I support that the N.I.
E. was careful to say it's possible that they may get some fissile material from a third country.
It's possible they may solve their problems.
But I can tell you, John Negroponte was telling Congress privately in the last few months, it could be as long as ten years before they really are in a position to get a bomb.
This city looks far from where I'm here.
I wonder who'll survive out of our D.A.
G.
Alright, folks, welcome back to Antiwar Radio and Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
Our next guest is the former U.N. weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, author of the books Target, Iran, Waging Peace, and Iraq Confidential.
Welcome back to the show, sir.
Hey, pleasure to be here.
That's good to talk to you again.
And it was almost a year ago, about 11 months ago, we last spoke, and the premise of the entire conversation basically was that Iran's nuclear program is simply a pretext for regime change.
That America's dispute with that country has actually nothing to do with them making nuclear bombs and everything to do with our government wanting a different government in Iran.
Is that still your case?
And to follow that up, do you think that the recently released N.I.
E. will serve as a major obstacle to that policy?
Well, it's definitely the case.
I mean, the findings of the N.I.
E. with some major differences pretty much reflect the findings that I put out in my book, Target, Iran, last year.
I mean, it's no secret, it's been no secret that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program as we speak.
It's nice that the intelligence community has finally depoliticized itself enough so that it can put out, you know, that finding.
But it doesn't change the basic underlying policy position of the Bush administration, which continues to be regime change in Tehran.
The Bush administration finds the theocracy in Tehran to be incompatible with its vision of how the Middle East should be operating.
And they continue to push for, you know, for their agenda.
You know, that's why you have Condoleezza Rice, you know, changing the direction of the debate, slamming them for human rights violations today.
And you continue to have the White House working with Congress to make a case for intervention based upon Iran's alleged status as a state sponsor of terror.
The nuclear weapons issue was, you know, a red herring that was being put out there by the Bush administration to alarm the American public.
And the American media bought into it to the point that they would find intervention in Iran, while distasteful, to be a tragic necessity.
They're not going to be able to use the nuclear card anymore, but they will continue to hype up a case that Iran is a threat that's incompatible and must be dealt with.
Well, I mean, it is quite a red herring if you can get the American people afraid of, you know, the smoking gun as a mushroom cloud.
That might justify war.
But without that red herring, do you think that the political calculations have changed in D.C., that it will be more difficult for them to get away with it politically?
Absolutely not.
You just had Senator Rodham, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others vote for a Senate resolution that designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard command as a state sponsor of terror.
This is the same senator who voted to give the president war powers authority twice.
Both of these resolutions authorized the president to use military force against any nation, group, individual that is involved in terror.
And so the bottom line is the case for intervention still holds.
They're just going to change the justification away from nuclear to terrorism.
When we live in a nation that's gripped by the so-called global war on terror, we have the Supreme Court of the United States paralyzed as we speak, not knowing how to deal with detainees who, it's proven, have been unjustly held for years.
Years.
But they're afraid to confront the executive branch because the executive branch has to defend us from terrorism.
So while, yeah, the nuclear boogeyman might be gone, the terrorism boogeyman is still there, alive and well and living.
And I think it's a very important point, almost a legal and technical point there that you're making, I think referring to the original authorization for the president to basically hunt down and kill those who carried out the September 11th attacks and to deter further acts of terrorism against us.
And that this Kyle Lieberman bill and the designation of Iran's military as a terrorist force could serve as the legal pretext to allow them to go to war under the 2001 authorization against Osama bin Laden.
And the 2002 against Saddam Hussein continues the very same language.
And so the scary thing is you have people like David Addington, the legal advisor to the office of the vice president, who says constitutionally the green light has been given.
And there are many in Congress who acknowledge that there's little they can do to stop this president because their hands are tied to giving the president all the authority he needs under the constitution to carry out military action.
Unless Congress suddenly awakens and reinvigorates the notion of separate but equal branches of government and asserts itself in a very definitive manner here, this is an administration that has shown a proclivity in the past to strike out blindly against its perceived enemies.
