Scott Ritter on Iraq
In 2002, former U.N. weapons inspector and military intelligence analyst Scott Ritter discussed the “Iraqi threat” that he said was built on a framework of lies.
| [I]n 1999, Ritter confounded get-Saddam hawks who thought he was in their camp when he published “Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem — Once and for All.” In it, Ritter repeated his charge that UNSCOM’s mission had ultimately been compromised by Washington’s use of the inspections to spy on Saddam. But the bombshells were his assertion that Iraq was no longer a military threat and his call for the U.S. to quickly give Iraq a clean bill of health and lift its harsh sanctions, which he asserted were killing thousands of innocent Iraqi children. |
His assessment of how the war and occupation would go has been correct. The conclusion he anticipates is of concern.
| If we go against Iraq, it will require extensive military power — more than the 75,000 [troops] that some claim. We are talking about 150,000 to 200,000 troops. Kurds and Shiites are saying don’t go after Saddam. There is no Northern Alliance in Iraq and the Iraqi army is not the Taliban. If we go into Iraq, we will have to go into densely populated areas, villages, farms. People will fight back. The army will fight. They won’t fight Saddam; they will fight against us, the invader, with thousands of deaths. We are talking about an unpopular war with no popular support in Iraq and going into Baghdad. Sure we’ll win — we always do. But it’ll never last. Central authority in Iraq will collapse. How long will the mothers of America allow their sons to patrol the streets of Baghdad with no end in sight? When we eventually run, Iraq will collapse. Turks, Iranians, Saudis will be making a move, and the U.S. will be fundamentally isolated in the region. |
It is no surprise that the Kurdish problem in Iraq was more complex than the government or media let on. Neither was Saddam the mythological creature they told us he was.
| Saddam Hussein had a problem with the Kurds along the Iranian border — active involvement of Iranians threatening the dam providing hydroelectric power to Baghdad, threatening the oil field in the north. Saddam created a depopulated zone. He did it with extreme brutality. I’m not defending it; there is a big difference between that and genocide. The Kurds are an active part, 23 percent of the Iraqi population. There has not been a genocide against the Kurdish population in Iraq. There has been extreme brutality on the part of the regime in controlling the Kurdish problem. Even prior to 1991, Kurds had greater autonomy in Iraq than they have enjoyed anywhere else. This is never talked about.
There is too much mythology that has gone into the idea of Saddam. He’s a horrible man and has done horrible things. But he’s also done a lot of good things for Iraq. Iraq was brought from the Third World status in the 1960s to one of the most modern advanced states in the Middle East in 1990. Saddam brought education, medicine and suffrage to women in Iraq; [Iraqi women] can vote, go to work, get an education. This isn’t bad stuff. Saddam Hussein is a much more complicated issue than people like to admit. It’s not black and white and he’s not a cartoon character. |
Hillary Clinton has promised to keep troops in Iraq until at least 2013 with at an estimated deployment of at least 75,000.These forces will be used to “fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.” Clinton’s policy is estimated to cost almost 5 trillion dollars.
