Did Australia Go to War On the Basis of An American Lie?

When I was on radio in Melbourne many years ago I was invited to a speech given by Scott Ritter the former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq.  It was an explosive lecture at the time and I aired it on radio. 

I produced my own transcript as below. I met Scott Ritter the next day and spent 4 hours speaking to him about my work (love) as  a World Peace Clown and peace education.  Towards the end of our conversation, I recall him saying about his book Waging Peace “I will have to rewrite my book”.  I told him there are no enemies.

This transcript is essential reading for all Australians and Americans who are seeking knowledge to create a better world.  

It is essential to a real world at peace that the truth emerges and the public is empowered and informed about decisions that have been made in their name.

Scott Ritter stated at the end of this speech“…if debate, discussion and dialogue, freedom of speech is sedition, so be it, let it begin here.”

 

VICTORIAN PEACE NETWORK PRESENTS

 

Scott Ritter

Former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq

 

A Critical Analysis of the War in Iraq and Future Implications

 

University of Melbourne, Australia

 

 2 December, 2005

 

As a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq, Scott Ritter was labelled a hero by some, a maverick by others, and a spy by the Iraqi government. In charge of searching out weapons of mass destruction within Iraq, Ritter was on the front lines of the ongoing battle against arms proliferation. His experience in enemy territory served as the basis for his book Endgame, which explored the shortcomings of American foreign policy in the Persian Gulf region and alternative approaches to handling the Iraqi crisis.  His impassioned discussion explores the area where justice meets compassion and covers the controversial topic of weapons of mass destruction. Ritter’s own experience and insight serve to enlighten the audience on an important and under-publicized issue.  Scott Ritter has had an extensive and distinguished career in government service. He is a ballistic missile technology expert who worked in military intelligence during a 12-year career in the U.S. armed forces including assignments in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. A former major in the U.S. Marines, Ritter also spent several months of the Gulf War serving under General Norman Schwarzkopf with Marine Central Command headquarters in Saudi Arabia.   In 1991, Ritter joined the United Nations weapons inspections team, or UNSCOM. He has taken part in more than 30 inspection missions, 14 of them as chief.[1]   

The following verbatim transcript is taken from an audio recording of Scott Ritter’s speech at the University of Melbourne on the 2nd December, 2005. 

____________________

 

“…What did the United Nations do, remember that thing called the rule of law.  If you are going to pass a law you got to enforce it if it is going to have any value.  So we passed a law saying Iraq must be disarmed.  We caught the Iraqi’s red-handed lying about their weapons of mass destruction, about nuclear weapons.  At that point in time you should pull the weapons inspectors out, bring the military back in and solve this problem once and for all.  Get rid of the man responsible for telling the lies, Saddam Hussein.   You would think if the President of the United Stations policy was regime change, America would jump at an opportunity to do this.  No, we didn’t want to go to war against Iraq we just wanted Saddam gone and the CIA said he’ll be gone in 6 months.  We passed the resolution in April, this confrontation is taking place in June, the President is going to wait we got 4 months to go, let’s not confront Iraq on this one, let’s back off.  We’ll pass a new resolution that says shame on you for lying.  Now you have to submit an honest declaration, no more lies this time.  

Then they did an amazing thing that many people who study disarmament really don’t pick up on, they transferred the burden of responsibility for disarmament away from the Iraqi’s and onto the shoulder of the inspectors.  You see for inspections to work we got to have access to the information necessary to complete the mission.  Think of it as an automobile engine.  Inspections are an engine, for that engine to function you need fuel, good information is the fuel that makes the inspection engine work.  The Iraqi’s were responsible for submitting good information, a declaration listing the totality of their weapons, but they lied, the fuel is contaminated the inspection engine is not working too well.  But what the Security Council said is inspectors you have to go into Iraq and find the hidden weapons.  Look at the inherent contradiction, on the one hand they say Iraq you must submit a declaration listing the totality of your weapons, on the other hand, they say inspectors you have to go into Iraq and look for hidden weapons, what does this mean?  That nothing the Iraqi’s ever submit will be acceptable.  The inspectors will always be looking for the negative, seeking to prove the negative and that is a proposition that will never succeed, it will never function.  But the inspectors tried to do this anyways. 

