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Note: I have posted information on the pro-Iraq movie Ritter made at the bottom. emersonj@gmail.comThe Ritter SmearAs the U.S. approached the Iraq War, one of the strongest and most effective opponents of the war was former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who basically turned out to be right on the facts of the matter -- that Saddam did not have a significant WMD capacity or program. In early 2003, however, news of a 2001 misdemeanor arrest in Colonie N. Y. for soliciting sex on the internet with an underage girl (for which charges were dropped) was leaked to the New York Daily News. Ritter continued to speak out, but he ceased to appear in the major media and also decided to cancel a trip to Iraq in order to keep his own reputation from harming the anti-war cause. I googled "'Scott Ritter' + Colonie" and checked through the first 60 stories. Below are what I've found in English from the legitimate media -- excluding Fox, Worldnet, and warblogger sites, etc., but including the Indymedia interview with Ritter. It was an interesting search: try it and you will see the warbloggers in full character-assassination mode, and you also will also see that coverage of Ritter was much better in French, Spanish, and Italian than it was in English. The timeline is simple. In 2001 Ritter was arrested in a sting operation. The case was dismissed and the records sealed. In January 2003 someone leaked the news, and it spread quickly through the media and triggered the warblogger slime machine. In February 2003 or thereabouts Ritter decided to take a lower profile, both to protect his family and for the good of the antiwar cause. Since then he has seldom been interviewed by the major media -- not even recently, after his point of view has been completely vindicated. According to the incomparable Bob Somerby, in the six months preceding February 2004, Ritter appeared on the major broadcast media exactly three times (and Gloria Borger slimed him on one of them). Rumsfeld and Rice each have made that many appearances in a single day. After February 2003, the Colonia story died -- a Google-news search brings up nothing. I don't have Lexis-Nexis, but searches of "'Scott Ritter' + 2004" turned up two mainstream American articles published after February 2003 -- one negative story in Slate and one piece by Ritter himself in the Christian Science Monitor. The results with "'Scott Ritter' 2003" were no better. The guy had been disappeared. There were many problems with the story from the beginning -- the charges (misdemeanors) had been dismissed and the records sealed, so nothing should have been on the news at all. But the damage had been done. New:
Tom Spencer reports that
the judge in Ritters sex case was Thomas Spargo, a Republican
operative involved in the Miami 2000 goon squad which stopped the
vote count: A google also finds an recent ethics charge: "NY Judge Allegedly Solicited Funds From Lawyers in His Court": http://www.judicialaccountability.org/articles/spargofightscommission.htm Original
leaked story: Capture of MSNBC story no longer to be found:
The Movie In 2001 (i.e., before 9/11) a movie was released arguing that the Iraq did not have WMD and was not a real threat. Ritter participated in making this movie and contributed to its financing, but most of the money was put up by an Iraqi-American named al-Khafaji with ties to the Saddam regime. At this time Ritter was a private citizen, not working for the U.N. or anyone else. During the 2002 debate about going to war, it was suggested that Ritter had received funds for the movie from Saddam (directly or indirectly) and that his change of opinion about the Iraqi threat between 1998 (when he quit the UN inspection team and still felt that Iraq was dangerous) and 2001 was the result of this money. Others argued that both Ritter and al-Khafaji were being blackmailed in some way (since al-Khafaji still had family in Iraq). However, no one came up with any real evidence for any of these claims, and it is doubtful that Ritter profited from the movie. Based on the links below, it seems that while there was considerable criticism of Ritter before the story of his arrest was released, and more than one story presented Ritter as a sort of oafish loose cannon, he was getting coverage and still being taken seriously. But after February, 2003 he basically disappeared.
Captured documents
reveal the Iraqi intention of bribing Ritter, but not that he
actually was bribed: July 2001 BBC report on Ritter and
film:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1446656.stm Australian review of the film: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/26/1048653744773.html American review of the film: http://www.sfbg.com/37/02/art_film_sands.htmlOct 2002 -- Washington Post
portrays Ritter as unstable, but does not allege law violation: Oct. 2002 speech by Ritter: http://traprockpeace.org/recorder101602.html Nov. 2002 New York Times (via Truthout): http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/11.25D.bearak.ritter.htm LA Times, Sept, 2002: A couple of characteristic attacks on Ritter: http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2002/09/12.html (Reed Irvine, Sept 12 , 2002)
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