Scott Ritter's Iraq Confidential by James Ridgeway

village voice > books > Scott Ritter's Iraq Confidential by James Ridgeway:

"Many people find the ongoing debate over weapons of mass destruction so confusing that they despair of ever understanding what's going on. That's why Iraq Confidential, by Scott Ritter, an American who helped lead the United Nations effort to get to the bottom of the mess, is so helpful. A major player in the search for WMDs, Ritter lays out the tale of what actually took place. Ever since the Gulf War, the U.S. had been seeking regime change in Iraq, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. To that end it sought to use the U.N. weapons inspections as a facade behind which the different American intelligence agencies tried to run covert operations aimed at toppling Saddam. When those efforts failed, and it began to look like the U.N. inspections might not find any WMDs, the U.S. intelligence community set out to sabotage the U.N. program. "