To do this we need that good fuel, the Iraqi’s aren’t giving us good fuel, where do you get it?  The Iraqi’s are denying you information, you have to gain access to the information the Iraqi’s are denying you, you need intelligence capability.  You need people who can practice the art of espionage to gain access to denied information in denied areas.  If you want to do conventional weapons inspections you need experts.  If you want to go after chemical weapons, get a chemist.  Look at my resume I am not a chemist.  If you want to go after biological weapons, get a biologist, I am not one of those either.  If you are after nuclear weapons get a nuclear physicist.  Right again, not me, and I’m darn sure not a rocket scientist so I am not good on that ballistic missile thing either.  I am a spy.  I am an intelligence officer.  I do it better than just about anybody.  You want to go after denied information in denied areas, you bring in the spies.  They brought in me to do that job, my job was to create an intelligence capacity to gain access to the information the inspectors needed to complete their mission, as difficult a mission as it was. 

We tried to do our job, the CIA didn’t like this.  When I came in everyone focuses on the confrontation between the Iraqi’s and the inspectors what they don’t focus on is the confrontation between the inspectors and the US government.  You see legitimate disarmament was a threat to the American policy of regime change.  Because for if we the inspectors did our job, completed our mission, disarmed Iraq, we throw the whole calculation out the window.  To disarm you have to lift sanction, if you lift sanctions, break containment etc. etc. etc.  No, a legitimate inspection operation one that can succeed becomes a threat. I didn’t realize that at the time, I tried to do the job. I focused initially on ballistic missiles. I wrote an estimate in November 1991 that said I think the Iraqi’s are lying about ballistic missiles, I think they have 100 hidden.  The Iraqi’s denied everything.  But we pushed and pushed and pushed and in March 1992, the Iraqi’s came clean, ‘we lied about everything’.  They signed a new declaration and in that declaration they said they hid 98 missiles.  Remember, I said intelligence services sometimes get it wrong.  I was off by two, we don’t get it that wrong guys, we got it pretty good.  I said 100, they said 98, good enough.  So now we go into Iraq it is time to account for these 98 missiles.  We show up at the facility, at the field where the Iraqi’s say these missiles are expecting to see 98 missiles that we can account, we can destroy, and there is nothing there.  Where are the missiles?  Iraqi’s they say well we blew them up in the summer of 1991 and buried them in the ground.  So the inspectors become forensic archaeologists we bring out bulldozers, we dig up missile pieces, these are pieces, we start collecting the pieces, we start collecting serial numbers off each different piece, there is a serial number on each component, we collect page after page after page of these serial numbers.  Then we go to Russia to a factory that produced these missiles, and we get the production records, we start plugging in each component each serial number to a given component each component to a given missile, until we can match all the pieces we have to a missile and put that missile in Iraq.  That way we are able to confirm that 96 of the 98 declared by Iraq were in fact destroyed underground.  That is good work, that is outstanding work in anybody’s judgement.  Good stuff, but we can’t say all the missiles are accounted for.  We have scraps of metal that we think are the remaining two missiles but because the Iraqi’s lied in the past we can’t give them the benefit of the doubt we can’t accept at face value what they say.  We demand absolute verification and we can only verify absolutely 96 out of 98 missiles.  So our job is not done.  We have to dig a little bit deeper.  So we go back to Iraq we spend the summer of 1992 into fall of 1992 investigating, investigating, investigating the most intrusive, detailed, technologically advanced inspections every conducted by inspectors in the history of arms control and in October we come out. 

