Scott Ritter to Keynote at SF Benefit for Oxfam, ACLU, NAACP etc

Get personal. Impeach, Remove, Banish, Out-law, De-Select, (even Ex-communicate with the blessing of the Vatican) Bush and his thugs and prevent them from harming people in America and abroad.

Support your local peace groups.

George, could you provide more details on the program, topics of speakers, possibly some links to background of speakers, etc?

It looks like the organizer posted more information last evening, but nothing new is posted. Looks like the system filter it out.

Indymedia, could you check?

Orgainizer, please try again.

Greetings Abraham, All -
I am modifying the website

http://www.100yearmarch.org/symposium2003.htm

Thus, by clicking on any of the presenters, you can get additional detail related to the presenter, their planned topic, and a link to their respective organization. I hope to have this up (by the latest) on 6/14. Thanks for your patience!

By the way, we conducted a press conference on Tuesday, and Mr. Scott Ritter participated. He will be speaking about the lack WMD in Iraq (which Scott accurately predicted), and why America needs a regime change.

Thanks! - George (peace [at] 100yearmarch.org)

Scott Ritter
What turned the hawkish Iraq weapons inspector into a dove?
By Michael Crowley
Posted Wednesday, September 25, 2002, at 10:51 AM PT

If you've been paying any attention to the debate over invading Iraq, you're probably familiar with Scott Ritter, the blustery former U.N. weapons inspector who has spent the past few weeks vigorously denouncing the Bush administration's rush to war. Ritter's ubiquity has been breathtaking. Lately he has appeared on every major TV network and in a slew of major newspapers arguing that, contrary to what you may have heard, Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein poses no real threat to anyone.

You may also be aware that Ritter didn't always feel this way. In the 1990s he made his name as the macho leader of U.N. inspectors hunting for Iraq's hidden chemical, germ, and nuclear weapons programs. A hulking figure at 6 feet 4 inches and 200-plus pounds, Ritter was known for shouting down Iraqi officials during tense standoffs outside suspected weapons sites. When he concluded in 1998 that neither the United States nor the United Nations had the stomach for disarming Iraq and resigned in disgust, he was a regular on television and at Capitol Hill hearings, urgently warning of the horrors that would reward the world's wimpiness. Iraq is "not nearly disarmed," he wrote in a 1998 New Republic article, asserting that Saddam likely retained everything from nerve gas to anthrax, as well as his "entire nuclear weapons infrastructure." Iraq could completely resurrect its weapons of mass destruction programs "within a period of six months," he told a Senate committee that year. As for Saddam, Ritter said he "remains an ugly threat to his neighbors and to world peace."

Today Ritter sings a suspiciously different tune. He now contends that Iraq was "fundamentally disarmed" in the 1990s. It turns out that when U.N. inspections ended in 1998, Saddam "did not have the capability to reconstitute" his death machine. Ritter now assures us that "Iraq is a threat to no one." Earlier this month, he took the extraordinary step of visiting Baghdad to address the Iraqi assembly, where he said that "in regards to the current situation between the United States and Iraq, the truth is on the side of Iraq."

Ritter hasn't provided any explanation for his change of heart or cited any new evidence. Instead, he denies contradicting himself. He says that as an arms inspector in the 1990s, he observed the United Nations' absolute, "quantitative" standard for disarmament. Anything but the elimination of 100 percent of Iraq's WMD program was unacceptable. Now he urges a more subjective, "qualitative" measurement: "the elimination of a meaningful, viable capability to produce or employ weapons of mass destruction." For instance, Ritter says that although U.N. inspectors may have failed to destroy some portion of Saddam's chemical and germ weapons, most of them have lost their potency by now and are merely "harmless goo."

There may be some merit to this distinction, but it doesn't get Ritter off the hook. In 1998, he suggested that Iraq failed both the quantitative and qualitative tests, writing that Iraq's remaining weapons "represent a vital 'seed stock' that can and will be used by Saddam Hussein to reconstitute his former arsenal." Ritter's argument also fails to explain his old insistence that Iraq could quickly restart its weapons programs. Nor does it account for the probability that Iraq had weapons Ritter never found out about in the first place.

