War on Iraq

As an American Historian and hopeful writer, I can not state enough positive remarks about Will Rivers Pitt's skills and level of honor as a writer getting the "truth out." His keen documentation proves beyond all shadows of doubt what honest and to the point writing is all about - that alone should be enough for most. Whatever the subject, if you can't trust Pitt's writings my suggestion to anyone in disagreement is to first head for the archives and libraries, and prepare to be up all night long, enduring many sleepless nights chasing story after story just to find the "truth." Begin a fact-finding mission, per say on you're own. Till then, no one can substantiate their opinions any differently. As a researcher I know first-hand hard it is to dedicate yourself to the kind of journalism certainly Mr. Pitt lives with on a daily bases and I might add, he's not let me down yet! The difficulty in finding the truth alone, and seperating fiction from facts is a personal journey that leaves not much time for anything else. To write on his level can only come from truth seeking, and dedication to a career that few of us can ever hope to aspire to. Then to have to put the story into the most simpliest of words is an even harder feat. Hat's off to Mr. Will Rivers Pitts for making sure we have somewhere out here to get true journalist news as it happens.

Having just read this short little book I am absolutely amazed at the foresight Pitt and Ritter displayed in 2002. Almost everything these two men said about the state of Iraq than and now is incredibly accurate. I never would have believed that Scott Ritter, who the mainstream press branded a "lunatic" or "an Iraqi agent", was actually one of the better informed Americans when it came to the nation of Iraq. From WMD to tribal factions to the members of the so called "insurgents", it seems that Scott Ritter is the person the press and the Pentagon should have gone to when they had questions of Saddam and Iraq. This book is a must read for ANY red blooded, straight thinking American who is genuinely interested in the truth about Iraq.

How incredibly prescient this book has turned out to be, and how unbelievably wrong the neocons were not to listen. I guess the verdict is in, and it doesn't look good for Bush. Bush blames his Iraq fiasco on "bad intelligence." If the intelligence was so bad, how come Ritter knew the facts on the ground? How was he able to accurately predict EXACTLY what we found--that there were no stockpiles at all? Maybe the problem wasn't bad intelligence, but bad ideology, blindly ignoring what the weapons experts knew to be true. In the end, though, I can probably agree that Bush does have a problem with bad intelligence. His own!

Months prior to the Iraq war, I researched press accounts worldwide, read published UN documents and web-posted reports and evaluations of weapons experts, and read this book by Scott Ritter and published interviews of him, and was convinced that either Iraq had no WMD or had no functioning WMD. My question is: if I could come to this conclusion without the aid of classified intelligence, how can we even conceive of the President of the United States coming to his false and calamitous conclusion with all of the classified and unclassified intelligence at his disposal? Even the President now agrees that Iraq had no WMD based on the Kay report.When one considers all the vilification that Scott Ritter has undergone, how his patriotism and professionalism have been questioned, and how he has even been threatened with Court hearings, simply because he spoke the obvious truth long before it was politically chic to speak it, it is clear that the US government owes Mr. Ritter an immense apology. It is also obvious that if the United States government wants to conduct a fair and impartial investigation of this intelligence calamity, it should appoint Scott Ritter to head the investigation.

"War on Iraq" is a Republican military expert's analysis and rejection of the American government's current justification for invading Iraq. All Americans, especially politicians, should pay close attention to this book for two reasons. First, the arguments contained in this book were made by the person who knows the status of Iraq's weapons program and the potential threat posed by Iraq better than anyone else. Scott Ritter is a former intelligence officer and Marine veteran of the Gulf War. When the war ended, Ritter played a critical and highly effective role in inspecting and destroying the Iraqi weapons program. Second, Ritter is a Republican who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, and who clearly harbors no liberal agenda. If this guy is telling us that the coming war with Iraq is unwarranted and extremely dangerous, we had better take him seriously. Ritter's arguments are summed up below.IRAQ HAS NO SERIOUS WEAPONS CAPABLITYRitter demonstrates that Iraq's chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons were thoroughly dismantled. Rebuilding these programs is easily detectable, and if some chemical or biological agents evaded detection, they have probably exceeded their shelf life.IRAQ DOES NOT HAVE A FUNDAMENTALIST GOVERNMENTAs evil and nasty as Saddam Hussein might be, he is a secular ruler who has gone to great and brutal lengths to repress religious fundamentalism in Iraq. He has no interest in perpetuating Islamic fundamentalism of the sort that Bin Laden espouses. SADAM HUSSEIN AND BIN LADEN ARE ENEMIESSaddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden are enemies. Saddam Hussein outlawed Wahabbism the fundamentalist sect of Islam to which Bin Laden belongs, and Bin Laden declared Saddam Hussein an apostate who should be killed. Even if these two were sympathetic to each other, Ritter proves that there isn't a shred of evidence of a cooperation between Iraq and Al Quaeda.THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT BIN LADEN WANTSAn American invasion of Iraq has an excellent chance of infuriating other Islamic nations and creating a West vs. Islam polarization. MORE TERRORISM PLEASEEven if America has a speedy victory in Iraq (Ritter, a twelve year Marine veteran and former intelligence officer states that this is highly unlikely this time around), extremism and resentment against the U.S. will only increase in the Middle East. More likely, this war will generate tremendous civilian casualties in Iraq and hundreds or thousands of U.S. casualties. If, in a worse case scenario, America resorts to tactical nuclear weapons to help it's pinned down military forces-something Bush has publicly stated as a possibility. Ritter argues that if this happens he can guarantee that Iran and Pakistan will hand over nuclear devices to terrorists and we will experience a nuclear bomb detonation in America within decades.DEMOCRACY IS IMPOSSIBLE IN IRAQIraq contains a Shiite majority, which shares powerful fundamentalist beliefs with Iran, and which the U.S. definitely does not want to co