 I was the planner of these inspections I come out and go down to Washington DC.  I brief them on the results, these are amazing results, we accounted for all the missiles, there is nothing left.  We are tasked with disarming Iraq, people said it couldn’t be done, in a series of months we just accomplished the unaccomplishable the impossible.  Go down to Washington DC I’ve 60 of the US’s best intelligence analysts in a room and I say guess what guys we’ve done it, mission success, we’ve disarmed Iraq.  And in typical American exuberance, I expected the room to explode in top gun like exhilaration people yelling USA USA, cheering hats in the air, the whole thing, I was greeted with icy silence.  That was the last thing they wanted to hear.  Just how little they wanted to hear it manifested itself a week later when I received a 4 page memorandum from the Director of the CIA saying hey not so fast bucko, we don’t agree with your analysis, we reject it, absolutely.  They didn’t detail exactly what they disagree with.  But the Director of the CIA got before the United States Senate, he said that it was his belief that the Iraqi’s still retained 200 missiles. Mathematically impossible, but it is irrelevant what do you think the American media and people were buying into.  The UN inspectors that said there was nothing there or the Director of the CIA who said there is 200 missiles there.  200 was a number we had to deal with whether we liked it or not.  So I went to the CIA and said  where are the 200 missiles? how did you come up with that number?  First response (CIA) is that it is too secret, we can’t tell you. Guys it is our (Ritter) responsibility to disarm Iraq, you got to tell us something.  So let’s slip us a nugget, (CIA) they’re hidden on the back of trucks.  That’s good, Iraq is a country the size of state of California.  Don’t know the equivalent of Australia in geographical terms, you guys are big, equivalent to one of your big states, lots of territory.  Um trucks, which ones? just trucks man, driving around hiding on the back of trucks.  Alright – so we try out best, we look at photographs, we figure out where the trucks are parked, we do an analysis of movement, we swoop in and stop convoys do truck inspections, we surround trucks, we rip open the back of trucks, we find nothing.  What does this mean?  That there is no missiles in Iraq or we just hit the wrong trucks?  You see once you have a piece of intelligence information that you act on, the mere fact that you act on it, gives that intelligence information legitimacy, it is a sustainable problem.  Can’t find the missiles, keep looking for the trucks.  I said wait a minute this is bad, where are the other missiles? They said (CIA) well, alright, we got some really good stuff they are buried underground, they’re buried in the tunnels in the mountains, they are wrapped in prophylactics and they’re buried… I don’t mean that kind guys, keep your minds clean … they wrap them they water proofing them put them in the river, bury them, put them in the lakes.  Ok do you know where they do this?  They start putting out grids.  Alright, I’ll call your bluff on this one.  We need to build a ground penetrating radar, and we did, spent 12 million building this thing, put it on a helicopter went to California, trained, buried missiles in the desert, flew over, we could pinpoint missiles buried in the desert.  We had special equipment that we could take into the water and do the same thing in the water and we prepared. 

We went to Iraq and spent 2 months going to every single one of these sites.  Every single one.  Now guys – inspections can sometimes be a little bit dangerous.  Out West where we were looking for the buried missiles, there was thousands of unexploded munitions.  So it is not just about flying a helicopter over the desert, no our boys had to go to the desert and actually sit there probe for mines, probe for unexploded bombs, because it they didn’t they would blow themselves up and kill themselves.  Very tedious, dangerous work but we did it for 2 months.  We debunked every single site the CIA provided.  We put divers in the river, these rivers are muddy, brown and fast flowing at the lower levels.  Our divers had to go down, zero visibility and do brail diving feeling around, putting their sensors in, taking pictures, shooting back up, we found nothing.  For 2 months we did this and every single piece of intelligence information the CIA provided was shown to be false. 

It is now November 1993, we go down to CIA Headquarters, not the big building the one no-one talks about next to the White House and the Old Executive building.  We meet with the Director and his staff, I give the briefing, I say with all due respect to your 200 missile theory, this is what we found, we think we accounted for everything, there is nothing there, your intelligence was wrong.  I was invited to leave the meeting, they kept my boss there he went in for a one on one with the Director of the CIA James Woolsey.  You really did a good job, we understand there is not 200 missiles, we accept that.  The number is 12-20 and that number will never change, regardless of what you do.  Ladies and gentleman, the CIA didn’t want us to disarm Iraq.  The CIA knew that we had accomplished.  See that thing called a mistake where they go oops we got it wrong I am sure as early as 1992, the CIA knew there were no missiles in Iraq.  The case had been closed, but they wouldn’t allow that.  The one honest thing the CIA said was that number will never change regardless of what they do. 