And it has designated Iran.
And remember, language is important to these people.
The national security strategy in the United States, circa March 2006, designates Iran as the number one threat to the national security of the United States of America, no fewer than 14 times.
Right?
Okay, now, let's do, let's, we have time, if you have time, I'd like to break these issues down a little bit in terms of the nuclear program first, and then hopefully we can get back to Iran killing our guys in Iraq and all those kinds of accusations.
But in terms of the nuclear program, I interviewed Dr. Gordon Prather yesterday, and we talked about it, and it seems like best information, I also talked to Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer, seems like best information that Iran ever had a nuclear weapons program was this stolen laptop.
And that Dr. Prather seems to think that the information on this stolen laptop was bogus anyway, and actually he was pretty specific in that the accusation was that the Revolutionary Guards Force had hired a private contractor to do laser enrichment of yellowcake to tetrafluoride.
Whereas Prather says that at the Ifshafam plant in Iran, they already had the ability to enrich the yellowcake, not just to tetrafluoride, but to hexafluoride, and that's what you need to put in your enrichment facilities in order to get the uranium-235.
And that they had declared that to the IAEA long before they were even required to, which basically he was saying, why would they have this secret program to enrich yellowcake to half as much as they can enrich it at this other place when they're enriching it by the ton at this other place right out in the open in front of the IAEA?
Am I making sense?
Is that right?
Can you weigh in, please?
You're right.
The bottom line is the United States, and this is a curious thing, and that's why I caveated right up front.
I said I'm in agreement with many, but not all, of the findings.
The notion that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, and that's an important designation there, it's a critical designation, is unfounded with hard, substantive fact.
It continues to be an assertion, an assessment of raw data, which of and of itself doesn't say nuclear weapons program.
Even if you presuppose for a second it's a legitimate finding, that the intelligence community got a coup and did this, as opposed to it being something else, people who have seen the data on the laptop, I haven't, I have spoken to people who have, say it's ambiguous at best.
It doesn't say nuclear weapons.
It talks about technologies and processes that could be used for enrichment, could be used for other purposes.
It doesn't come right out and say this is unique to a weapon.
It also has some warhead design information, but again, it doesn't point to a weapon program.
And then you combine this with intercepted communications, and I guess they recently got ahold of some internal memorandum within the Iranian military, where you have people in the military very upset that the civilian leadership shut down certain programs.
Again, the programs are not identified as nuclear weapons programs.
They're programs that the military was carrying out in a secret basis.
Perhaps a parallel enrichment program, who knows, and they were shut down.
But this concept that the Iranians were pursuing a nuclear weapons program that was shut down in 2003 continues to be only an assessment.
It's not a statement of fact, and this is what people need to understand, because the Bush administration continues to pound away at the notion that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, that it may be shut down today, but that they could restart it.
You hear the president make this statement over and over again, and now their big contention is Iran must come clean about the program it had.
Well, what if Iran never had a program?
I mean, how can you become clean about something you did?
This is the same logic that the Bush administration used in December 2002, when Iraq was required to submit a declaration about the totality of its WMD programs.
And prior to submission, the U.S. said, if Iraq fails to declare its biological weapons program, ongoing biological weapons program, and tell us where the stockpiles of biological agents are that we know to exist, then we will deem the entire submission as a fraud.
Well, Iraq submitted a declaration that we don't have a bioprogram.
There are no stockpiles to declare.
You guys know everything there is to know.
And the U.S. said, you're liars, and they moved forward.
And it turned out that Iraq was telling the truth.
And I'm pretty sure that's what's happening today.
Iran is saying, there was never a nuclear weapons program.
We've told you what we have, but the U.S. continues to cry wolf.
So while this NIE is being celebrated for basically confirming what you've been saying, that they don't have a nuclear weapons program, really the half-truth is also triumphant here.
