Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. I’m Dori Smith

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter joins us this time. He spent two hours talking with me and two other independent media producers.

Dori Smith: Former UN Weapons inspector and Marine Scott Ritter has long expressed concern about the Bush Administration’s plan for wider war in the Middle East, citing Syria and Iran as potential targets. Members of the audience stayed late on the 24th to ask Ritter questions. I asked him at what point the US Press might wake up to the kinds of bleak situations he has been describing and at what point they might pick up on the extreme of the security risks we are facing under George W. Bush.

Scott Ritter: Tragically it’s going to take another 9/11 type event for the American media to pick up on that because the American media doesn’t recognize or at least is unwilling to articulate the failures of the Bush administration. They buy into the Bush administration rhetoric that we are doing everything possible, we are trying to make America safe, etcetera. It’s about spreading Democracy around the world, and they parrot this without any in depth analysis or critique of this. It’s going to take a disaster before the media has the potential of waking up.

The problem with the disaster is that the Media may go the other way, is that the next disaster, instead of prompting the Media to be highly critical of the Bush Administration it will turn the media into a sounding board for the Bush Administration saying: “See we told you, see there’s this threat, see this is bad, we could have prevented this if you had let me do the wiretappings, we could have prevented this if you had given me carte blanch, we could have prevented this if we accelerated the Patriot Act. -You have only yourselves to blame.” -And the Media may very well fall into that kind of shrill screaming match. So it’s like I said, very bleak times. I don’t see the American people waking up. I just don’t see it. I see concerned citizens, individuals, small groups, but they have always been awake. The problem is that the threats become so much greater to what we call the United States, not from abroad, but from within. And the American people just seem to be asleep at the wheel. They’ve forgotten what it means to be a citizen.

Dori Smith: In the past three weeks we’ve seen four US helicopters go down in Iraq, we’ve seen a costly CIA attack in Pakistan that’s become very controversial for President General Pervez Musharraf.

We’ve seen the Iranian Revolutionary Guard lose a helicopter in Iran. Now this was not widely reported, not intensively looked at by the Press, however, a top military official in Iran was killed. Now Iran is blaming the US and Britain for two January 25th bombings that killed nine people. This is going to obviously give Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad more ammunition for justifying a weapons program in Iran. This is obviously an escalation in potentials in the Middle East. Would you characterize where we are in this in the sense of what the borders are like between Iraq and Iran, what the potentials are for cross border operations now?

Scott Ritter: We need to set the record straight that it doesn’t give the Iranian President additional ammunition to justify a nuclear weapons program; he’s not trying to justify a nuclear weapons program. In fact, the Iranian Government has made it quite clear they don’t have a nuclear weapons program. I think what it does is it creates the conditions under which the Iranian Government might want to reconsider that policy. You know we had a situation last week where the President of France said that it supports America’s pressure on Iran. It might even support military action against Iran and it thinks Israel’s justified in the notion of bombing Iran. -Well isn’t that the role of a facilitator? When the United States talked about the global war on terror we held the Taliban to account for facilitating Al Quida’s ability to strike us. The Taliban became a facilitator, a state sponsor. What is France now but a state sponsor of illegitimate military aggression against Iran, and then if Iran says, we are going to strike back against France, France says then we will use nuclear weapons.

Now if that’s not an argument for the Iranians to say, the only way we can prevent France from talking about using nuclear weapons is develop our own nuclear weapons capability, there is no argument. Now the Iranians aren’t doing that but we need to understand this that we are not talking about a situation in the Middle East that’s improving on a daily basis. It’s getting worse. One of the main reasons it’s devolving is because of the American occupation of Iraq. We took away the glue that held Iraq together, Saddam Hussein and the Baathist Government and now we see chaos and anarchy, and we are not containing that chaos and anarchy, it’s spinning out of control, not only because of the events that are taking place inside Iraq; You know again, I’m just appalled by the ignorance of the American people. We think that the Bush Administration has every right to get up and chastise the world because the world is indifferent or interfering with what we are doing in Iraq.

