Former U.N. weapons inspector Ritter denounces war on Iraq

Scott Ritter, a controversial former U.N. weapons inspector, gave a speech yesterday at the Wilson School in which he strongly denounced an invasion of Iraq, which he says is all but underway.

He has emerged in recent weeks as a maverick, at odds with most American officials, by arguing that Iraq probably does not possess weapons of mass destruction and should not be attacked.

Ritter took part in more than 30 inspection missions, leading 14 of them, before resigning his post in 1998, protesting what he then described as the Clinton administration's unwillingness to provide effective support for U.N. weapons inspections, which Iraq was obstructing.

Ritter told Congress in 1998 that Iraq was "winning its bid to retain its prohibited weapons" and was "not nearly disarmed."

But he now takes a different line, saying in yesterday's speech that Iraq was "fundamentally disarmed" during the 1998 weapons inspections. He expressed doubts that the country has biological, chemical or nuclear weapons now, or could acquire them in the near future.

Some have argued that Ritter may have personal reasons to favor the Iraqi regime. He has acknowledged that a company he runs received $400,000 of financial backing for a documentary about Iraq from an American citizen of Iraqi descent named Shakir Al-Khafaji.

Ritter acknowledged that Al-Khafaji is sympathetic to the Iraqi regime but vehemently denied that the financial backing had any effect on the documentary film or on his public statements.

In comments after his speech yesterday, Ritter dismissed questions about the film deal as "politically motivated character assassination."

Throughout his speech, he combined graphic descriptions of military conflict with questions about Iraq's biological weapons capabilities.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to war. Wake up to that fact," he said. "We'll probably be bombing Iraq in a systematic fashion by the end of December and have troops on the ground by January.

"I have to tell you that Iraq has no nuclear capability, we destroyed it, eliminated it," he said.

But at other points in his remarks, he backed off from his claims.

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"I'm not trying to tell you what Iraq has or doesn't have," he said. "I can tell you what Iraq had in 1998, which is damn close to zero.

"We've been told that [Saddam] has weapons of mass destruction . . . a marine corps company is a weapon of mass destruction. Biological weapons and chemical weapons aren't weapons of mass destruction.

"In combat, you don't get to say, 'Oops.' In combat you're dead, or you lost an arm or a leg or you're paralyzed.

"We better make damn sure before we send [American troops] off to war that it's worth the sacrifice."

He repeatedly called on the Bush administration to produce whatever evidence it has for its claim that Iraq is rebuilding weapons capabilities. Biological weapons produced by Iraq in the 1990s have by now decayed and can no longer be used, he contended, and the country does not have the resources to mount a nuclear development program.

"We took Iraq's nuclear weapons capability down as close to zero as it can go in 1998," he said. "It would take a significant investment of time and money" to bring it back.