"Scott Ritter is a Jerk"

Watching Scott Ritter on Tim Russert tonight just reminds me anew that Ritter is a jerk. The Weekly Standard has already done an excellent piece on him, so I won’t try to detail his bizarre transformation. I can only conclude that Iraqi intelligence caught him involved in something and is blackmailing him. The alternative is to consider treason.

Ritter’s ability to apologize for Iraq now while denying he has changed his tune is scary. He talks about his statements in 1998 in the third person and essentially says he was just speculating and had no evidence for his statements. Those statements categorically asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam would never surrender his pursuit of those capabilities. Now he says Iraq is 95% disarmed and holds UN inspections as an end in themselves. He actually blames America for the ending of inspections in 1998. He concedes Saddam is awful yet believes any action aginst him is worse. No action but inspections under UN auspices is acceptable. For shame, Scott Ritter. Turn in your Marine Corps uniform. You dishonor the corps.

One thing that all this inspections talk reminds me of is that Saddam is stupid. If he had cooperated in 1991 and completely disarmed, in six months he’d have the UN certify him as disarmed and six months after that his programs would be up and running. He’d have nukes now. Luckily for us, he has resisted disarming and kept attention on him. The focus has to be on Saddam if we are to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Regime change is the order of the day. Invasion is the only option. Let’s go get him.

And for God’s sake, do we have to listen to Scott Ritter any more? He should be ashamed of himself. Put Tariq Aziz on TV and let the Iraqis make their case themselves.