And use Australia, you wanna be concerned about this, what did your SAS regiment do during the Gulf War? They subjected your boys, put them in harms way, to go into Western Iraq to do what?  Intercept scud missiles that could be fired from Western Iraq into Israel.  What scud missiles, according to the estimate provided by Richard Armitage to your wonderful John Howard, 12-20 scud missiles.  Where did they get that number? I just told you, they made it up.  Your boys were put in harm’s way on the basis of a lie.  If that doesn’t shock and disturb you and make you angry, I don’t know what will.  It is not just ballistic missiles ladies and gentlemen, I can make the same case, the same sad tale for chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons.  The bottom line is by 1995 the CIA knew for absolute certainty that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed.  It wasn’t about disarmament the CIA wasn’t there to disarm Iraq. 

The same month that I briefed the intelligence community in October 1992 that the weapons were accounted for, the President of the United States George Hebert Walker Bush signed a lethal finding a covert document authorizing the CIA to use whatever means necessary up to and including lethal force, to remove Saddam Hussein from power.  That is what it was all about.  That George Hubert Walker Bush a month later had to run for re-election, he didn’t make it, he got beat, enter Bill Clinton.  Bill Clinton is a guy who says you know I am not too comfortable with this American policy on Iraq, I am a Southern Baptist he said and I believe in death bed conversions and I think we can get Saddam Hussein to change his ways.  He actually sent teams to Jordan to meet with Iraqi diplomats, I write this in the book, where I am sitting with Iraqi officials in January 1993, they are ecstatic.  I say what are you so happy about?  They say you have a new President coming in and we think sanctions are going to be lifted soon.  He is talking to us about the conditions under which sanctions can be lifted.  Amazing, except all those politicians Republican and Democrat who told their constituents that we were confronting evil in the form of Saddam Hussein, a Hitler like figure, came running up to Clinton and said you can’t make a deal with Hitler you can’t negotiate with the devil.  So Clinton instead of solving the Iraq problem inherited the Iraq problem, the problem of regime change, the problem of economic sanctions based containment.  But he wasn’t enthusiastic about it, so kept it on the back burner, until 1994 when the Republican Party wins the election of Congress; the Gingrich revolution comes sweeping in.  The first thing they do is highlight Bill Clinton’s inability or unwillingness to deal with Saddam Hussein.  They use that as an example of how weak this President is.  As I said Saddam Hussein does not pose a security risk to the United States, he is a political threat to the President.  First, George Herbert Walker Bush now Bill Clinton.  Bill Clinton is in trouble because has got his own re-election campaign in 1996.  So in 1995 he turns to the CIA and says you need to get rid of Saddam Hussein by June 1996.  It’s got to be done so I can run a campaign free of interference.  So the CIA gets to work. 

So how do you get rid of Saddam Hussein?  He surrounded by concentric circles of security that have proven very difficult to penetrate.  How do you gain access to Iraq?  Oh yeah those weapons inspectors, they got a mandate that allows them to go anywhere anytime.  So the CIA used the inspection process as a Trojan horse to gain access to Iraq for the purpose of spying on Saddam not to facilitate disarmament, that was my job, spying on Saddam to gain information so they could remove him from power.  Carry out a coup d’etat.  They tried to carry out a coup de tat in June 1996. Remember that name Iyad Allawi, that guy was the interim Prime Minister of Iraq.  Before he entered into a career in politics he was a paid agent of the CIA.  They had Allawi and the Iraqi National Accord set up in Amman, Jordan and sent them into Iraq to recruit spies using intelligence information gained by the UN inspection process.  In June 1996 Allawi had this big scheme to get rid of Saddam but the Iraqi Intelligence Service penetrated the scheme, arrested all the plot makers and rolled it up.  In doing so exposing the complicity between the CIA and United Nations inspection process.  It is not that the inspectors knew what was going on, they were being used.  From that moment on, the Iraqi’s when they looked at an inspector, they didn’t see somebody trying to disarm them they saw somebody trying to kill their President.  Sadly, they were right. 

