Nov 16-18, 2007
This workshop will provide you with information, data, and perspective that will empower you to more actively engage in the public forum on the vital, pivotal issue of Iraq. Too often, people feel they lack the information necessary to formulate individual positions on such a sweeping and multi-faceted issue as the War in Iraq. However, this may be the most important issue for the future of our country and there may be no one better qualified to bring you up to speed than Scott Ritter. He will offer a series of lectures and interactive processes designed to help you work your way through why the United States is in Iraq, what it is really like there today, and what would happen if the United States withdrew in the near future. This workshop will also offer strategies for repairing American democracy and restoring our credibility abroad. This workshop is co-sponsored by Traprock Peace Center.
Born into a military family, Scott Ritter joined the Marine Corps after university and served as the lead analyst for the Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force concerning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. During the Gulf War he served as a ballistic missile expert under General Norman Schwarzkopf, then joined the United Nations Special Commission (Unscom), where he took part in more than 30 inspection missions, 14 as team leader. His unannounced visits surprised Iraqi officials, who accused him of being a US spy in 1997. In August 1998, Mr. Ritter resigned from his job. His 1999 book Endgame argued that Unscom’s mission had been compromised by Washington’s use of inspections to spy on the Iraqis and blamed the US and the UK for the breakdown. Iraq Confidential reveals how the CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of the UN. As the US and UK prepared to invade Iraq, Ritter asserted his team was satisfied that Iraq had destroyed 98% of its weapons by 1995. He said “Iraq today is not a threat to its neighbors and is not acting in a manner that threatens.” He has also written Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America, Waging Peace: the Art of War for the Antiwar Movement and Target Iran: The Truth about the White House’s Plans for Regime Change. Rowe is honored to welcome the return of this lucid, energetic, and honorable world figure.
“By any standard, the ongoing American occupation of Iraq is a disaster. The invasion of Iraq was a crime of gigantic proportions, for which politicians, the media, and the public share responsibility.”
– Scott Ritter