That leaves us to consider ulterior motives. One popular theory, recently advanced by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, holds that Ritter has essentially been bought off. By his own admission, Ritter accepted $400,000 in funding two years ago from an Iraqi-American businessman named Shakir al-Khafaji. Ritter used the money to visit Baghdad and film a documentary purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections (which in his telling were corrupted by sinister American manipulation). As Hayes has reported, al-Khafaji is openly sympathetic to Saddam and regularly sponsors anti-American conferences in Baghdad. Al-Khafaji seems to have gotten his money's worth: The documentary was so anti-U.S., says one of Ritter's former U.N. colleagues, that Iraqi officials were passing out copies of it on CD-ROM at a recent international conference.

But this theory doesn't solve the Ritter riddle. Of the $400,000, he claims that only $42,000 went into his own pocket—which, if true, is a low price for the integrity of a former Marine who by all accounts was a zealot for his old cause. And Ritter didn't need to switch sides to make money. A few years ago, he had ample work as an Iraq-bashing TV analyst, lecturer, and author. As a Bush critic, he may be more visible, but he is certainly less employable; Fox News, for instance, dumped him as an analyst after deciding his views had become too pro-Iraq.

What's more, Ritter's conversion apparently began before he ever met al-Khafaji. In 1999 he published Endgame, a book that railed against the Clinton administration, labeled the sanctions against Iraq "evil," and suggested that the international community could do business with Saddam. It was only after Endgame was published that Ritter says he was approached by al-Khafaji. It's possible that Ritter took money from al-Khafaji, or some other ally or agent of Saddam, before writing Endgame. But there's no evidence of that.

Finally, Ritter hardly sings in perfect tune with Baghdad. He has recently called Saddam Hussein "a pathetic old, brutal dictator" who is "clearly repressing the innocent people of Iraq" and who he wishes would "drop dead." Nor does he pretend that Saddam Hussein's phony inspections ploys are a solution. "[I]f Iraq chooses to play cat and mouse and cheat, we don't play that game," he told the Guardian last week. "We back off and the Security Council takes decisive"—presumably military—"action." Ritter's basic position—that the Bush administration should work with the United Nations to win the return of an unrestricted inspections process under the threat of force—is not so different from Al Gore's.

Why else would Ritter be making friends in Baghdad? Another theory holds that he's an embittered man grinding an ax against his government. Ritter left his weapons-inspector job in 1998 feeling betrayed by the Clinton administration, which, not wanting to back up his aggressive tactics with force, had grown uncomfortable with his runaway machismo. After he resigned, Clinton officials publicly trashed him. And just when he would have been looking for a new government job, Ritter learned he was under investigation by the FBI, on suspicion of being a spy for Israel (with whom he had shared some seemingly benign U.N.-gathered intelligence data about Iraq). Ritter had already been denied a security clearance a few years earlier because U.S. officials suspected his wife, a former Soviet translator, of having been a spy herself for the Soviets.

Together the experiences appear to have left him with an (understandable) persecution complex. "[A]fter all this time of serving my country I don't want to be treated like Aldrich Ames or Edward Lee Howard. It incenses me. I'm not a spy, I'm a patriot," he told the Washingtonian magazine in 1999, demanding public apologies from FBI Director Louis Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet. More recently Ritter fumed to the journalist David Wallis that "[s]ome idiots in Washington, D.C., betrayed me." But a sense of betrayal isn't an entirely satisfying explanation, either. Most of the national-security officials who Ritter feels undercut him, like Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, are now out of government. And it's hard to see how questioning George Bush's Iraq policy amounts to revenge against the FBI.