And the meme is set that, well, even the Cheney debunkers over at CIA agree that there used to be one.
Well, they say there used to be one.
Again, they provide no proof whatsoever.
It's an assessment on their part.
And again, it's part of this groupthink.
I mean, I think it's a good step that the intelligence community, when called upon to determine what Iran is doing right now, has come up with an accurate assessment.
But the foundation, their springboard, their starting point continues to be flawed.
Groupthink that there was a nuclear weapons program.
Again, unless someone can say, here it is, the smoking gun, I think we have to go with where the facts lead us.
And right now, the facts definitely don't lead us towards Iran ever having a nuclear weapons program.
Now, forgive me because it's been a year since I've read Target Iran, and I forget whether you cover this topic in your book, but do you know the origin of the stolen laptop?
Did this come from the Mujahideen al-Khalq and the National Council for Resistance in Iran?
No, it's much more nefarious.
And again, they haven't been specific about exactly where it came from, but apparently it came to the United States through a variety of cutouts.
It's not as though a U.S. agent actually grabbed this computer.
It had something to do with a cousin of a cousin of a cousin of a cousin, which automatically makes this a suspect laptop.
I'm always a little nervous about, you know, I used to be intelligence honest for a number of years, and I was always nervous about the golden source, you know, whenever somebody came in and said, hey, look, I got it, man, it answers all our questions.
And I said, well, wait a minute, all our questions are answered by one item.
And there is some concern that Iranian resistance was involved in getting this laptop into the market.
You know, we're supposed to, in the intelligence business, operate with three separate sources before we validate any given piece of information.
And again, we have the United States acting on suspect data of incomplete nature and forming a definitive conclusion.
That's just dead wrong.
In the old days, I could tell you, that just wouldn't be allowed.
If I were director of the CIA, some heads would roll if somebody came up to me with a national intelligence estimate based on a single source of dubious quality.
I mean, do you think we would have learned our lesson with curveball?
Now, something that I know that you've, a point you've made repeatedly that Dr. Gordon Prather also likes to make is that the parts of the Iranian nuclear program that were secret, that were revealed by the NCRI and the MEK types, apparently you both agree, correct me if I'm wrong, that this really wasn't an indication that it was a weapons program.
The secrecy was because the Clinton administration was doing everything they could to twist the arms of the Russians and the Chinese and everyone else to prevent them from providing any nuclear technology to the Iranians.
So then they decided to go underground and start buying AQ Khan stuff on the black market and that sort of thing.
Is that right?
That's correct, and that's an assessment that I put forward in Target Iran.
It's an accurate assessment.
The facts line up.
I mean, when you throw the facts on the table, sort of swish them around and then see which way they take you, the facts point in the direction that cause and effect analysis is that Iran had a declared nuclear energy program.
In fact, many U.S. companies and German companies and other companies were involved in providing technology for this.
It was declared.
This is back in 1978-79.
With the fall of the Shah, this program went dormant, and then in the mid-1980s, Iran tried to revive it, tried to breathe new life into these dormant contracts, and the United States prevented this from happening.
As the 1990s comes in, the Clinton administration embarks on a policy of so-called dual containment containing Iraq and Iran, and part of the dual containment was to deny Iran access to technology, which is legally authorized to have under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But unilateral American economic sanctions penalized foreign companies for investing in Iran, and many foreign companies dropped out.
This meant that the only way Iran could move forward with its declared nuclear program was to go to the black market.
The IAEA in its September report says pretty much just that.
They say, look, we've talked to the Iranians, they've provided documentation, they've done a cause and effect analysis, and the bottom line is it seems that the genesis of this nuclear program is an Iranian reaction to American sanctions.
Not some desire to have a secret program to produce nuclear weapons, but rather to acquire technology for a program it says it desperately needs to be economically viable in the decades to come, as its energy resources dry up, as the demands for the need to export energy are trumped by the need to consume energy domestically.
