Final Word: WMDs

If we have a winner on the WMD issue, it appears to be Scott Ritter, former marine and veteran Iraqi arms inspector. In the run up to the overthrow and occupation of Iraq, Ritter maintained that 95% of Iraq's weapons capacity (a capacity that would not be in existence without U.S. assistance over the years) had been destroyed after Gulf War I, when Saddam finally defied the empire. We might count Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector after Ritter in a close prognosticative second place. Of course, Ritter was routinely targetted by a war-hungry mainstream media as a whipping boy, a nutcase. Now the CIA has given the final word. The final word looks much like the story that Ritter has been telling for quite some time now: Hussein's weapons capacity was destroyed in 1991, and far from recovering in the decade following, due to murderous U.S.-led sanctions, it had only declined. Ritter responded to Colin Powell's February 5th, 2003 UN smoke-and-mirrors display in Robert Greenwald's documentary Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War. Ritter's response was: "I've been in those buildings; there's nothing there." This was no secret.

UPDATe: Here's Scott Ritter writing in the Independent on October 11, 2004 concerning the news.

I'm always amazed at the 'manufactured surprise' from the mainstream news media at such announcements as the CIA's. There was no shortage of voices that could attest to the WMD situation in Iraq, perhaps the most thoroughly-inspected country since the UN's founding.

I think we can all learn much from The Who:

I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss