Ritter Again Charges Britain and U.S. Manipulated UNSCOM to Justify Air Strikes
December 24, 1998 - 0:0
TEHRAN A U.S. former member of the UNSCOM UN weapons inspection team in Iraq Wednesday restated his charges that Britain and the United States had manipulated UNSCOM's work to justify their air strikes on Iraq. Scott Ritter said in a telephone interview with the BBC that the data presented by UNSCOM's Australian chief, Richard Butler, and used by Washington and London to justify the raids was outdated by months, perhaps years.
I can guarantee you that every piece of information used to support this most recent inspection was of a dated nature, Ritter said. He blamed the U.S. and Butler, saying, I think that both bear responsibility. Ritter said Butler had allowed the United States to manipulate the work of UNSCOM in such a fashion as to justify an air strike. There is no problem with the deadlines, but there is a problem with the manipulation of the inspection process, he said.
The inspection process has been used as a tool to justify military action. Ritter said, I believe this inspection was rushed through and the sites weren't chosen for disarmament reasons but rather to be provocative in nature. So that Iraq would respond in predictable fashion, which it did and that response would be used as a justification for a military action Ritter, who left his UNSCOM post in August after accusing the UN and the U.S. of not supporting the disarmament team's work in Iraq, said shortly after the air strikes began on December 16 that the Butler report had been a Washington setup.
Ritter said Butler was told by U.S. officials as he completed the report to sharpen the language in his report to justify the bombing. Ritter, in an interview with the New York Post last week, also accused the Clinton administration of a wag the dog approach in Iraq, referring to a film in which the president's staff creates a fictitious war to detract attention from sexual abuse charges being leveled against the president.
The Anglo-U.S. attack on Iraq coincided with debate in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Clinton on charges stemming from sexual improprieties with a White House intern.
I can guarantee you that every piece of information used to support this most recent inspection was of a dated nature, Ritter said. He blamed the U.S. and Butler, saying, I think that both bear responsibility. Ritter said Butler had allowed the United States to manipulate the work of UNSCOM in such a fashion as to justify an air strike. There is no problem with the deadlines, but there is a problem with the manipulation of the inspection process, he said.
The inspection process has been used as a tool to justify military action. Ritter said, I believe this inspection was rushed through and the sites weren't chosen for disarmament reasons but rather to be provocative in nature. So that Iraq would respond in predictable fashion, which it did and that response would be used as a justification for a military action Ritter, who left his UNSCOM post in August after accusing the UN and the U.S. of not supporting the disarmament team's work in Iraq, said shortly after the air strikes began on December 16 that the Butler report had been a Washington setup.
Ritter said Butler was told by U.S. officials as he completed the report to sharpen the language in his report to justify the bombing. Ritter, in an interview with the New York Post last week, also accused the Clinton administration of a wag the dog approach in Iraq, referring to a film in which the president's staff creates a fictitious war to detract attention from sexual abuse charges being leveled against the president.
The Anglo-U.S. attack on Iraq coincided with debate in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Clinton on charges stemming from sexual improprieties with a White House intern.