Iran has made the case for many years now that it needs an alternative energy resource, and nuclear energy was the one that they chose.
Now, I know you're a former Marine and a very tough-minded guy, and you'll be able to take this as I play devil's advocate.
Somehow, Scott Ritter, you've been duped into being apologists.
You're soft on this terrible theocratic enemy state of America over on the other side of the sea against your own country.
What gives?
Well, I would say that my track record proves otherwise.
First and foremost, my demonstrated willingness to put it all on the line to defend my country, I would say those who challenge my patriotism do so at their own risk.
The fact is, as somebody who has worn the uniform, who knows what it means to be in war for my country, one has a duty and responsibility to ensure that the cause we ask men and women to die for is a cause worthy of that sacrifice.
That means that one has to determine that a genuine threat does, in fact, exist as an intelligence officer, a proven intelligence officer with a proven track record.
I mean, I'm not bragging here, but I have to say, I haven't been wrong yet, and I'm not just talking about Iraq and Iran.
I'm talking about 12 years of providing high-level assessments to commanders-in-chief and a number of administrations.
My methodology has proven to be a good methodology.
I tend to be fact-based and am able to discern dead-on accurate predictions of what had happened and what is going to happen.
Again, woe be it to those who seek to question me on this single issue, unless you can come to the game with a little bit more than just your innate skepticism.
There needs to be more than just ideology at play here.
If one wants to challenge me, bring facts up.
Don't call me a dupe.
My track record proves completely the opposite.
If you want to demonstrate that I'm flawed in my analysis, then bring to the table your own analysis, and no one's able to do that.
Yeah, well, you know, I apologize for even turning the interview that way and making you defend yourself like that, but in my estimation, you're probably the best one to make this case.
Nobody's going to compare you to Dennis Kucinich and say, well, you know how Scott Ritter and Dennis Kucinich are about these things or something like that.
Well, anyway, I think you make a great case, and the fact that it's you making it is a very important part of it, so that's why I wanted to give you an opportunity to go through that.
Now, one thing that you mentioned there, and this is something that is worth emphasizing when you were talking about the Clinton administration's obstruction in the 1990s and so forth, the Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees the Iranians the right to engage in nuclear activities for peaceful purposes, and our country and their country are both members in good standing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and we're violating it, right?
Well, I would say there's a better case to be made for American violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, especially intent.
I mean, when it comes to the letter of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that's a much more difficult thing to prove, but the intent, especially the part that talks about the powers possessing nuclear weapons promising to do their best to disarm themselves, you know, we're definitely in violation of that.
Iran is guilty of a violation, a material breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
They embarked on certain activities in the 1990s and early 2000s, a time period that needed to be declared and weren't declared.
But Iran has come clean and has acknowledged this and has done everything possible to demonstrate why they did what they did and how what they did was not a threat to international peace and security.
Under no circumstances can one make a valid case that Iran's non-compliance therefore now forever disbars them from protection under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
And therefore continues to allow Iran as a signatory state full access to the technologies needed not only to enrich uranium but for the full fuel cycle, meaning reprocessing and its totality.
This is a legal right that Iran has, and it's sort of strange that the United States and the Security Council seek to deny Iran this right while remaining mute over the myriad of nations who have failed to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and who have developed nuclear weapons on their own in violation of the intent and will of the international community.
I'm speaking about India, Pakistan, Israel.
You know, there's silence when it comes to these three nations, but Iran, who is doing its best to comply, is suddenly not only criticized but severely so.
Now my understanding was that their secret activities actually weren't in violation of the IAEA because they weren't required to declare the stuff until they introduced material actually into the field.
Right, but one of the problems is they actually did introduce a uranium hexafluoride stock into a centrifuge without declaring it.
That's the material breach.
It was a small-scale experiment, and they used Chinese-provided uranium hexafluoride, and Iran admits they shouldn't have done it.
And that was back in what year?
This would have been in 2001, 2002.