Perhaps a better possibility is that during his thousands of hours in Iraq, Ritter developed something like Stockholm syndrome. He may feel a genuine concern for Iraq that makes him want to see it restored to economic and political health. In interviews Ritter has spoken of the "warmth" of the Iraqi people, the beauty of the country's mosques and ziggurats, and the suffering of children who he says are victims of economic sanctions. It's conceivable that Ritter has simply had a change of heart about our Iraq policy and is too bull-headed to acknowledge it. (One person who knows him says Ritter once told him, in all seriousness, "I've never been wrong.") But if Scott Ritter wants to be treated with respect and not with mistrust, he'll have to admit that his story has changed—and explain why a lot more persuasively than he has.


http://slate.msn.com/id/2071502/

> Ritter developed something like Stockholm syndrome. He may feel a genuine concern for Iraq


What are you saying here, that a genuine concern for Iraq is a form of mental illness?

He'll be one of the speakers at the 2003 San Mateo Peace, Justice, and Human Right Symposium. Go to the show and ask him yourself if you're in the area.

Ex-cabinet minister Robin Cook has accused Tony Blair's government of "not presenting the whole picture" in the run-up to war with Iraq.

He made the claim when he appeared as the first witness at a Commons inquiry into whether the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was exaggerated.

Fellow ex-minister Clare Short followed - accusing Mr Blair of a "series of half truths, exaggerations, reassurances that weren't the case" in the run-up to war.

She said she presumed Mr Blair saw the devices he used to get the UK to back America against Iraq as "honourable deception".

The evidence of the two ex-ministers came as Mr Blair tried to recapture control of the political agenda in a speech to the left-leaning Fabian Society in which he argued the case for radical reform of the public services.

Mr Cook, an ex-foreign secretary, told the MPs he had "no doubt about the good faith of the prime minister", but said the "burning sincerity and conviction of those involved in exercise" was a "problem".

This conviction had led to intelligence material being carefully selected to back up their case for war - rather than being used as a basis for assessing whether or not Saddam posed a threat, he said.

The London inquiry comes ahead of a similar probe by Congress in Washington into whether the Bush administration misread or inflated threats posed by Iraq before going to war.

The US debate has been fuelled by senior senator Carl Levin, who claimed he had evidence the CIA deliberately withheld crucial information from the UN arms inspectors deployed to Iraq before the war to find evidence of banned weapons.

False links

In London, Mr Cook's evidence was being closely watched because he was the only minister to quit Mr Blair's cabinet ahead of the conflict, in his case because he believed the US-led coalition should seek further UN sanction before attacking.

Ms Short quit her post after the war having publicly agonised before the conflict over whether she should stay on as international development secretary.

Ms Short told the committee she believed the US and UK decided in summer 2002 that there should be a war against Iraq in early 2003.

She said this timetable led to Saddam's threat being exaggerated; to "false" links with al-Qaeda being talked up; to the efforts for a second UN resolution being abandoned with the blame wrongly placed on France; and to the early curtailment of Hans Blix's inspection regime.

The foreign affairs select committee is set to look in particular at claims that Iraq had the capacity to launch a strike using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) within 45 minutes.

Since the war was declared over, there have been no significant finds in the search for Saddam Hussein's WMD and in recent days there has also been a resurgence of military clashes involving US forces.

No full inquiry

Both the prime minister and his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, have refused to appear before the committee, which takes evidence in public and publishes its reports.

A separate inquiry by Parliament's intelligence and security committee, which meets in private, is also going to look at Iraq's WMD.

Downing Street has rejected calls for a full public inquiry into its pre-war claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons capability.

Mr Blair has denied accusations a dossier about Saddam's threat contained intelligence information which had been doctored, insisting he stands "100%" by the evidence shown to the public about Iraq's alleged weapons programmes.


Duped?

Asked if intelligence had been "sexed up" to back the decision to go to war, Mr Cook said: "I think there was a selection of evidence to support the conclusion."

He said he was "disappointed" by the quality of the intelligence in the September dossier as it did not provide "any recent and alarming" intelligence to suggest that Iraq was a current and serious threat.

Mr Cook restated his belief that Iraq probably had no weapons of mass destruction.

He said: "Such weapons require substantial industrial plant and a large workforce. It is inconceivable that both could have been kept concealed for the two months we have been in occupation of Iraq.

"I have never ruled out the possibility that we may unearth some old stock of biological toxins or chemical agents and it is possible that we may yet find some battlefield shells.

