Movement for a Socialist Future

Scott Ritter is no radical. A card-carrying member of the Republican Party and a former Marine, he took part in the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. He then spent seven years with UNSCOM, the body set by the United Nations to find and destroy Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

His time with UNSCOM came to an abrupt end in 1998 when he resigned in protest at the activities of the CIA and the provocative behaviour of the head of the mission, Richard Butler. This led in October 1998 to the ending of the UN mission and a Cruise missile bombardment not long after.

So when Ritter says that an attack on Iraq along the lines proposed by Bush and Blair could unleash a nuclear war, he is no scaremonger but warning from experience of the consequences of the actions of the “neo-conservative fringe thinkers” who have their hands on the reins of government.

The main section of this short book* is a lengthy interview with Ritter conducted in August. In it he insists that Bush has no basis for a war against Iraq. Ritter maintains that the White House actually knows that Iraq does not possess the weapons it is alleged to have. The US has the technology to detect any nuclear weapons programme and chemical weapons manufacture by satellite and adds:

“All this talk about Iraq having chemical weapons is no longer valid. Most of it is based on speculation that Iraq could have hidden some of these weapons from UN inspectors. I believe we did a good job of inspecting Iraq.” The UN blew up the main manufacturing plant and Ritter says that anything hidden would by now be “useless sludge”. He adds: “If Iraq was producing weapons today, we’d have definitive proof, plain and simple.”

In fact, he argues, it is precisely because Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney know that Iraq doesn’t have these weapons that they are prepared to sanction a ground-based attack on Iraq.

Ritter details how the CIA became involved in the weapons inspection programme, first as open advisors and then more covertly. A signals intelligence programme Ritter devised was then taken over by the CIA for the purpose of spying on Saddam Hussein’s regime. “This was wrong, and I said so on numerous occasions.” Ritter dismisses the claim that a “regime change” in Iraq will lead to “democracy” and warns that the break-up of the country is a more likely outcome. He also rejects any linkage between Saddam and Al Qaeda as rubbish, with the secular regime in Baghdad itself a target for Osama bin Laden’s network.

The most chilling section of the interview deals with the scenario of a large American force becoming bogged down in an invasion of Iraq. Citing the Pentagon’s nuclear policy review, Ritter says: “If 70,000 to 100,000 troops get bogged down in Iraq, and the Middle East explodes, threatening our lines of communication, threatening our ability to support these troops, and the Iraqis resist, the potential for nuclear release is very real.”

The consequences, he believes, would be that within a decade the US itself would be struck by a terrorist nuclear bomb. “There’s Armageddon. This war with Iraq is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” We have been warned.

* War on Iraq. Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt. Profile Books, £4.99