Ritter takes on the lies they tell about Iraq

REVIEW BY ELIZABETH SCHULTE

War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know
William Rivers Pitt interviews Scott Ritter
Allen and Unwin, 2002
78 pages, $9.95.

A former marine and a member of the Republican Party who voted for George W Bush, Scott Ritter is an unlikely voice against a US invasion in Iraq. But as a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Ritter is providing the inside scoop to cut through lies the Bush administration is using to sell its war.

This little "instant book" is primarily an interview with Ritter. Based on his personal observations before the US suspended inspections in 1998, Ritter debunks the threat of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" as a myth.

"Iraq has destroyed 90-95% of its weapons of mass destruction", says Ritter. "Okay. We have to remember that this missing 5-10% doesn't necessarily constitute a threat. It doesn't even constitute a weapons program."

On the subject of Bush's claim that al Qaeda is linked to Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein: "patently absurd", says Ritter.

This book offers worthwhile facts with which to chip away at Bush's mountain of lies.

[From the US Socialist Worker.]

From Green Left Weekly, November 27, 2002.

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From GLW issue 518