Seymour Hersh & Scott Ritter on Iraq, WMDs and the The Clinton Administration In The 1990s

Former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, and investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had a public discussion Octiber 19th, in New York City titled "Iraq Confidential: How We Got Into Iraq and How to Get Out."

Hersh is the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for the New Yorker who first exposed the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq and is author of the book "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib."

We play an excerpt of the discussion between Ritter and Hersh focusing on the role of the Democrats and the Clinton administration in Iraq during the 1990s.

* Scott Ritter, was the United Nations' top weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. He is author of "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein."
* Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist for The New Yorker.

LISTEN ONLINE (or read transcript online)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/21/145202


Scott Ritter on the Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein
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We speak with Scott Ritter, the chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 about his new book: "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein." It details how the CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN departments to achieve the foreign policy agenda of the United States in the Middle East.
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In a major article in The New York Times this weekend, reporter Judith Miller admitted she was wrong when she wrote several of the key articles that claimed Iraq had an extensive weapons of mass destruction program ahead of the 2003 invasion. Miller wrote, "W.M.D. -- I got it totally wrong. The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong." Today we are joined by someone who was not wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - Scott Ritter. He was the United Nations" top weapons inspector in Iraq at UNSCOM between 1991 and 1998. Before working at the UN he served as an officer in the US marines and as a ballistic missile adviser to General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf war.

Scott Ritter has just published a new book titled "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein." The book details how the CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN departments to achieve the foreign policy agenda of the United States in the Middle East.

* Scott Ritter, was the United Nations' top weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. Before working for the UN he served as an officer in the US marines and as a ballistic missile adviser to General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf war. He is author of a new book, just out, titled "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein."

LISTEN ONLINE (or read transcript online)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/21/144258