"War on Iraq" is a Republican military expert's analysis and rejection of the American government's current justification for invading Iraq. All Americans, especially politicians, should pay close attention to this book for two reasons. First, the arguments contained in this book were made by the person who knows the status of Iraq's weapons program and the potential threat posed by Iraq better than anyone else. Scott Ritter is a former intelligence officer and Marine veteran of the Gulf War. When the war ended, Ritter played a critical and highly effective role in inspecting and destroying the Iraqi weapons program. Second, Ritter is a Republican who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, and who clearly harbors no liberal agenda. If this guy is telling us that the coming war with Iraq is unwarranted and extremely dangerous, we had better take him seriously. Ritter's arguments are summed up below.
IRAQ HAS NO SERIOUS WEAPONS CAPABLITY
Ritter demonstrates that Iraq's chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons were thoroughly dismantled. Rebuilding these programs is easily detectable, and if some chemical or biological agents evaded detection, they have probably exceeded their shelf life.
IRAQ DOES NOT HAVE A FUNDAMENTALIST GOVERNMENT
As evil and nasty as Saddam Hussein might be, he is a secular ruler who has gone to great and brutal lengths to repress religious fundamentalism in Iraq. He has no interest in perpetuating Islamic fundamentalism of the sort that Bin Laden espouses.
SADAM HUSSEIN AND BIN LADEN ARE ENEMIES
Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden are enemies. Saddam Hussein outlawed Wahabbism the fundamentalist sect of Islam to which Bin Laden belongs, and Bin Laden declared Saddam Hussein an apostate who should be killed. Even if these two were sympathetic to each other, Ritter proves that there isn't a shred of evidence of a cooperation between Iraq and Al Quaeda.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT BIN LADEN WANTS
An American invasion of Iraq has an excellent chance of infuriating other Islamic nations and creating a West vs. Islam polarization.
MORE TERRORISM PLEASE
Even if America has a speedy victory in Iraq (Ritter, a twelve year Marine veteran and former intelligence officer states that this is highly unlikely this time around), extremism and resentment against the U.S. will only increase in the Middle East. More likely, this war will generate tremendous civilian casualties in Iraq and hundreds or thousands of U.S. casualties. If, in a worse case scenario, America resorts to tactical nuclear weapons to help it's pinned down military forces-something Bush has publicly stated as a possibility. Ritter argues that if this happens he can guarantee that Iran and Pakistan will hand over nuclear devices to terrorists and we will experience a nuclear bomb detonation in America within decades.
DEMOCRACY IS IMPOSSIBLE IN IRAQ
Iraq contains a Shiite majority, which shares powerful fundamentalist beliefs with Iran, and which the U.S. definitely does not want to come to power. The U.S. can't put the Kurdish minority in power because Turkey, which has its own issues with the Kurds, would never allow it, which just leaves the Sunni minority from whose ranks Saddam rose to power. The only realistic result, according to Ritter, is another Sunni dictator who is as repressive as Saddam.
IRAQIS WON'T RISE UP AGAINST SADAM
Even if Iraqi civilians ignore the fact that the U.S. bombed, starved and killed many of them during the past ten years, the state apparatus that Saddam built has had more than twenty years to seep into their lives and is too well entrenched.
WHAT ABOUT SADDAM'S BOMB MAKER
Ritter quickly proves that Saddam's alleged bomb maker Khidre Hamza is a fake who never headed Iraq's nuclear program (Jafar al Jafar did) and who did not possess adequate knowledge to develop nuclear weapons. When Hamza first defected in 1994, his intelligence was rejected by the CIA and the intelligence community at large.
HITLER DID IT
Ritter correctly points out that while the justification for a first strike may resonate with many Americans still wounded by the memory of 9/11, it is the same excuse Hitler used for attacking Poland. The world may well see an American "first strike" in the same light.
HOW DO YOU SPELL "NEO-CONSERVATIVE"
According to Ritter, you spell it, "Rumsfeld", "Wolfowitz", and "Perle". Donald Rumsfeld, is of course the Bush Administration's Secretary of Defense, while Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle are part of a conservative think tank that is convinced that Iraq is a threat to both Israel and the United States and that is ideologically committed to toppling Saddam Hussein regardless of the potential consequences. These ideologues, according to Ritter, are the key decision makers with respect to Gulf War II, The Vengeance and they have effectively terminated all government debate on the subject. Ritter, who is also a Republican, astutely argues that extremism is the most dangerous way to approach an already volatile Middle East.
FACTS ARE A STUBBORN THING
Unlike any of his critics including the Richard Butler, the careerist who ineptly headed UNSCOM after the Gulf War, Ritter can and does document every argument he makes. Journalists have never found a single error in any of Ritter's claims and his critics are unwilling to debate him in public. Ritter's stance on this issue made him the subject of at least one intense FBI investigation in which he was cleared. Ritter sums up his approach with John Adams's famous statement that "facts are a stubborn thing."