And of course we all know they've attempted to come more than completely clean a hundred times since then.
They've acknowledged this and explained it, and frankly speaking, the IAEA isn't losing any sleep over it.
Now speaking of them coming clean, and the IAEA not losing sleep, Al-Barada has said all along that he's seen no indication, much less evidence, that there's a nuclear weapons program there.
And you mentioned the September report where he said we have this new agreement with the Iranians where they're coming clean on the very last of our most innocuous questions and detailed important ones, I guess, too.
And everything's going along swimmingly, and we expect to have our final report done by the end of the year accounting for every bit of this stuff, presumably even the green salt accusations about the laptop and the rest of it.
And it was Gordon Prather's suspicion that that was really, partially at least, behind the timing of this NIE is to try to preempt Al-Baradei's report with this CIA report saying that there used to be a program which Al-Baradei is expected to debunk here in a week or so.
Well, there can be no doubt that the elements within the Bush administration have been delaying this NIE, the release of the NIE for some time, primarily the office of the vice president, but including Stephen Hadley, the national security advisor, for a long time now.
Hadley didn't want this NIE out there because it was better for the Bush administration to operate in an ill-defined, nebulous, accusatory environment where they could point a finger at Iran and say whatever they wanted, and there was no national intelligence estimate, formal documentation to get in the way.
Suddenly, they released it.
Now, why?
Why all of a sudden?
It doesn't mean, you know, people are saying this is a declaration of victory for the moderates.
No.
This is a, as I think you mentioned and Dr. Prather mentioned, this is a deliberate act by the Bush administration, and one has to say, well, then what's the reasoning behind it?
And I think it's just, while it's speculative on my part, it makes sense that this was a preemptive action against ElBaradei's report, because now when ElBaradei releases the report, the United States will say, but, you know, the IAEA doesn't even know anything about this other nuclear weapons program.
You know, what good is there?
Yeah, they talk about something, but it's just, they're dupes.
The fact is, Iran had a program the IAEA didn't know about and the IAEA doesn't have any information on, and therefore it's very possible for Iran to reconstitute this program outside of detection of the IAEA's inspection activities.
All right, now let's switch gears here to the Iranians or the biggest terrorists in the world, and specifically their fight against our guys in Iraq.
You were a UN weapons inspector in Iraq for a long time, but I also know from reading your book Endgame years ago that you really did master the history of that country and the different religious and tribal and ethnic splits and that sort of thing.
And I wonder if you can comment on this riddle for me.
The government has been trying to make me believe for a year, pretty much since last January, that the Iranian government is either backing the Sunni insurgency on some days, or they're backing rogue elements of the Mahdi army, which are said to be tied to Iran, even though my understanding is that the Mahdi army are the nationalists least tied to Iran among the Shiite factions, and that it's actually our government's best allies in Iraq, the Dawa party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, who are tied to Iran, that they're actually backing our best friends in Iraq rather than our enemies.
Can you please straighten me out?
Yeah, look, Iran and Iraq fought a vicious eight-year war back in the 1980s, and Iran paid heavily.
And the last thing the Iranian government wants is a post-Saddam Iraq to emerge that continues the anti-Iranian sentiments of the Saddam era.
And so the Iranian government has invested a tremendous amount of effort and resources into getting a government in place that assures peaceful coexistence between Iran and Iraq.
And this is the government that indeed is holding power today, the government of Nurya Maliki.
Prior to that was Jafari.
And you mentioned the Supreme Council, the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and then also Dawa, two, not just pro-Iran, two organizations built by Iran during the Iran-Iraq war to take on Saddam.
And they're in power today.
So now the United States government wants us to believe that the Iranians are basically at war with themselves, that they're, on the one hand, you know, trying to support this government that they've actually installed.
And on the other hand, they're trying to undermine this government by providing assistance to elements that are sworn to see this government collapse, both the Sunni insurgency and the Mahdi army of Baghdad al-Sadr.
