn't have chemical weapons (they no longer have factories and the stuff doesn't have a long shelf-life), why we don't want to install a democracy there (they are divided ethnically, so one group would have to rule over the others, and none is a good choice for America), and frightening prophecies (Bush is likely to drop the first nuke if our troops get into trouble). An accessible, thought-provoking book that makes a strong case for diplomacy and against pre-emptive strikes.
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Let there be truth, January 9, 2003
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Reviewer: Robin Orlowski (see more about me) from United States |
Thus, the administration's real policy agenda is the launching of a preemptive war with Iraq which would idealistically end with Bush's big business (and oil buddies) flodding previously forbidden markets with Western products. It's a tired arguement that bears more than a chilling semblance to those used by Johnson's Vietnam team (themselves formely the heads of major American multinational corporations) in assuring the president of an easy victory. History of course, reveals a far different picture.
Indeed, an administration whose foregin policy immediately following 9/11 was focused on finding Osama Bin Laden "mysteriously" shifted to the 'immediate' threat Iraq posed even as the country's surrounding neighbors (who would theoretically have much peace of mind in a world without Saddam) are urging us not to follow through on our narrow minded fanatical zeal.
Great Britan, once a lukewarm ally is even rethinking it's mild support with the realization evidence has not been produced to warrant UN action. If the two countries acted against Iraq, they would become the very rouge states they supposedly are opposing.
Although Bush's handlers and spin doctors are undoubtedly trying to paint opposition to war against Iraq as the timless liberal versus conservatives debate, the fact that Republican-identified individuals such as this author, members of Congress, and the everyday citizens the president supposedly claims to care about are all asking tough questions clearly demonstrates good people of concience are refusing to play the global bully.
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ROFLMAO..........this absolutely MAKES my day!
By the way, this underage stuff is the perfect tool, because to fight a charge means to expose yourself publicly, and people are loathe to expose themselves publicly even as a POSSIBLE pedophile, no?
We don't always do it that way, but you have no "need to know" all the ways we do manage it. Check your credit rating Tuesday morning if you want a hint.
So9
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