Ritter Redivivus

Hitchens and Ritter are to debate tonight (and, in what surely augurs ill, are to be joined by "comedian" Randy Credico). As this is a debate, one assumes that the two main opponents will differ over the questions which the advert implies are of the essence:

... is Iraq better off? Why did we go, and why are we still there? When should we pull out?

A few weeks ago Ritter was in town to promote his new book, and sat for an interview with a local, vehemently anti-invasion talk-show host. The conversation gave a good preview of the positions Ritter will likely take in his debate with Hitchens.  I was actually more impressed with his performance than I had expected to be; he was respectably articulate, and cut the figure of a rather sober and reasonable opponent of the invasion, apparently relying on a good deal of first-hand experience in Iraq.

To the host's apparent disappoinment, Ritter declined to be drawn on the question of whether, in the run-up to the invasion, Bush lied (knowingly said things he himself believed were false) when warning of Iraqi possessions and capabilities vis-a-vis WMD. The problem with having a sympathetic interviewer - and audience: the immediate listeners would be in the SF Bay Area - is that one doesn't get accustomed to the kinds of challenges which a worthy adversary would offer.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get through with my question, concerning discrepancies between the assertions of the more recent Ritter (last 5 years or so), and the "hawkish" Ritter of '97/'98, fresh on the heels of his tenure with UNSCOM. Of course, it's fine to change one's mind, in the light of new considerations and/or evidence. What deserves blame is the politician's approach of flat-out denying a clear change of heart - especially, as in Ritter's case, where the rationale for the change is baffling, and all but invites uncharitable speculation.

I have no plans to invest in the new Ritter book, but as part of my own research in the Autumn of 2002 I read his Endgame:Solving the Iraq Crisis. The book was published in 2000, with an "afterword" from 2002. In the latter, Ritter recounts a meeting with Tariq Aziz in 2000, which articulates Ritter's current position with respect to WMD:

" 'Well Mr. Ritter," [Aziz] said, 'the question of inspectors is part of the whole story. There are U.N. resolutions, mainly Resolution 687, and we had to implement it. And we did. We accepted this resolution formally, and we implemented this resolution for seven-and-a-half years. And I can say also that we still abide by this resolution' ...Tariq Aziz was repeating the mantra of the Iraqi government, playing the innocent in the face of incontrovertible evidence that established that Iraq in fact had not fully complied with Security Council resolutions concerning its disarmament obligations."

"And yet now, more than ten years after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that had set this whole chain of events into motion, Tariq Aziz's words rang with a new credibility. As the lead investigator for UNSCOM, I knew firsthand the lengths to which Iraq would go to keep the inspectors, and the international community at bay. And yet I also knew that, during the course of our difficult work we inspectors had uncovered the lion's share of Iraq's illegal arsenal. What was left, if anything, represented nothing more than documents and scraps of material, seed-stock, perhaps, for any reconstitution effort that might take place in the future, but by and of themselves, not a viable weapons program." [emphasis added]

The reader is not told why Aziz's words "rang with a new credibility."

Here is Ritter writing in December of '98 for The New Republic:

"Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. UNSCOM lacks a full declaration from Iraq concerning its prohibited capabilities, making any absolute pronouncement about the extent of Iraq's retained proscribed arsenal inherently tentative. But, based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells,bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production ...

"These capabilities may seem paltry compared with what Iraq had before the Gulf war. But they represent a vital "seed stock" that can and will be used by Saddam Hussein to reconstitute his former arsenal.  His strategy for doing so has emerged over the past seven years of struggle with UNSCOM. That struggle began almost as soon as the commission was created to verity a declaration Iraq was supposed to provide to the Security Council 15 days after the end of the Gulf war.  A Security Council resolution required Iraq to set forth the totality of its proscribed arsenal, as well as all its components and the means of producing it.  But, instead of telling the truth, Iraq gave a radically misleading and incomplete account.  UNSCOM's original mandate, a seemingly simple exercise in conventional arms control verification, evolved into an endless game of cat and mouse."
[emphasis added]

Ritter's testimony before the U.S. Senate in September '98 was, if anything, even less cautious:

"Iraq today is not disarmed, and remains an ugly threat to its neighbors and to world peace." (opening statement, beginning of third paragraph).

" ... I cannot speak on behalf of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear disarmament issues in Iraq are their purview. But what I can say is that we have clear evidence that Iraq is retaining prohibited weapons capabilities in the fields of chemical, biological and ballistic- missile delivery systems of a range of greater than 150 kilometers. And if Iraq has undertaken a concerted effort run at the highest levels inside Iraq to retain these capabilities, then I see no reason why they would not exercise the same sort of concealment efforts for their nuclear programs" (response to Thurmond)

"The fact of the matter is that since April 1991 under the direct orders and direction of the President of Iraq the government of Iraq has lied to the Special Commission about the totality of its holdings. We cannot conduct verification of Iraq's compliance with Security Council resolutions without an understanding of what there was to begin with.  Iraq not only lied to us in April 1991. In the summer of 1991 they conducted what they call unilateral destruction: that is, they disposed of certain materials without the presence of weapons inspectors and then destroyed the records of this alleged destruction. They also diverted certain materials to the presidential security forces. This has confused an already confusing situation. We do not know the totality of what Iraq has. What we do know is that the declarations they have made to the Special Commission to date are false. And the explanations that they give to us about how they disposed of weapons are wrong. And therefore we know we have a job to do. How much longer will it take? I can say this, and I'll echo the words of the executive chairman. If Iraq gave us today a full and final accounting of all of its weapons of mass destruction -- programs and retained weapons capabilities -- our job would be over very quickly. But because we don't have such an accounting, our job has become a mission of discovery. We must go forth and find these weapons that Iraq is hiding. And that could go on a very long time, especially given the level of Iraqi obstruction today" (Response to Warner)

Of the questions which are to exercise the debaters' attention this evening, the preceding is most relevant to: Why did we go?

Nowadays, Ritter seems to want to say that the pre-war propaganda  in '02 and '03 was unduly affirmative and unequivocal, whereas all that those in the know - like Ritter! - would have been prepared to say was that there were merely questions about "unaccounted for" materiel. But if the statements from the administration betrayed a lack of probative rigor, cleaning them up a bit hardly helps Ritter's case - and what Hitchens ought to say is simply that, while no one knew for sure, to the extent that WMD were a motivating factor for the invasion it was entirely reasonable to assume the worst about Saddam Hussein and his regime (as Ritter himself realized back in '98).

There's another oddity in the new vs. the old Ritter: now he says - and apparently this is the "gotcha" of his new book - that the US repeatedly undermined inspections over the years because the goal for the Americans "all along" (meaning, since '91) has been regime change; they never wanted inspections to " work," and leave a de-fanged Saddam in power. But in Endgame, and in the Senate Testimony, Ritter takes the Cinton Administration to task for not wanting inspections to become confrontational, thus causing enmity in the Security Council.  Hence a leitmotif of the Senate hearing was the expressed concern on the part of the Senators that the US and the UNSC were not serious about Saddam's malfeasance. That is to say, the Senators were concerned that empty threats of force had been bandied about. (Note in particular the bluster of current Bush critics Levin and Biden).

Despite it all, this aspect of the debate over the war is misleading: the controversy over invading was always more of a prudential question - what to do in light of the evidential and existential picture - rather than a matter which could somehow be resolved almost automatically, if only the data were established.