If a hostile power came in and occupied Mexico and the destabilization of Mexico was spilling over into America, we’d have every right to say enough is enough. The Iranians have a long border with Iraq. They have vested national security interests regarding Iraq, and yet we get upset with Iran when they act on this vested interest, when they interfere in what’s going on in Iraq.

Iran has much greater legitimacy in terms of the reasons for their interference than we do. The same thing with Syria, the same thing with Turkey, the same thing with Saudi Arabia; All of these nations are deeply concerned about what’s happening in Iraq because it’s not just about Iraq, it’s about their own national security, and how this war is spinning out of control.

The United States has taken an extraordinarily dangerous step that maybe Americans aren’t aware of. During the time of Saddam Hussein there was an organization called the Mujahdeen-e-Khalq (MEK) which is an Iranian opposition group. One of the ironies is that the MEK was actually a group behind the taking of hostages in Tehran in 1979, 1980. They broke with the Iranian regime and they fled to Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service brought them in, created a directorate specifically for managing MEK affairs. And the MEK became this very highly disciplined, well equipped paramilitary organization that carried out active operations inside Iran. -Car bombings, assassinations, destruction of political targets, intelligence gathering. (See: Conn Hallinan report for additional background.)

The State Department called the MEK a terrorist organization. And one of the big arguments that was made before the war is that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror by supporting the MEK.

We invaded Iraq in March 2003. In April we disarmed the MEK, well we brought them under control. The problem was what to do with them. Well see we had this policy of regime change in Iran, so MEK stopped working for Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service, started working for the CIA, today the MEK works for the CIA. The CIA is directing the MEK to carry out the exact same range of operations that it carried out under Saddam Hussein which the United States called terrorist activities, they are doing it today in Iran but we call this liberation activity. It’s the same crime.

I don’t know if the MEK is responsible for the bombings in Avaz that killed nine people. There are Arab separatist organizations that have carried out acts of violence in the past. But the Iranian government has every right to be outraged about this. The United States of America prosecuted, held to account, Puerto Rican separatists who did the exact same thing. We called them, rightly so, terrorists. They are not freedom fighters. They are terrorists. They use the tools of terror and they attack innocents. We are right to condemn it here at home when it happens to us. Why in God’s name are we embarked on these exact same activities, you talk about the global war on terror, when in fact, we are guilty of the same crimes we are condemning other people for committing.

Dori Smith: Now you talk about the Mujahidin al and the State Department. It’s reminiscent of the 1980s right? When the State Department was worried about people like Gulbadin Hikmatyar, that he was being funded through Zia’s Pakistan at the time, by the U.S. -A very deep problem because the State Department saw this particular war lord as hideously dangerous, they were frightened of him they said. And yet we did fund him and he got a great deal of money and arms, and so did other members of either the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, or other war lord type of organizations. Where do we start to make inroads with stopping this? Do we approach the State Department? Do we approach Congress? Who puts a halt on this kind of process that gets us into so much trouble?

Scott Ritter: Well it’s not the State Department. The bottom line is the MEK operation is being carried out by the CIA as part of covert policy. The executive branch has almost unilateral authority when it comes to covert action of this nature. They are required to report to Congress, at least select members of Congress who have oversight responsibilities, but it’s done in great secrecy, the data is never made public. And Congress really doesn’t have too much latitude in terms of interfering with it. As long as the President declares it and notifies Congress of it, there’s not much Congress can do.

The only way that it can have an impact is if the American people express their dissatisfaction, if we the people of the United States say “no” we are not happy with this. We make it a political liability for the President. Because at the end of the day it’s all about politics, the President will not do that which puts him at political risk or puts his party at political risk. There’s no one out there who has that kind of courage. I’d love to have a president that would tell the political powers that be to stick it in their ear, I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.

Bush isn’t that way, Clinton wasn’t that way, no one is that way. If the American people make the support of the MEK a political loser for the President this policy will change. The problem is the American people don’t care. And in fact if you explained it to the American people and they engaged I would imagine that most people would say, hey, we’ve got to get rid of that Iranian government, the MEK gives us a tool to do that, you know war is hell. So we are going to go forward and this is a good thing.

So I think you are going to have a hard time getting most Americans to wake up to the moral contradictions that exist with the United States supporting a terrorist organization like the MEK while we are engaged in a global war on terror. (See: We Are At War With Iran Also: America’s War on Terrorism by Rahul Mahajan.)

