Editorials

Former weapons inspector says war with Iraq inevitable

The Associated Press
Friday November 15, 2002

PASADENA — Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter says the U.N. resolution to disarm Iraq makes war inevitable. 

“We’re going to war, and there’s not a damn thing the inspectors can do to stop it, and that’s a shame. Inspections worked once and they can work again,” Ritter said Wednesday night during a speech at the California Institute for Technology. 

The wording of the United Nations resolution will allow the United States to attack by mid-December, said Ritter, who was chief weapons inspector for the U.N. Special Commission in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. 

He resigned in 1998, in part, because weapons inspectors were being used to justify the Desert Fox bombing campaign against Iraq, Ritter said. Although he’s a Republican who voted for President Bush, Ritter spent much of his speech criticizing the administration. 

“The U.S. has a policy regarding Iraq of regime removal. The last thing Bush wants is a weapons inspection regime that works. That would mean lifting economic sanctions and Iraq coming back into the fold with Saddam Hussein still at the helm,” Ritter said. 

The U.N. resolution carries a hidden trigger allowing Bush to attack after the Dec. 8 deadline for a weapons declaration from Iraq, he said, noting there will be four U.S. aircraft carriers in the region in December. 

If Iraq does not declare any weapons on Dec. 8, it will constitute the false declaration described in the resolution. This would trigger a Security Council meeting to consider serious consequences, he said.