'Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.' -- Eugene V. Debs

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Scott and Judy and Ahmed 

Amy Goodman just interviewed Scott Ritter on her show. Of Judith Miller, Ritter said:

I was called on occasion by people at The New York Times, but not during the critical buildup to the war. There was a period of time, I would say from the summer of 2002, through the invasion in the spring of 2003, where I was pretty much persona non grata with The New York Times and the Washington Post. When I did talk to reporters, they let it be known that my name was not even supposed to be published in The New York Times. The one time that the New York Times did make an effort to publish my name was when they hired Barry Barrak, to write a profile of me in the New York Times magazine, which I think will go down as quite an embarrassment for Mr. Barrak, not for me. I don't have anything to do with that story; it's his own fiction. They weren't seeking the truth. I know Judith Miller. Prior to this time, we would talk often. I would do my best to set her straight on her stories. She would listen, take notes. Nothing I would say would appear in her pieces. Then during the time of my blackout, there were no phone calls. She contacted me after the war. Again, she was trying to prove her point that there were weapons of mass destruction. I would set her straight on the mobile biological labs and other points that she was raising. Nothing I said would appear in the paper. Judith Miller, I agree with Mr. MacArthur, has an agenda. It's not one centered on the truth. It's centered on promoting Judy Miller and her biases. Unfortunately for her and The New York Times and the American people, truth has caught up. ... Everything they were writing was a lie, not just a nuanced misrepresentation of fact. Judy Miller was running stories from the engineer, Hydari, who was provided by Chalabi, and I was able to provide five or six points where I directly contradicted him and said, if I can contradict him just on the surface of what he is saying, you cannot run with the substance of the rest of that material. This is a man who is not believable. His data doesn't stack up technically. His data doesn't stack up logically. His data doesn't stack up on any of the tests that one would use. There's no independent confirmation of anything this man is saying, why are you running with it on the front page of your newspaper.

of Ahmed Chalabi:

... I met Chalabi in the summer of 1998. He was working with certain elements in the Senate, particularly Danielle Pletka, who at the time was a lead counseling for the Republicans on the U.S. Senate. Her husband, Steven Ratmaker was a legal counsel for the Republicans, and the House of Representatives. They were working on the Iraq liberation act at that time. They let it be known that there would be a position for me, that would be put together by the United States congress, on a committee that would be overseeing Ahmed Chalabi's group. I would be working with Chalabi, paid for by the U.S. government. What Chalabi did I when I balked at this, he thought I was balking at it from a monetary stand point, meaning that they were not going to pay me enough. I was balking at it from an integrity standpoint, meaning I wasn’t going to play this game. He let me know that once he was president of Iraq, he will have control of the Iraq's resources and that he has oil concessions that he would be able to dole out and that I would quote, unquote, be well taken care of. That, I also rejected.

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