E-mail a friendScott Ritter
airdate November 3, 2006
In '98, Scott Ritter resigned as chief weapons inspector for the U.N. Special Commission in Iraq and has been a vocal critic of U.S. policy. Currently a consultant, he's the author of several books, including Target Iran. Ritter was born into a military family and grew up all over the world. He joined the Marines after college and was a ballistic missile expert. Ritter is also a Gulf War veteran. The Iraqi government called him a spy and, in the U.S., he's been labeled both a hero and a maverick.
Scott Ritter
Tavis: Scott Ritter served as a top U.N. Weapons Inspector in Iraq during much of the 1990s. Prior to that, he served in the United States Marines and as an adviser to General Norman Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf War. His latest book is called "Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change." Scott Ritter, nice to have you back on the program.
Scott Ritter: Well, thanks for having me.
Tavis: Good to see you again. The minute I saw this book, my first thought was Iraq, though the book is about Iran, because with Iraq, they told us it's not about regime change. It's about weapons of mass destruction. We found out, of course, later on that it was all about regime change. This book says right up front "the truth about the White House's plans for regime change," target Iran.
This White House is saying now that we're not talking about regime change in Iran. It's about nuclear capacity, it's about weapons, it's about, you know, what they intend to do with them, but it's not about regime change. So who should I believe? Scott Ritter or the White House?
Ritter: Well, I'll tell you what. I'll put their 2002 National Security Strategy on the table, then I'll spring their June 2006 revision of it in which they say, "Regime change is our policy." So I mean, it's not about believing me. It's about the White House repudiating their own documentation. It's about the White House repudiating Condoleezza Rice's repeated testimony before different oversight committees in Congress where she has said, "Our policy in the Middle East is regional transformation."
Now that might be cute little semantics, but what does it mean to transform a region when the Bush administration defines the region as a collection of failed states and rogue states that can only be transformed once the governments of these failed states and rogue states are removed and democratic institutions brought in? So I would say that it is quite clear that the Bush administration policy is not only vis-à-vis Iraq, but also about Iran.
Tavis: So pardon my naiveté or my ignorance about this, but if the plan is for regime change, if that's the desire, the end result, why not say that?
Ritter: Well, because it would be very difficult to sell the American public. You see, the Bush administration has not -
Tavis: - but if you're making the case that these are a bunch of rogue, out of control, crazy people like Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, etc., etc., why can't you sell that?
Ritter: Well, you can say all that, but then you have to say that you don't go to war to get rid of crazy people. You go to war to get rid of threats that manifest themselves in a way that negatively impact the national security interests of the United States of America.
You know, it was easy to make the case that Saddam Hussein was a rogue dictator. However, we're not going to go to war to remove a rogue dictator from power unless that rogue dictator acts in a manner which threatens us. That's why we had to create the fiction of weapons of mass destruction.
Ahmadinejad is a poster boy for demonization. Every time he opens his mouth, it seems he's inserting his foot, so it's easy to point to him. But America is not going to go to war against Iran just because Ahmadinejad says silly things. But we might talk about engaging Iran in a military conflict if it can be demonstrated that they have a nuclear weapons program at least demonstrated in terms of creating the same sort of fiction that we created vis-à-vis Iraq.
Tavis: Hold the phone. You can't be suggesting to me that there is any scenario under which we'd march into Iran as we did Iraq.
Ritter: Oh, of course not. We're not going to march into Iran with two hundred thousand troops with an invasion plan that's focused on ground forces. We're talking about regime change through the application of military force.
The Iranian plan appears to be initiating conflict with a massive aerial bombardment where we say that we're not going to invade, but we're going to create the conditions inside Iran that facilitate regime change by not only bombing Iran to neutralize their nuclear capability, but increasing the size of the target deck, the points that are going to be bombed, to bring into play the regime targets itself.
We're going to decapitate the regime. We're going to neutralize their security establishment thereby liberating the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands. See, there's a feeling in Washington, D.C. amongst the Bush administration that the Iranian people are chomping at the bit waiting to be given an opportunity to wipe the Mullahs off the face of the earth.
