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

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Scott Ritter at Large 

So, you know, standard disclaimer -- I report, you decide -- yada yada yada ... but ...

At a talk on Friday in Washington state, Scott Ritter said that the US plans to bomb Iran in June and that the Iraqi elections were rigged to grant the Shiites fewer seats in the assembly:

On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran's alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.

The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.

The above doesn't mention Ritter's source, if he gave one, for the Iran allegation but says he cited "an [anonymous] official involved in the manipulation" for the vote-rigging claim, and strongly insinuated that Seymour Hersh is going to do a New Yorker piece on vote tampering in Iraq -- Ritter said that "the story [will] soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine."

So, you know, just some stuff being said by the most prominent voice who was right about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and, you know, was exiled to the media wilderness for the trouble. Oh yeah, and also here's a Buzzflash piece comparing CNN anchor Aaron Brown's treatment of the Jeff Gannon's personal life to his treatment of Scott Ritter's personal life.

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