{"id":720,"date":"2003-04-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-04-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2003-04-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-04-01T00:00:00","slug":"US Will Lose Iraq War Says Scott Ritter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=720","title":{"rendered":"US Will Lose Iraq War Says Scott Ritter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thorn in the side of the American administration, and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, has warned that America will lose the Iraq war and the American military: &#8220;will leave Iraq with its tail between its legs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with Irish radio, Mr. Ritter said that the conflict would become an &#8220;absolute quagmire,&#8221; and the US-UK advance would stall outside Baghdad and fail to capture the city.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We find ourselves&#8230; facing a nation of 23 million, with armed elements numbering around 7 million &#8211;who are concentrated at urban areas. We will not win this fight. America will loose this war,&#8221; said Mr. Ritter.<\/p>\n<p>According to Mr. Ritter, too many in the Pentagon have listened to: &#8220;the blithering of Iraqi expatriates,&#8221; whose agenda coincides with neo-conservatives in the White House.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re in Iraq &#8211;carrying out the right-wing neo-conservative motives of a handful of people. The Richard Perle&#8217;s, Paul Wolfowitz&#8217;s; the Dick Cheney&#8217;s. And we&#8217;ve allowed them to hijack our foreign policy,&#8221; he told Irish broadcaster, Vincent Browne on the RTE1 radio &#8220;Tonight Show.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He warned that Shia Muslims in the South were not fighting because of intimidation by the Iraqi government, but because of nationalistic and religious reasons.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re doing it because, the American Crusader Infidel has invaded and violated Holy Iraq, and they will resist us, and they will resist us strongly,&#8221; said Mr. Ritter. &#8220;We are not liberating Iraq, we are destroying Iraq,&#8221; he added later in the interview.<\/p>\n<p>Scott Ritter, is a former U.N. weapons inspector and author of the book &#8220;Endgame.&#8221; Ritter, a ballistic missile technology expert, worked in military intelligence during his 12-year career in the U.S. armed forces. In 1998, Ritter resigned from the U.N. Special Commissions team to protest Clinton Administration policies that he said subverted the weapons inspection process.<\/p>\n<p>Vincent Browne: &#8220;Scott Ritter&#8230; are you surprised by how the assault in Iraq is going?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Scott Ritter: &#8220;No actually, I wrote a paper that was published last Fall, that predicted just this. And i&#8217;m a little disturbed in listening to some of the analysis going along here.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dI think that one of the reasons the American find themselves in such difficulties in Iraq, is that so many in the Pentagon have listened to the&#8230; blithering of Iraqi expatriots who have spoken out &#8211;rightly so&#8211; against Saddam Hussein, and who think that it&#8217;s a) the role of the United States to liberate Iraq; and b) think that the Iraqi people want us to liberate them from Saddam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dAnd I think that the harsh reality is that in buying off on the expectations of being greeted in the streets of Iraq with song and flowers&#8230; we now find we are being greeted with bullets and bombs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dAnd it&#8217;s the Shia in the south who are fighting us. They&#8217;re not doing it because Chemical Ali is down there with his death squads threatening to execute &#8217;em.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dThey&#8217;re doing it because, the American Crusader Infidel has invaded and violated Holy Iraq, and they will resist us, and they will resist us strongly. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dAnd no matter how many Iraqi&#8217;s we kill and slaughter, I predict that America will loose this war and ultimately the American military will leave Iraq with its tail between its legs. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dUnfortunately, we&#8217;re going to inflict a tremenduous amount of death and destruction on the people of Iraq; the American soldiers and Marines will also pay a price. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dAnd all those who sit outside of Iraq and courageously encourage Americans to go in and slaughter Iraqi&#8217;s should be ashamed of themselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Vincent Browne: &#8220;&#8230;You think the Americans will loose this war? &#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Scott Ritter: &#8221; We lost Vietnam&#8230;. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dRemember we can kill many, many Iraqi&#8217;s and we will do so. But I am telling you right now, that we do not have sufficient combat power in Iraq &#8211;as we speak&#8211; to win this battle. So we will have to reinforce considerably. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dThe current posture, in terms of American deployment, is predicated on a presumption that the Iraqi Army would surrender; that the Iraqi people would welcome; that the international community would support. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dThe exact opposite is happening. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dAnd now we find ourselves with fewer than 120,000 boots on the ground; facing a nation of 23 million, with armed elements numbering around 7 million &#8211;who are concentrated at urban areas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dWe will not win this fight. America will loose this war. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dSaddam Hussein may die&#8230; But you know what? <\/p>\n<p>\u201dI&#8217;m betting that Saddam&#8217;s gonna be around a lot longer than anyone can predict. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dI&#8217;m betting that we don&#8217;t capture Baghdad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dI&#8217;m betting that we stall outside Baghdad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dI&#8217;m betting that this becomes an absolute quagmire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dI hope I&#8217;m wrong, for the sake of the American lives that are going to be lost. Remember I&#8217;m a 12 year veteran of the Marine Corps. I fought in the first Gulf War. I know what war is about. I know what defending my country is about.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dThis is a bad war, because it has nothing to do with the defense of the United States of America. Iraq doesn&#8217;t have weapons of mass destruction. The Bush Administration has pulled an enormous lie to the international community; to the American people. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dAnd now we&#8217;re in Iraq &#8211;carrying out the right-wing neo-conservative motives of a handful of people; the Richard Perle&#8217;s, Paul Wolfowitz&#8217;s; the Dick Cheney&#8217;s. And we&#8217;ve allowed them to hijack our foreign policy. <\/p>\n<p>\u201dAnd they&#8217;ve been cheered on by these Iraqi expatriots, who have zero credibility in my eyes. They&#8217;re so brave and they want Iraq liberated&#8230; Then my goodness man, go to Iraq&#8230; fight and die for your country&#8230; But don&#8217;t ask Americans to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>. The former US marine and UN weapons inspector predicts that the US military will leave Iraq &#8220;with its tail between its legs&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Iraq"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}