Tavis: I've heard that story before. They said that about Iraq. They were going to greet us with kisses and hugs.
Ritter: That's right. But we're dealing with the Bush administration that has said that, because of the total accumulation of power, economic, diplomatic, military power, in the hands of the United States, we can create our own reality. This makes it very difficult to engage in a logical debate with them because, when you put out facts about the reality of Iran, they'll say you're dealing with old reality. You're not talking about the new reality, the new reality that we Americans can bring to the table by changing the way the world operates.
Unfortunately, new reality is fanciful fiction and it has manifested itself in this ongoing tragedy we call Iraq. I mean, October was one of the bloodiest months for Americans in Iraq and it's only going to get worse. Today "The New York Times" had a diagram that showed Iraq slipping towards chaos. That's the United States military saying this. It's tracking only in one direction, towards chaos. There's no reversing the course. We're getting beat in Iraq. It's a debacle and yet the Bush administration says we can persevere in Iran. It's lunacy.
Tavis: Speaking of lunacy, how do you respond to folk, with all due respect, who say that what Scott Ritter is suggesting is really fantasy, that there really is no way that we could at this moment with Iraq, with Afghanistan, there is no way that we could sustain any kind of attack militarily on Iran at the moment?
Ritter: Well, first of all, I wouldn't disagree with that notion that we cannot sustain any kind of military attack against Iran at the moment. That's why I call it lunacy. That's why I call the plan fanciful. But the critics who will say that are outsiders. Unless they're sitting down in the Pentagon at the planning table, unless they're at the White House situation room sitting down with Dick Cheney and George Bush and the planning staff, then their opinion, frankly speaking, doesn't count.
The only opinion that counts, whether or not we go to war with Iran, is the opinion of the Bush administration and they are putting this on the table. They are engaged in a process that will lead to the engagement of Iran militarily for the purpose of removing the regime from power.
Tavis: Let me ask a question now that I could have started with. Viewers watching now, I'm sure, are no doubt asking, where does Scott Ritter get this? I mean, we know who Scott Ritter is, but where does he get this?
Ritter: The information?
Tavis: Yeah.
Ritter: Well, first of all, you'd be surprised that eight-tenths of this is available to the public. All I've done is take the data that's out there in the form of official reports, official statements, and package it together. One of the things that frustrates me so much is that people say, "Well, we just didn't know." Well, if you don't know, then you're lazy. You're intellectually lazy because the data is there.
If you want to know the truth about Iran's nuclear weapons program or the allegations put out there, read the International Atomic Energy's web page. It lists all the inspection reports. It lists all the deliberations. It's all there in black and white, including the inspector's statement that there is no evidence in Iran to sustain any allegation report that their program is a nuclear weapons program. It's all there.
Now, twenty percent of the book, I did nonproliferation pretty much my entire career. I know all of the players, so I'm able to pick up the phone and call people, travel to Europe and travel to other places and meet people and confirm some of the data that's out there available. So, yes, there is some of the data that's unique that I bring to the table, but the vast majority of this book is just a repackaging of data that's available to every single American citizen.
Tavis: Okay, so if the weapons inspectors find, and we can read on the website, that there is no credible threat, back to your scenario earlier that the Bush administration would have to create, to in fact bring about regime change, the scenario again being that there's a credible threat here, if you're telling me the exact opposite is the truth, that there is no credible threat, how then do they go about even making that case?
Ritter: The same way they did with Iraq. When U.N. Weapons Inspectors said, well, wait a minute. We got ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of it, what did the Bush administration do? They didn't say that the job of the inspectors is to find the weapons. They said, "We know the weapons exist. Therefore, the job of the Iraqis is to prove that they don't exist." How do you prove a negative?
