Scott Ritter
Scott Ritter
William Scott Ritter Jr.was a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, and later a critic of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter stated that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destructioncapabilities, becoming "the loudest and most credible skeptic of the Bush administration’s contention that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction." He received harsh criticism from the political establishment but became a popular...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth15 July 1961
CountryUnited States of America
Scott Ritter quotes about
This refusal means we can't carry out our inspections -- it is a failure of Iraq to comply with obligations,
This refusal ... in effect means we cannot carry out our inspection and is a failure of Iraq to comply with its obligations.
An ACOD means that it's expunged from the record, as if it never happened,
I love my country more than anything. I spent 12 years in the United States Marine Corps. I know what it means to defend this country.
Iraq has not been disarmed 100 percent [but] in terms of what they [Iraqis] have accomplished there are no meaningful weapons or weapons production capability in Iraq today.
If you call yourself an American that means that you have embraced the constitution, because that is what an American is. A citizen of the United States of America is someone who has sworn an oath of allegiance to that document, to the words, to the ideals of that document. Right now we have citizens who don't even understand what that document is.
We had the proof. We couldn't present it. And that's where we are today.
We had the information. We had the goods on the Iraqis, clear and irrefutable evidence of Iraq's prohibited activities. We caught them red-handed.
It is complicated because you need members of all fields, including chemists, physicists and biologists. They are the heart and soul of the process.
I'll put my record of service up against anyone, bar none.
I have a credibility on the subject that most people don't.
We have thousands of American veterans who continue to suffer,
You know we can't expect the inspectors to accomplish anything in a country the size of Iraq.
When I resigned, I put the U.S. Government on notice that I'm going to stick to policy issues, that I have no intention of going out and blowing the cover off of the intelligence operations, that those are truly sensitive and they should not be exposed.