Summary: Iraq Confidential
"The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle EastThe Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
After reading The Great War of Civilisation and The Three Trillion Dollar War, I read Iraq confidential because as a European I try to understand why the US administrations and politicians are so stuburn in their anti democratic and warlord attitude towards all the other nations of this world.
Reading this fantastic book I realized the situation is much more dramatic than I ever could imagine. Having read this book and putting the facts together with the two others I can only come to the conclusion the US itself created not only the Iraq War with all the negatif financial consequences -(not only for their own citizens and the most depraved in the rest of the world but first and for all for their own troops victim of this war by losing their life or worse surviving with serious health injuries for the rest of their "miserable" life, and all this for no reason what so ever exept the insane attitude of a few US administration and White House "dictators")- but the US also supplied the weapons and training for those they could abuse to obtain their dubious purposes and whom they afterwards(f.i. after 9/11) call terrorists.
It certainly is not the purpose of this book but it makes clear why the US citizens , victims of this system, are not realy welcome or save any more in this world.
The US politicians and the White House are responsible for these developments and a change in the White House won't change this policy since it is part of the US system.
Intelligent and honest US citizens like Scott Ritter should be heard of much more.
I certainly would recommand this book even in the meantime it is in part dated.
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"The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle EastThe Three Trillion Dollar War: The T
... Summary: CIA & Weapons Inspections.
"In the Preface the author elaborates on the sources he used for the book.
Some sources are named while others are anonymous out of neccessity. Mr. Ritter also writes from experience as a UN weapons inspector with prior military experience.
Scott Ritter describes the inspection process, the nationality of team members, and the involvement of governmental agencies from various countries.
He gives some history between Iraq and America dating back to 1991 and the publicized threats from Bush 41. That administration is the source of the presidential "lethal finding" which strongly advocated the removal from power of Saddam Hussein. That regime change policy was pursued by the Clinton administration also. The Iraq Operations Group was instrumental in those efforts.
Besides the Iraqi government's uncooperative actions, the author describes devious actions by the CIA.
He tells about the worst covert operation failure since the Bay of Pigs. A CIA coup attempt in Iraq was effectively infiltrated by double agents.
If that wasn't bad enough, someone blew the cover of a British-assisted SIGINT operation in Iraq.
The failed weapons inspection program can be summed up best by the author's words on page 291- "Disarmament was simply not the USA's principal policy objective in Iraq after 1991. Regime change was."
In "Iraq Confidential" Scott Ritter tells the inside story of what really happened in Iraq."
"In the Preface the author elaborates on the sources he used for the book.
Some sources are na
... Summary: kt99l
"This book is a waste of time. It is nearly impossible to read and not worth waisting your time on. Get (you can just Google it in google video) and watch 9/11 mystries instead it is far more intresting and might even get you to look at Iraq differently. "
"This book is a waste of time. It is nearly impossible to read and not worth waisting your time on.
... Summary: A rehash of "Endgame", but a fascinating read - buy it!
"This book seemed to be a rehash of his 1998 "Endgame" but I couln't put it down. Ritter is an outstanding writer, and even if this was fiction, I would recommend it because it is a circuitous story of strategy, intrique, counter-plots, and gamesmenship. All of these things surround the basic story of his frustrated effort to do his job and reach an authoratative conclusion as to the status of WMD in post-Gulf-War Iraq. He details the impact of the Necons and their efforts through the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) to put pressure on the Clinton presidency to adopt a policy of regime change in Iraq as a policy that would most address the security needs of Israel, then how Secretary of State Albright and the CIA effected that policy by undermining the inspections. He resigned in 1998 in protest, and wrote his first book 'Endgame'. A great read and essential to understanding the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq."
"This book seemed to be a rehash of his 1998 "Endgame" but I couln't put it down. Ritter is an outst
... Summary: Useful study of Iraq's disarmament
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Scott Ritter helped to lead the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), whose job was to oversee Iraq's disarmament after the 1991 war. From September 1991 to August 1998 UNSCOM worked to compel Iraq to provide a full account of its weapons. By contrast, US policy was to carry out limited inspections, which would be bound to fail, so that the USA could still claim that Iraq was concealing weapons.
Ritter shows how the CIA used UNSCOM as cover for its own intelligence-gathering effort in Iraq, compromising UNSCOM's integrity and independence. He "reveals the role played by the USA in manipulating, suppressing and fatally undermining the inspections process in support of a different agenda - regime change. Many American and many, many more Iraqi lives have since been lost in support of this agenda. The world may yet pay the price for the CIA's decision to use disarmament as its smokescreen."
Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) called for sanctions to be lifted once Iraq had been disarmed. Iraq complied with the requirement to disarm, destroying all its WMD in the summer of 1991. Hussein Kamal, head of Iraq's Military Industrial Commission, responsible for all Iraq's WMD programmes, told the truth when he said, "All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed."
But the US state had no intention of abiding by the UN's promise. Its policy was to maintain sanctions by refusing to let UNSCOM find out that Iraq had disarmed and to lift the sanctions only when the regime had been changed.
Contrary to the Butler Report and other official whitewashes, there was no intelligence failure. The CIA and MI6 knew that Iraq was no threat, and they told Bush and Blair. However, as Ritter writes, "Intelligence is always at the service of a country's national interest. But when intelligence is misused in support of politicians' agendas, that national interest is undermined ..."
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Scott Ritter helped to lead the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), whose job
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