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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Why doesn't Scott Ritter just accept lies like a good American? Former Marine and weapons inspector of Iraq for the United Nations Scott Ritter is critical of VP Dick Cheney's recent bout of bellicosity. Speaking on yesterday's edition of PBS' NewsHour, Ritter said: what Vice President Cheney said to the American people [RE weapons inspections] is tantamount to a lie. The CIA knows that, Hussein Kamal, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein when he defected clearly stated that under his instructions all weapons programs were eliminated. This is fact. He didn't lead us to a document. The Iraqi government did. The bottom line is inspection worked.RE Iraq's ability to produce weapons since the removal of inspectors, Ritter said: I made it clear when I testified to the Senate in 1998 that Iraq could reconstitute significant aspects of its weapons program within six months of inspectors being withdrawn. It's been four years, so absolutely Iraq has some potential. We have to keep in mind that the weapons they had in 1991 came from factories that had been destroyed. So for Iraq to produce weapons today they would have had to reconstitute a manufacturing base since the time inspectors left in December 1998. That's not simply done.Your blogger doesn't aggree with Ritter on everything. He wants to contain Iraq while I believe that any such attempt is just one method of the United States trying to control Iraq and deny that the U.S. has a moral right to do that. Still containment would be preferable to the U.S. using Iraq as a target range "because," as I said yesterday, "it can and to show the world that Al Haig's country is in charge." (O.K., I'll admit it, that is one of the funniest things I think I've ever written and I just had to use it once more but, in the interests of moving forward, I hereby swear to my readers that they will never read me write on this blog again save for nostalgic purposes.) (Thanks to Les Dabney for the link.) UPDATE:Andrew Edwards has provided not one but two reasons to doubt Ritter's honesty. (8/30/2002 11:49 a.m.) |