If you look at the CIA’s report that was put out by after 2003.  The CIA clearly says that all weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by Iraq by the summer of 1991. A lot of people, including your Prime Minister (Australian) like to say Iraq was in violation of 17 consecutive Security Council resolutions.  Even if there wasn’t any WMD Saddam Hussein had no intention whatsoever of complying with the rule of law.   They said – wait a minute he got rid of his WMD in the summer of 1991.  March 1992, he told the UN inspectors that he had lied and he said we don’t have any weapons left.    He was doing everything necessary to work with the inspectors to facilitate this understanding.  Wait a minute – why did he block your inspectors?  Especially you Ritter you, you were the moron running around in Iraq from 1996-1998 getting in the face of everybody, saying I wanna go here I wanna go there.  And when they did, you go whining back to the Security Council, saying they won’t let me in, they won’t let me in.  True, I did.  My job was to inspect.  We were being denied access, and believe me, as somebody on the ground in Iraq trying to gain access and the Iraqi’s deny you access, you begin to think why?  Perhaps they are hiding weapons of mass destruction perhaps they are hiding something.  They were hiding something; they were hiding information that pertained to the security of their President.  This is why The Iraqi’s obstructed the work of the inspectors.  They did not obstruct any legitimate effort to disarm them.  Anytime we went to a factory anytime we went to a facility that could be used for WMD they gave us 100% cooperation.  They only balked when we went to the Presidential Palaces, went to intelligence services, we went to the security services, they eventually let us in, but they weren’t too happy about it.  The Iraqi’s were cooperating; they were not violating any resolutions.  America was violating the resolutions, because we never intended to respect the resolutions. 

Now Clinton in 1996 had a problem he couldn’t get rid of Saddam Hussein, so once again he put it on the back burner and tried to forget about him.  The Republicans wouldn’t let him forget about it, the Republicans used his inability or unwillingness to do anything about Saddam Hussein as fodder on the domestic political front.  The Republicans were successful in 1998 for passing the Iraq Liberation Act, $100 million dollars of American tax payers money was set aside to support opposition groups to get rid of Saddam Hussein.  Clinton had no choice but to sign this legislation, but he wasn’t thrilled about it so he didn’t effectively spend this money.  Which leads us to the 2000 election in which George W Bush uses Bill Clinton’s unwillingness to intervene to deal with Saddam Hussein as a cornerstone of his foreign policy platform.  He said if you vote for me I will get rid of Saddam Hussein I will succeed where Clinton has failed.   That dubya wanted to use the opposition groups, he got elected, he started work with the opposition groups, he had a problem, the CIA was saying these guys aren’t serious these guys aren’t good it’s a waste of money it is a waste of time.  Dubya was frustrated he couldn’t make a move on Iraq. 

Then comes September 11, that horrible day, where 19 men hijacked 4 airplanes and flew them into targets killing around 3,000 Americans.  And the fear and the ignorance of the American people was exploited and manipulated by the Bush administration to make a move on Iraq that had nothing to do with the events of September 11.  The President said that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, that relationship was a very dangerous one, not so much because they were cooperating but that Saddam could pass weapons of mass destruction to Osama Bin Laden who would attack America by proxy, and we know Osama Bin Laden wants to attack America because he just did, 3000 Americans are dead. Because next time he attacks us he will use weapons of mass destructions, which will make the events of September 11 pale in comparison.  No we had to go to war against Iraq, the personification of evil, Saddam Hussein the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler, who possess massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction.  So we did.  We got rid of Saddam and we find ourselves in the situation we face in today. 