"Nevertheless, this would not constitute weapons of mass destruction and would not justify the claim before the war that Iraq posed what the prime minister described as a 'current and serious threat'."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2995526.stm

Just a reminder. If you're in the area and would like to show your support, go to the above provided link to get your tickets.

Show your support for various non-profits groups. Get your tickets now. Thank you.

Just a reminder. Get your tickets now.

on the unlikely notion that one might be more interested in CAPITALISTIC ENTERPRISING than the topics being offered how can you put a price on the words of peace?? how can you sell this concept?

The symposium is to promote PEACE and JUSTICE for the us all human race. It's a charity fund raise for the non-profit organizations participated in this event.

Do you believe in peace? And in justice? And human rights?

We are taking our Civics class to the event. Two dozen screaming and enthusiastic 16 year olds should add some sparkle!

Bring as many students as you can and scream enthusiastically as you can.

Greetings -

The purpose of the Symposium and Benefit is to provide the Bay Area with eloquent subject-matter experts in a number of compelling and integrated areas surrounding Peace, Justice and Human Rights, and also provide relevant, themed entertainment to make it an educational and inspirational afternoon.

The net proceeds from the event are being shared among the actively participating organizations, tremendous people working on the front-lines to make this world a better place now, and for future generations. Groups like Peace Action, the ACLU, the NAACP, Oxfam and more.

Not one group or individual is profiting from the event. It represents the blood, sweat and tears of many amazing people that I have been honored to work beside.

--George

Try to say something politically and socially annoying as usual. If you can't come up with any, save the rest of your trash talk until you make your $2~3 dollar a minute nightly phone calls.

A reminder email from MoveOn:


Dear MoveOn member,

For those who are interested in peace events on the Peninsula, here is a message from The 100 Year March, who would like to invite you to join them at the Wellstone Renewal Meeting/Scott Ritter Benefit this
Sunday, June 29th. See below for more information.

--Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org

-------------------

Announcing:

Wellstone Renewal Meeting / Scott Ritter Benefit - Sunday, June 29th

The 2003 Peninsula Symposium/Benefit for Peace, Justice and Human Rights

San Mateo Performing Arts Center
600 North Delaware
San Mateo, California
Sunday, June 29, 2pm - 6pm

Please join us for an afternoon of compelling presentations, multimedia
and entertainment benefiting the organizations listed below.

The following are speaker/presenters scheduled for the Symposium

Keynote, Scott Ritter, Former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector "It's not about Democrat or Republican. Why America must work together for Regime Change in 2004."


Charles Liteky, Voices in the Wilderness, Iraq Peace Team Marie Davis, Reparations Chair, NAACP
Paul Gilbert, ACLU of Northern California
Brian Rawson, Oxfam/Make Trade Fair
Torill Eide, Dorinda Moreno, the Human Rights March
Alpesh Patel, Peace Action
Blase Bonpane, Director, Office of the America's
Marylia Kelley, Director, Tri-Valley CARES
David Mezzera, SOA Watch
Paul George, Peninsula Peace and Justice
Rev. and Poet, Darin Nathan
Douglas Mattern, President, Association of World Citizens
Surprise Guests, Entertainment and More!

Click here for more details:
http://www.100yearmarch.org/symposium2003.htm

Tickets are $55.00, $45.00 and $25.00.
For more details, please visit:
http://www.100yearmarch.org

or phone Ticketweb at 866.468.3399

The 100 Year March, founded in 2002, is a grass-roots, national, non-profit organization dedicated to Peace, Education, Equality and Justice. After Symposium expenses, net receipts from this event will
be divided equally among represented organizations.

Get Politically, Socially, Economically, Environmentally, Peacefully Active!

-----------------------------

This is a message from MoveOn.org. To unsubscribe yourself from this
list, please visit our subscription management page at
http://www.moveon.org/subscrip/i.html?id=1475-1808414-zNWQi1hEYw0sZIyPeofpQQ

Scott Ritter- a pawn for liberals?


common rhetoric for the liberal dysinformation campaign. it has little relation with the truth.