And that's whatsoever what the United States has said.
Look, the U.S. has fallen flat on so many occasions when it comes to trying to, you know, pen the blame for all that ails us in Iraq on the Iranians.
You remember, of course, the Quds Force, the element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, which the United States says is responsible for, you know, funding and training of the anti-American insurgency.
You know, we've been capturing Quds Force members for months now.
Every time we capture, there's a high-profile briefing given by a member of the American military who's out there saying, we've got the goods now, we've captured these Quds guys, this is proof the Iranians are supporting this insurgency, et cetera.
And then about a month later, somebody else will say, you know, we still don't have any direct evidence of Iran providing this assistance.
You go, wait a minute, what about their briefing last month?
Well, nobody's talking about that.
Now, suddenly we find out they're releasing all these Quds people.
They say they're of no inherent intelligence value and they don't pose a security threat to the United States.
Well, wait a minute, if they were Quds Force, according to the United States, this was the number one threat to American troops and now we're releasing the totality of the people we captured?
It means, yet again, the United States has overplayed its analytical hand, hyping up a threat where none exists.
The problem in Iraq is not Iran.
The problem in Iraq is the American occupation.
That's the problem.
And so long as America remains in Iraq, there will be those inside Iraq who have forsworn themselves to oppose the continued occupation.
And the United States needs to recognize that, that we're responsible for the violence and the anti-American sentiment.
This isn't something that's being ginned up by Iran.
Now, let me ask you this and I'm sure you'll have an opinion.
Well, let's see, I guess one theory is that the only reason that the United States continues to back the Iranians and really has backed the Iranian parties in Iraq this whole time is because they need us.
Whereas Muqtada al-Sadr, the Sunni insurgency types, all demand immediate withdrawal.
And then, of course, another theory is that, no, the neoconservatives meant to smash Iraq into at least three pieces and destroy the largest Arab state in the neighborhood deliberately.
And this was really the plan all along was to provoke a Sunni insurgency here and ethnic violence there and Shiite death squads on this side and the Sunni insurgency now and the awakening and that sort of thing in order to destroy Iraq.
One or the other, a little bit of both?
What do you think?
Neither.
What aspect of the American involvement in Iraq leads one to believe that there is the competency and foresight existing in the Bush administration to carry out this clever manipulation of Sunni destroying Shia?
And what part of the Bush administration makes you think that they support people created?
I'm a big believer in the incompetency theory, that the Bush administration is one of the most grossly incompetent foreign policy teams in modern history, especially when it comes to Iraq.
They didn't have a plan for post-Saddam Iraq.
Donald Rumsfeld, bad people will do bad things, hands-off policy of the summer of 2003 blended into Paul Bremer's criminal occupation with the coalition provisional authority, creating instability after instability after instability.
When they needed expertise, they brought in ideologues where the litmus test for whether or not you could work at the U.S. Embassy compound was whether you were a Republican who opposed abortion as opposed to somebody knowing something about Iraq.
So suddenly in 2004, they go into a panic, the Bush administration, and you get the January 2005 election.
And this was, of course, something that they didn't want to hold in January, they wanted to hold it later, but their bluff was called by the Shia who said, no, we'll have the elections now.
The United States supported elections that the Shia went in and dominated.
The United States tried their best to get a Sunni element elected.
They failed, they cheated, they stuffed the ballot boxes, they did everything they could, but the Shia dominated and the Shia won the election.
And that's what the United States had faced with a government it never intended to have in the first place.
And it hasn't known how to deal with this government ever since because it can't, you know, the entire facade of legitimacy of our presence in Iraq would be thrown out if the United States declared war against the government of Nury al-Maliki or of Jafari prior to that.
So they've been forced to deal with this government.
And what you see is the United States using Sunni and the Mahdi army as an excuse.
What they're really angry at the Iranians for is their continued support of the government the United States put in power.
So then at this point, you don't even think that it's a matter of, well, we should continue to favor Dawa over the Sadr guys because at least I was going to continue to ask us to stay here.
