Scott Ritter
 Scott Ritter          (Soldier, Whistleblower) | |
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| Born | July 15, 1961 Gainesville, Florida |
| Alma mater | Franklin and Marshall College |
| Exposed | Operation Mass Appeal |
| Member of | Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity |
| Interests | • 2003 Iraq War • 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine • Serena Shim Award |
UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, who exposed the lies about Saddam's WMDs. | |
William Scott Ritter, Jr. was a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He was chief inspector in fourteen of the more than thirty inspection missions in which he participated. He became a major voice of opposition in the run-up to, and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, being one of the few analysts who were right about non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
A May 2001 report by the US newspaper The Bellingham Herald noted:[1]
"Ritter resigned from his post as weapons inspector almost three years ago when inspectors attempting to gather information on Iraqi weapons activities were actually being used to gather information for the Americans on Iraqi security forces, he said.
By that time, Ritter said, Iraq was “fundamentally disarmed,” but inspectors could not prove that 100 percent of the weapons had been destroyed, so the sanctions continued.
He said the United States didn't truly want to declare Iraq completely disarmed, anyway. While the U.N. declaration imposing the sanctions against Iraq links the embargo to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the United States wants the embargo in place until Hussein is swept from power, Ritter said."
Contents
Arrest
He was later jailed on underage sex charges after multiple US police sting operations, first in 2001, then 2009. In October 2011 he received a sentence of one and a half to five and a half years in prison; he was paroled in September 2014.
| 'Scott Ritter; Ukraine, Finland and Nato, a Warning to the People of Finland' |
Opinions
On 11 January 2023, Scott Ritter wrote about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and concluded:
- "There is an old Russian saying, 'A Russian harnesses slowly but rides fast.' This appears to be what is transpiring regarding the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
- "2023 appears to be shaping up as a year of continued violent confrontation leading to a decisive Russian military victory."[2]
Documents by Scott Ritter
Quotes by Scott Ritter
| Page | Quote | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| William Arkin | “the signature style of Arkin and his Pentagon handlers [is] a sort of Orwellian double-speak where one can rest assured whatever bold statement is made, the truth is the exact opposite.” | 1 September 2022 | Consortium News |
| Fog of war | “It is not uncommon for opposing parties to a conflict to put forward competing narratives about a given event, with each side believing itself to be accurate, yet their respective facts and the conclusions derived therefrom failing to align. However, sometimes one or both parties have something that they want hidden, an uncomfortable reality that should, from their perspective, never see the light of day. In that case, the fog of war becomes a deliberate smokescreen designed to mislead and misdirect an audience so that the truth is never found out. If only one party is participating in such a deception, the fact will generally find a way to reveal itself. But if both parties are engaged in deliberate obfuscation, it becomes virtually impossible to find the truth.” | 20 October 2023 | |
| NATO | “We had a moment in history, between 1988 and 1991, where we could have worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to make his vision of perestroika succeed. Instead, we allowed him to fail, without any real plan on how we would live with what emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Save for a short period of time during the Second World War where we needed the Soviet Union to defeat Germany and Japan, we have been in a continual state of political conflict with the Soviet Union. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, we viewed the Russian Federation more as a defeated enemy that we needed to keep down, than a friend in need of a helping hand up.” | 2021 | Dissident Voice |
| Yuri Nosenko | “The highlight of the event came when we entered an auditorium and saw a man onstage wearing a wig, a fake beard and mustache, and makeup designed to alter the angles of his face — either for his own protection or to heighten the Reagan-era theatrics, we couldn’t be sure. He was introduced as Yuri Nosenko, a defector from the KGB. Nosenko proceeded to regale us with tales of the wicked and bellicose Soviet Union, whose details coincidentally matched almost every talking point in the latest edition of Soviet Military Power. This was exciting stuff. For the better part of a week, we had been the recipients of dull presentations from DIA staff. Now we were listening to an actual acolyte of evil, whose indictment included not only the military elite but also the common people, and we soaked it up. Nosenko, in other words, had been dead wrong....I should have been even more skeptical about my own government’s motivations for showcasing Nosenko.” | 2017 |
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:The arrest of journalist Richard Medhurst and the fight to defend democratic rights | Article | 27 August 2024 | Robert Stevens | Now, in a move that would have been agreed to by PM Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Labour has pioneered the use of an amendment to the Terrorism Act passed by the Tories to once again attempt to silence and criminalise a journalist and political activist. The same course is being pursued by governments throughout the world. |