Ladies and gentleman we can’t accept the situation where the politicians say oops we got it wrong.  They didn’t get it wrong.  The President knew there were no WMD in Iraq.  Not just George W Bush, Bill Clinton knew, George Herbert Walker Bush knew, it was never about disarming Iraq it was only about getting rid of Saddam Hussein.  Congress knew there were no WMD’s in Iraq.  I can say this about Australia, I know your intelligence service, I worked with them, I worked with them on the ground in Iraq, I worked with them as an analyst in Bahrain supporting the inspectors.  I guarantee you this; your intelligence service knew that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed.  Your intelligence service knew there was no massive stockpiles of weapons of massive destruction in Iraq.  But Your Prime Minister wouldn’t listen to your intelligence service.   Your Prime Minister (John Howard) said he knew there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  Where did he get this certainty of knowledge? Not from the Australian intelligence services.  He got it from American representatives who came over and briefed him on the same druck that was being sold to the Congress of the United States and the American people.  Australia went to war on the basis of an American lie.  I don’t know about you but if I was an Australian I would be ashamed.  I’d be deeply ashamed.  Fact is maybe it is time you guys leave here tonight if you see an Australian flag pull it down and raise the American flag and certify your genuine status as a colony of the United States of America.  If this is true what is happening, then this is true and this is all you are all you are good for.  It is not only about being a colony of the United States. 

It is the failure of representative democracies to do the right thing.  We say we are a nation of law, we say we believe in law, we say we are a people respect human rights, yet we sit back and do nothing while our respective governments lie to us, mislead us.  Ladies and gentleman there is no such thing as representative democracy unless you behave as citizens of a representative democracy.  This means you don’t just elect people to higher office but you hold them accountable in your name.  Both of our countries have failed on this account.  We all know we have been lied to on WMD, yet in 2004 we re-elected George W Bush you re-elected John Howard, the British re-elected Tony Blair – why?  Because as a society we have collectively failed to stand up to the challenges of citizenship.  Go back and look in the mirror, ask the following question – am I a citizen or am I a consumer?  See if you are a citizen you care about these things, you stand up you fight, you struggle, you defend the ideals and values that you represent.  You are not willing to be lied to by your elected representatives.  If you are a consumer, you’ve been wrapped up in a cocoon of comfort man, as long as the powers that be keep you witling down the path of prosperity you don’t want to rock the boat, so you give up your responsibilities of citizenship, you transfer them to other people, don’t want to think about these problems, you allow your media to dumb everything down.  You accept 30 second sound-bytes, you accept 3 minute in-depth stories.  You accept your government to intimidate you through the politics of fear, based upon your ignorance, and you don’t question it.  You want it to be fed, your addiction to your lifestyle to be fed, you’re telling your government, feed the addiction.  Because Australia is like the United States, we have a lifestyle we cannot sustain based upon our own resources; we go out and get it somewhere.  So if we are addiction to our lifestyle we are saying to politicians do whatever is necessary to go out there and gain access to global resources to feed my addiction.

The other thing you are doing is destroying the notion of democracy.  You see as a citizen if you transfer your responsibilities of citizenship to others, let’s call them special interests, you are no longer functioning as a citizen, what happens is the power of citizenship gets concentrated in the hands of a few, that is not called representative democracy, that is called oligarchy, the danger of that oligarchy is that you are treading in the wrong direction, the next step after oligarchy is fascism. 

Ladies and gentleman that is the direction the United States is heading, I am fearful that’s the direction the colony of the United States of America, known as Australia is heading.  What are we going to do to stop it?  The only way we can stop it is to empower ourselves with knowledge and information.  The only way we can empower ourselves with knowledge and information is to engage in debate, discussion and dialogue that is inconvenient to the powers that be.  You know what, I don’t know about Australia, but in America the Constitution that I swore an oath to uphold and defend, doesn’t say all power to the President, all power to Congress. It begins with We the people of the United States of America, the solution rests with us, the question is are we up to the challenge will we pick up the gauntlet. 

As I said at the beginning if debate, discussion and dialogue, freedom of speech is sedition, so be it, let it begin here.  I am happy to take questions”

 

 

Leave a Reply

Mohandas Gandhi

“Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong”

Archives
Categories