They're not even that smart.
Well, right now the United States is making it up as we go along.
And what you see is basically we have this cancer called our occupation in Iraq.
And instead of recognizing that we need massive surgery to remove the malignancy called the American occupation, we're solving cancer by putting bandages on source as they arise.
And so we have a big sore in Ambar province.
And so we go out there and we buy off the Sunni tribesmen.
We have a big sore with the Mahdi army.
So we go in and we have a ceasefire with the Mahdi army.
And what we're doing, and again, is we're hiding the blemish of the sore, but we're doing nothing to cure the cancer.
This is why the surge is such a farce.
Everybody today is, you know, lauding the surge.
Oh, wow.
Reduction of violence.
Look, it's just a pause before the storm.
We haven't resolved any of the underlying issues in Iraq.
What's going to happen when all these refugees come back and they have nowhere to live?
When a Sunni comes back and he finds out his neighborhood has been taken over by the Shia and that there's no plan for them?
What happens when the Sunni that we've bought off, you know, finally stabilize their position enough and say, as they have been saying all along, now it's time to make a move on the Shia?
What happens when the Mahdi army gets frustrated with the supreme council of the Islamic revolution in Iraq and starts their fight again?
What happens when the Kurds say, the heck with y'all, we're cutting and running, the Turks invade?
Iraq's just a powder keg waiting to blow up.
This surge didn't solve anything.
It just bought us some time.
It's artificial respite.
Well, Scott, can you imagine that an administration could be competent and extricate the United States in some intelligent way to try to alleviate the consequences that were set up for, as you just described, or is this a matter of it's time for us to cut and run the hell out of there and hope for the best?
Well, I've been saying for some time, it's time to get out that, you know, yesterday was the best day we're going to have in Iraq.
Today's just going to get worse and tomorrow will be even worse and the next day will be even worse.
And the bottom line is, you know, we have to acknowledge that it's broke and we can't fix it.
And until we acknowledge that, we're going to be stuck in this quagmire.
And the sad thing is, you know, Congress isn't going to do anything to get us out during the Bush administration.
They're too afraid to make an issue of Iraq.
Look at the cowardly nature of Congress.
So we have this surge, which is demonstrably a failure, and no one in Congress wants to take on the president or Petraeus because, you know, they're afraid of being called anti-American.
Well, the most anti-American thing you can do right now is to continue the sacrifice of American soldiers in a losing cause.
Iraq is very much a losing cause.
So the Bush administration leaves, you know, the leading Democrats, they have no plan.
I've said all along, when we invaded, we were looking at, you know, three national election cycles before we purged America of the debacle of Iraq.
And that's absolutely the case.
I think that Iraq is going to be a nightmare that haunts, you know, the full term of whoever the next president is.
Well, and this leads us back to Iran, too.
When you talk about the strength of the Iranian parties in power in Iraq and the danger of war with Iran, I'm led to believe that the number one consequence of a bombing campaign against Iran is that the Badr Corps and the Mahdi Army probably as well could be expected to turn against our occupation.
We'd have to start our war in Iraq all over again.
Well, yeah, if you want to make a nightmare for the American forces, attack you in Iraq, attack Iran.
You know, our lines of communication are tenuous enough as it is, and right now they're, you know, primarily dependent upon, you know, secure routing from Kuwait through southern Iraq into Baghdad and onwards.
And if the Shia decide, all right, America is now the enemy, you know, we've guaranteed the isolation of our forces.
Can anybody say Dien Bien Phu?
I mean, it's about as ludicrous a situation as one can imagine.
And again, we come down to what is to be gained from attacking Iran?
Nothing.
I mean, the sad thing is when you do the calculations, we're in danger of losing everything, and we're never going to gain anything from this attack.
The United States has given up on, you know, a major sustained aerial bombardment combined with troops on the ground approach to Iran.