Now what the Bush administration has done, every time they talk, they say, "Iran's nuclear weapons program" as if it's a reality and then they say that "the onus is not on the inspectors to find the nuclear weapons program, but on Iran to declare it and make it available for dismantlement." So if the inspectors go into Iran and fail to find a nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration simply says that the Iranians are hiding it from them, that we need to redouble our inspection effort and we need to, you know, go in and intrude in an unacceptable fashion on Iranian sovereignty.
Tavis: You're a bright guy and that's evidenced by the work that you've done and the books that you've written, but with all due respect, you ain't the only guy in Washington who has a brain and who can read and who can do research. In fact, there are people in Congress who have full committees that are empowered to do the kind that you've done in this text.
I raise that not to be funny, but only because I'm curious as to why it is that we're not hearing this kind of frank conversation, this kind of frank challenge, to the White House coming from members of Congress who have resources that are much more significant than yours?
Ritter: Let's say I was Congressman Ritter - a nightmare scenario for some (laughter). We're talking fiction here. Congressman Ritter now gathers together with data and he has a hearing where he says this is the reality of it. The first thing that's going to happen to Congressman Ritter is that his political opponents - and there will be many - will come up and say, "He is sympathetic to Ahmadinejad." They'll put up a commercial that says, "Ritter, Ahmadinejad, working the same direction." Then they'll say, "Ahmadinejad, Iran, Osama bin Laden, terrorists. Ritter is a terrorist."
See, if you're explaining, you're losing. No politician wants to get up there and buck nearly thirty years of demonization, and the American public has been preprogrammed right now to accept at face value anything that's negative about the Iranian regime. So if you step up and try to speak truth to power, they're not going to listen to the facts. Right now, the debate people don't want the facts. They want to debate about the ideology, about the fiction.
Tavis: You know what that means, though, Scott. That means, though, that absent truth tellers in Congress who've got courage and conviction and commitment, we find ourselves in harm's way again and then everybody starts asking five years down the road how we got into this mess.
Ritter: This is one of the reasons why I wrote this book. This book is about informing people. I call it the peoples' national intelligence estimate. If you're waiting for Congress to turn to the CIA and say to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate that we will share with the people of the United States of American, you're waiting in vain because they don't want the facts.
It's too easy for a Congressman or Congresswoman or Senator to score political points by demonizing Iran. You score no political points by standing up and saying to the Bush administration, "Wait a minute. You're lying. You're misrepresenting facts." That puts you in political harm's way.
I wrote this book. I'm an Intelligence veteran. The same methodologies and techniques and analytic processes that I put together writing analyses for the president back in the 1980s, for the Secretary General of Nations and heads of states in the 1990s went into this book. This is to empower people because, if you're waiting for Congress to do it, you're waiting in vain.
Tavis: So once you read Scott Ritter's book as an everyday American who cares about the future of our country and the world, what do you do?
Ritter: Well, hopefully the first thing you do is be able to start to cut through the rhetoric that comes out of Washington, D.C. about Iran. Then you call up your representative and say, "Hey, I heard a statement made by either the Bush administration" or, if the representative is a Democrat, "a senior Democratic official. That's not the information I have. Where do you stand on this and where do you get your information?"
"If your information doesn't seem to have depth to it, why don't you have depth to it? Because the last time I checked, you have X number of constituents in the Armed Forces in the United States of America who may very well go into harm's way if we go to war. What are you doing about this? Do we go to war on a lark? Is it fun to you? Is it a game? Do you put your political career ahead of the lives of these men and women who serve in the Armed Forces or are you going to do your job?"
"Get the facts and speak truth to power. If you speak truth to power, I'll support you and I'll get everybody to support you. But if you're going to stand here and play politics as usual and put American lives at risk, I'm taking you down."
That's what you do as an American because that's the only way you truly serve as a citizen of this country.
Tavis: There's the text of your letter, courtesy of Scott Ritter, to your member of Congress. His latest book is called "Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change." He is, of course, the same author of "Iraq Confidential." Scott Ritter, as always, nice to have you on the program.
Ritter: Thank you, sir.
Tavis: Good to see you again. Up next on this program, actress Joey Lauren Adams. Stay with us.
Back to November 3, 2006