Dori Smith: That brings to mind though how the American people do respond to the stated threats of the bad guy, the enemy guy, because right now it is the Mujahidin right? Now we are looking at a fascinating process in Iraq where we are starting in a way to change sides in Iraq, we are now opening the way for a much broader process of negotiating with the Sunni leaders that we are talking with and hopeful that they can be a sort of lever against more radical Shiites. (See: Gareth Porter for background and recent analysis. US Realignment with Sunnis Is Far Advanced )

Where does this process lead us? What are the possibilities that a conflagration will ensue let’s say between these different competing forces for international funds, for international arms, and for power, in Iraq and Iran?

Scott Ritter: I think we need to separate Iraq from Iran, those are two totally different beasts. One’s an Arab country and one’s a Persian country. Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. The reality, I’ve said from day one we are going to eventually go back and support the Sunni because the Sunni provide the only viable entity in Iraq that believes in a unified homogeneous Iraqi nation state.

We can’t support the Shiites, because the Shiites have no interest in Iraq, the Shiites have only interests in the Shiites; the Kurds have only an interest with the Kurds. Supporting the Kurds is suicide because our NATO ally in Turkey isn’t going to allow a viable independent Kurdistan state, even if you disguise it as autonomous.

So we are going to go back and support the Sunni which means that we are going to wave democracy, we are going to pick a Sunni strong man who is going to brutally suppress and oppress Kurdish independence and Shiite independence. What’s the Sunni? We are going to build a new Saddam. We had a guy in place who was doing all of this for us. That’s why we didn’t take him out in 1991. We went ahead and toppled Saddam, we got rid of the Baathist Party, you know the beauty of the Baathist Party: Everybody uses the Baathist Party as if it’s evil. You know the Baathist Party is like the Nazi Party. Heck no. The Baathist Party was a secular unifying force taking this artificial construct called Iraq and trying to bring it together as a singular entity. At the end of the day the Baath party, or something like the Baath Party, is the only thing that’s going to succeed in Iraq because you have to find a political structure that cuts through ethnicity cuts through religions, cuts through tribalism, and tries to create this construct of a unified Iraq. That’s what the Baath Party was about. (See: background and analysis from Juan Cole, 1/18/05.)

We were idiots to get rid of Saddam Hussein and to get rid of the Baath Party. We allowed ourselves to call Saddam Hussein Hitler like and we likened the Baath Party to the Nazi Party which it’s not. Saddam Hussein is not Adolf Hitler. Saddam Hussein is a modern Iraqi leader reflective of the horrific reality of the Iraqi state, which is, if you are going to have a leader he is going to have to bring to heel the forces that threaten to tear Iraq apart and we see the manifestation of that today. Those forces are tearing Iraq apart and America can’t control it, and it’s spinning out of control, and there is not only ongoing civil war as we speak but it’s going to explode orders of magnitude greater than what we are witnessing today and American troops are going to be stuck right in the middle, getting blown up, shot, maimed, wounded. -And then once this occurs, again, it will spill over. It will create factors of instability in Iran. It will create factors of instability in Syria, in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, and again, America, it’s a process that America can’t control. (See: Scott Ritter piece in Alternet on Elections in 2005, Civil War in 2006?)

Dori Smith: Helder Mira of Hartford Community Access and News Speak TV followed up on a statement Scott Ritter had made in his speech about the safety of U.S. troops in the region were America to use an unconventional weapon in Iran.

Helder Mira: Just last night you said that you could see, even if American troops were there in harms way, and we clearly see them in harms way now, their position there, being in Iraq is not making things safer, they are not making things secure. Do you see them just being pawns, and in case of a nuclear weapon being used in Iran, troops just being sacrificed to that means?

Scott Ritter: Well the troops are being sacrificed today for whatever means, you know they are dying as we speak. I will say this about America using nuclear weapons in Iran. A. I think it’s a real risk. It’s a possibility, there’s great potential. B. If we do that, the American people have to understand, that’s just the opening chapter of a very long and difficult story and that story is not going to end until an American city disappears in a mushroom cloud because if we nuke an Islamic state the Islamic radicals will not rest until they nuke an American city. So Mr. Bush pick your city because one of them is going, at least one of them is going. You are going to lose an American city. You are going to lose millions of Americans. And Americans have to understand that. This is madness to even talk about using nuclear weapons under any circumstances because it will not end in a way that’s good for America.

