Iraq is disarmed. There is no justification for a war," Scott Ritter, former Chief Arms Inspector for UN Disarmament in Iraq, told a Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs in June of this year.

Ritter, who proudly claims he is a card-carrying Republican in the US, nevertheless, strongly opposes the Bush Administration’s plans for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. According to Ritter, who was senior arms inspector in Iraq from 1991 until 1998, Saddam neither has weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that could threaten other countries, nor does he have ties with Al Queda terrorists. Moreover, war on Iraq would not be justified in international law and would be morally wrong. "This war is more or less about domestic policy, based upon speculation and rhetoric entirely divorced from fact. The United States has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions," Ritter stated at Boston Law School in July, 2002.

With a reputation of being the hardest and most thorough inspector in Iraq, Ritter vigorously ferreted out Saddam’s WMD capabilities, and now he campaigns to stop the war with the same vigour. Because of his expert knowledge of the situation in Iraq up until the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998, (he makes it clear to everyone, that they were withdrawn so that the US could pursue unilateral bombing of Iraq), and because of his expertise on WMD, Ritter’s voice is in strong demand, both by governments around the world and the public alike. He goes before the people with no political agenda, but with a strong sense of "doing what is right."

How can he be so certain that Saddam has not built up his WMD during the four years inspectors have not been in Iraq? When asked this question by Dr Keith Martin MP and member of the Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs, Ritter answered, "You do not build weapons of mass destruction in a basement. You do not build weapons of mass destruction in a cave. It doesn’t happen in anything other than facilities of the highest technological capability. The technology required by Iraq to reconstitute its programs would have to be bought in the open market in violation of sanctions in a manner which was undetected by myriad intelligence services, not just the American or Canadian, but the Israeli, the German and others, and not a single nation can come forward with anything other than rumours of tidbits being purchased by the Iraqis. These tidbits do not constitute a weapons program. They constitute an effort by the Iraqi government to circumvent sanctions to get equipment they need to rebuild their society which they can’t do under the current sanctions regime."

Although intelligence monitoring has not detected any evidence of Iraq’s effort to reconstitute its WMD, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, has said "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Ritter advocates getting the inspectors in so that we can quit this sort of speculation.

"The new weapons inspection team, will have to focus on the scientific and technical aspects of monitoring Iraq’s compliance and not get involved in the very dangerous game of spying," says Ritter. He sees Canada as being able to play the role of holding the Security Council to a standard, which demands total adherence to its mandate with no deviations, not only by Iraq but also by the Security Council members themselves.

In his closing remarks to the Parliamentary Committee, Ritter pleaded with Canada, as a friend of the United States and a leader of peace in the world, to stand up to the United States "on the Iraq issue" and say enough is enough. "Should you choose not to, I’m afraid that you’ll be made irrelevant by history. You will be nothing more than yet another proxy of American dominance of the world. Does Canada want to be a proxy or does Canada want to resume the leadership role that it once enjoyed?"

Irene MacInnes is a member of the Campaign to End Sanctions Against the People of Iraq. Scott Ritter, author of The End Game, will be the guest speaker at a forum at 7 pm October 4 at the First Baptist Church, 969 Burrard, Vancouver. Free admission. For information call 604 737-1299.

For more information or to get involved, contact cesapivan@yahoo.ca or visit these websites:

www.nonviolence.org/vitw
www.zmag.org
www.globalpolicy.org
www.globaljustice.ca
www.notinournames.org
www.commondreams.org
www.indymedia.org
www.coopradio.org
www.canesi.org

Back to September, 2002 Index




Top