Ritter
Blasts Bush's War
By Jan Barry
VAIW
6 May, 2003
Scott Ritter may be the Bush
reelection teams worse nightmare. The former UN chief weapons
inspector in Iraq and card-carrying Republican is barnstorming America
with a blunt message: George W. Bushs war on Iraq was waged on
a bodyguard of lies.
We need regime change,
and we need it quick, Ritter told a gathering of peace activists
in New Jersey on Sunday. George W. Bush does not have the right
to
represent the American people, if he told a lie. And he told a whopper.
That whopper, said Ritter,
was claiming that the US government had evidence that Saddam Hussein
was hiding massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction and that was
why Iraq must be invaded. The facts, he said, are that the inspections
worked. The United Nations did disarm Iraq.
I want the president
impeached because he lied to the Congress of the United States,
Ritter said. He may well go out and tell another lie about weapons
of mass destruction being found amid the rubble in Iraq. But,
Ritter said, any scheme to plant evidence would run afoul of professional
soldiers like those he served with in Gulf War I. I can tell you,
my fellow officers wont sustain that lie.
Ritter is a former Marine
major who worked as a weapons inspector for the United Nations in Iraq
from 1991 to 1998. These days hes an antiwar activist on a mission
to pacify Washington, DC.
What happened in Baghdad
last month was not in accordance with international law. What happened
in Baghdad last month was a west Texas lynching, Ritter said at
New Jersey Peace Actions annual dinner, where he was the guest
of honor. President Bush is implementing a policy of imperialism.
Ritter said Americans who
dont want the United States to go the way of all empireswhich,
he said, die of indigestionwill have to fight an historic political
battle over the nations future. We cant allow a bunch
of neoconservatives to hijack America, he said. Its
not a right-wing fraternity pinthe American flag, we own it, the
American people.
Ritter said he has been taking
his blunt message to college campuses and other forums around the country.
And when anyone demands that he support the war in Iraq, he replies:
What part of war do you want to support? and describes in
graphic detail the hell hole of war.
Recounting the story of a
Marine in a battle in Iraq, Ritter said that a soldier is only one face
of patriotism. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the
other face of patriotismthe people of the United States.
The other face of patriotism is the American citizen who gets up in
the morning and carries out the duties and responsibilities of
citizenship.
If you give up now,
you are giving up on American democracy, he said. Ritter urged
the assembled peace activists to reach out to Republicans like himself
and raise the constitutional issues and uncomfortable facts that Bush
has run roughshod over. Among those facts, he said, is this glaring
one:
Bush was a deserter
from his unit during the Vietnam War. He doesnt know what it means
to support the troops.
Jan Barry, a Vietnam veteran,
is a journalist living in New Jersey. Jan is also an editor of VAIW
and a contributing editor of Intervention Mag.