Dori Smith: We’ve been talking with Scott Ritter. A former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and author of “Iraq Confidential, The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein.” The book is available through Nation Books

In February of 2005 Scott Ritter told his audience in Washington State that George Bush had signed off on plans to attack Iran in June of 2005. In the months since the White House and international community have gone round and round on the issue of bringing Iran to the UN Security Council Now, however, it looks as if that is going to be the case.
John Bolton the US ambassador to the UN has said that he is pleased with the fact that the Security Council’s five permanent members want to take up the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. John Bolton was a leading proponent of bringing Iran to the Security Council early on, he sponsored a conference in 2003 titled, “Time to Focus on Iran, the mother of modern terrorism.” (See: Conn Hallinan’s update and background.)

In previous situations the International Atomic Energy Agency at the UN has demonstrated through inspections that Iran did not possess nuclear weapons materials or technology that would permit them to make a bomb, but the IAEA is presently examining documents it says Iran bought on the “nuclear black market”.

IAEA head Mohamed El-Baradei has said in the past that inspections would prevent Iran from developing a weapon. Nonproliferation experts have said Iran is years away from that kind of capability. background information

(See: AP story January 31, 2006, by George Jahn and Ali Akbar Dareini, has headline, Iran Said to Have Nuclear Warhead Plans. Report from IAEA and an overview of history.)

Television news and talk shows are starting to take on a style and tone that is reminiscent to what appeared on US TV during late 2002 when the Bush administration was focusing its attentions on regime change in Iraq. Former weapons inspector David Kay appeared on Chris Mathews program Hardball. He has cautioned in the past that any documents and evidence should be examined carefully, and that they may come from Iranian exile groups: (See: Washington Post February 7th 2005. “Iranian exiles are providing the press and governments with a steady stream of new “evidence” concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons activities. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that Iran will not be allowed to use the cover of civilian nuclear power to acquire nuclear weapons, but says an attack on Iran is “not on the agenda at this point.”) om/wp-dyn/articles/A3601-2005Feb6.html
January 12, 2006 Hardball, audio, David Kay, see transcript where David Kay answers Mathew’s question about Iran’s ability to get a nuclear weapon.

David Kay: Five to seven years is a reasonable one but quite frankly if I were there neighbor, with their current political leadership I would be awfully uncomfortable with that answer.

Chris Mathews: Right and well we know what neighbor is most worried is the neighbor that he keeps targeting verbally, and that whole situation that we know about in the Middle East between Iran and Israel. Do you accept what Andrea said in her report, that there is no feasible military option here for Israel or for us or for anyone else who would like to knock out that weapons program?

David Kay: Look, there is no feasible option at an acceptable cost. You know he talks about wiping Israel off the map. Do we have the military power to wipe Iran off the map? Sure we do but the costs of that both political and in military terms would be so high I think it’s not reasonable. There is no acceptable military solution that does not involve, and it would have to involve the U.S., a very heavy cost particularly now with our engagement in Iraq.”

Dori Smith: In another development Belgium’s state security service chief resigned amid allegations that his department failed to disclose nuclear technology transfers to Iran. Koen Dassen stepped down after it emerged that warnings from the CIA about such transfers had gone unheeded. And Agence France Press and the BBC is reporting that EPSI a Belgian firm has allegedly sold Iran an isostatic press which can strengthen nuclear weapons components. There is an embargo against nuclear technology transfers to Iran.

The company has insisted that the type of technology it exported to Iran in November of 2004 could not be used in nuclear weapons production.

For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced at WHUS Storrs, Radio for the People at UCONN. Thanks to WWUH producer John Holder, and Helda Mira, of Hartford Community Access and News Speak TV, for their assistance.

Log on to Talk Nation for transcripts and discussion of this program and try WHUS Wed. to listen live at 5 PM. (See: list of Ritter’s Alternet stories