Ridder Redux - George Dawson

Ridder Redux - George Dawson wrote this post on the Minnesota Politics/National listserv earlier today:

The Wisconsin Project has numerous documents relevant to this issue, including Mr. Ritter's 1998 testimony before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees. In that testimony he described his resignation from UNSOM as being out of frustration "because the U.N. Security Council, and the United States, as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq". He also describes some conflict with a member of the Clinton administration at the time as well as the belief that the administration was undermining the efforts of the inspectors. His conclusion about the situation in Iraq at the time was:

"Iraq, today is not disarmed, and remains an ugly threat to its neighbors and to world peace. Those Americans who think that this is
important and that something should be done about it have to be deeply disappointed in our leadership."

An interesting counterpoint is a less publicized piece in Science magazine, where a number of weapons inspectors agreed to be interviewed under condition of anonymity. According to that document it took the inspectors four years (1991 - 1995) to make any headway
at all. At that point it was apparent that there was 17 tons of culture media unaccounted for. A relevant quote from the article: "U.N. investigators were just starting to get a feel for the top secret program's broad outlines when Iraq slammed the door on them in 1998". A list of biological agents is included in the table for that article.

I would like to call again, for our elected officials to state in clear terms what is known about Iraq's WMD...partisanship and a premature jump into political thinking and rhetoric are not the best way to approach this problem. Neither is keeping quiet.

I thought this post stated it very nicely.

Posted by Mitch at September 10, 2002 02:12 PM