By Shannon Jones, wsw.org
29 May 2000
Scott Ritter, formerly a leading weapons inspector in Iraq for the United
Nation Special Commision (UNSCOM), denounced the economic
blockade of the Middle East nation at a rally opposing sanctions held
May 13 in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan. The former US
Marine officer resigned his post in August 1998 citing interference by
the
UN with the work of inspectors.
The pacifist group Metro Detroit Against Sanctions called the rally, which
concluded with a picket of a local television station to protest the media
blackout of reports documenting the suffering of the Iraqi people. Also
on the platform was former US diplomat Edward Peck, local religious
leaders and Iraqi-Americans.
Speaking before an audience of some 300 Ritter declared, “The
termination of economic sanctions must be our number one priority. It is
a sad fact that 500,000 babies dying hasn't moved the American people
...
“The US government has created a myth about Saddam Hussein as the
Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler. The only way you will deal with
the Middle East situation is based on fact. You will only have
disarmament if there is contact. It is not America's job to get rid of”
Hussein.
Ritter went on to expose the claims of the Clinton administration that
Iraq
posed a military threat to neighboring states: “By 1998 Iraq's biological
and missile plants were destroyed. In terms of the intent of the UN
Security Council resolutions, Iraq had been disarmed. The world is blind
to this reality. Even though Iraq has been disarmed, sanctions will remain
until Hussein is gone.”
Edward Peck, who served as US Chief of Mission in Iraq and worked
as a coordinator of covert intelligence programs at the State Department,
also spoke in opposition to the sanctions. “What happens if the country
implodes? No one benefits,” Peck said. He warned that the sanctions
policy was eroding support for the United States among its former Gulf
War allies, the Arab states in particular. “We look inhuman,” he said,
“we look racist.”
Ritter and Peck join a growing number of former US and UN officials
who have publicly opposed the Iraq sanctions. In the fall of 1998 Dennis
Halliday, the coordinator of the UN's "Oil for Food" program, quit,
calling the sanctions “a bankrupt concept.” Last February two UN
officials resigned—Hans von Sponeck, Halliday's successor as
humanitarian relief coordinator, and Jutta Burghardt, head of the World
Food Program in Iraq. In announcing his resignation von Sponeck
declared, “I do not want to be associated with a Band-Aid that is
inadequate to end the plight of the civilian population.”
In the case of Ritter and Peck, however, it is not simply revulsion over
the humanitarian catastrophe produced by the blockade in Iraq. Both
men are longtime foreign policy operatives who have concluded that a
different policy is required to defend the interests of American
imperialism in the Middle East. That they now oppose the Clinton
administration over sanctions highlights the disarray in US foreign policy.
Ritter's team was involved in attempts by the US government to
destabilize the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He led a series
of highly intrusive inspections of Iraqi governmental sites which the
Clinton administration hoped would provoke a hostile Iraqi response that
could serve as the basis for rallying domestic and international support
for
military action. It later came to light that these inspections were aimed
at
tracking the movements of Hussein in preparation for a possible
assassination. In Iraq Ritter had close contact with officials of the
American CIA and it was alleged, but not proven, that he had ties to
Israeli intelligence.
Before joining UNSCOM Ritter served as an aide to General Norman
Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War. He has called at various times for the
use of the US military to overthrow the regime of Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein.
In his book Endgame, published in 1999 following his departure from
UNSCOM, Ritter describes the growth of his disillusionment with US
policy toward Iraq. One event he cited was the botched attempt by the
Clinton administration to rally public support for military action against
Iraq at a Columbus, Ohio town meeting in February 1998. The meeting
turned into a nationally televised debacle for the Clinton administration
when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense
William Cohen and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger became
visibly flustered under intense questioning by opponents of military
intervention.
The failure of the Clinton administration to rally public support for military
action against Iraq and the growing divisions among the former Gulf War
allies of the US led Ritter to the conclusion that a military solution
to the
Iraq problem was untenable.
In Endgame he accuses the Clinton administration of having no workable
policy toward Iraq. He decries economic sanctions as a “morally
reprehensible policy” which has discredited the US internationally. He
says of Iraq's military, “The Iraqi army is in total disarray, capable
of little
more than manning security pickets along the Iran-Iraq border, in
northern Iraq (Kurdistan), and in Southern Iraq.” The Iraqi air force,
Ritter asserts, “would be shot out of the sky by any of the modern air
forces of its neighbors.”
Ritter has also called for a halt to the ongoing bombing of Iraq by the
United States and Britain. He has called the air strikes, which have taken
the lives of numerous civilians, a violation of international law.
Following the publication of Ritter's book his name dropped out of the
news in line with the unstated policy of the American news media of
blacking out all opposition to the sanctions policy of the Clinton
administration. Similarly Ritter's remarks to the rally in Michigan were
not
reported by any of the local television stations or newspapers.