We're now talking limited air strike against Revolutionary Guard command sites and a handful of nuclear sites.
We're not going to destroy their nuclear infrastructure, and we're definitely not going to degrade the Iranian Revolutionary Guard command.
And so the question is, why are we doing this?
And it's, you know, it's to fulfill the ideological wet dreams of the few, hold on, you know, hardcore neoconservatives that remain in the Bush administration, but it's not fulfilling any genuine national security prerogative.
This is what Congress has to wake up and understand.
They are a separate but equal branch of government.
They do have legitimate authority and mandate to delve into foreign policy and national security policy.
It's high time they confront this irresponsible unitary executive that has taken over, you know, taken near dictatorial powers when it comes to how America operates in time of war.
Congress needs to wake up, and sadly, the Democrats in Congress don't seem able.
Well, have you ever considered running for the House of Representatives?
I would be the worst congressman you could ever imagine, because I would irritate everybody and get nothing done.
I would be invited on no committees, and my people would never get any money, and I'd be voted out in two years.
So rather than go through that frustration, I'd much rather be a citizen activist who holds Congress accountable.
It's an important part of the governance game.
It's not just about, you know, people representing people in higher office.
It's about being held accountable by the people, and I think I'm much more effective being a member of the people than I would be being a member of Congress.
Well, I understand that, although I think your pessimism about your chances of being an effective congressman is, you know, maybe unwarranted.
I'm looking at the Ron Paul revolution going on all around me, and it seems like here's a guy they call Dr. No because he won't go along and stands on principle on every issue.
And yet, he's turning this political race for president upside down right now.
And God bless Ron Paul.
I mean, being compared to him even in any fashion is an honor.
He's a man who's done great things and doing great things.
Is that an official endorsement?
It's official admiration of Ron Paul.
I see.
Yeah, well, I think you'd be a great congressman.
I'd love to see you on C-SPAN railing from the House floor, but I like having you on the show as well and appreciate reading all your write and so forth.
And by the way, besides Truthdig, where can people read your articles nowadays?
Well, Truthdig is the primary outlet.
Every once in a while, I'll throw something up at Alternet, and I continue to inject here and there into op-ed pieces.
But generally speaking, when something I write gets put up, it gets picked up by Common Dreams and other websites like that.
So they shouldn't have too much problems.
Just Google my name and you'll get it.
Now, do you have any parting advice for people in the audience who would like very much to hold their congressman to account somehow, like you say, but they just don't know what to do, how to do it?
Well, you know, I don't have the A to Z manual on this.
What I would say is, you know, we are waging ideological warfare here.
I mean, it's not just, you know, minor issues we're talking about.
We're talking about the very foundation of our country, the Constitution, and a Congress that's shown itself to be impotent in defending the Constitution.
And, you know, I'm basically talking about going to war against ineffective representatives, and that means destroying them.
I don't mean physically, and I don't mean resorting to violence.
I mean getting them out of office.
It's not just about writing letters.
If you write a letter and you're not being listened to, it's time to take them out of office, which means you've got to go find out the sources of the money, who financed their elections, who will finance their future elections, and take them on.
If there's a businessman in town who's writing the big checks, put the businessman out of business.
You know, organized boycotts, you know, there's demonstrations worth attending that will accomplish something.
Those are the demonstrations that target the money that fund ineffective members of Congress.
But the bottom line is, until the American people demonstrate that they can flex their muscle and remove an ineffective congressman from office or a representative from office, the representatives aren't going to heed the will of the people.
You can write all the letters you want, but on election day, if the few involved citizens show up and pull the lever in special interest that gets others to come out and counter those votes, that representative is going to stay in office.
Yup.
All right, well, listen, I really appreciate your insight on all these issues today.
Everybody, Scott Ritter, you can read what he writes at truthdig.com, and please go out and get the book.
It's great.
It's Target Iran, also Waging Peace and Iraq Confidential.
Thanks very much, Scott.
Thank you, sir.
