Christopher Hitchens versus Ritter: Iraq War debate PART 7

Christopher Hitchens and Scott Ritter duke it out over the Iraq war. ca 2006. Part 7

Ritter proves himself to be Hitchens' most formidable opponent in the Iraq war debates. He was intimately involved in the Gulf war, and in the events leading up to the Iraq war. He gives a very detailed account of the contradictions and hypocrisies of US policy toward Iraq. Hitchens largely agrees, but draws a different conclusion.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Christopher
• Hitchens
• Scott
• Ritter
• Iraq
• war
• terrorism
• WMD
• George
• Bush
• Dick
• Cheney
• Saddam
• Hussein
• UN
• weapons
• inspectors
• Kurdistan
• Kuwait
• Kanan
• Makiya
• Gulf
• War
• Al
• Qaeda

[PhillyDickinson]

"Well don't do it then."

Spot on.

[boobiecats]

I don't think you'd hear Hitchens supporting or defending those practices.

[jamesthenabignumber]

You hear Hitchens at 0:39 anticipating that Ritter was daring to suggest that living under Sadam would be better than democratizing forces of the US and UK. He almost relished the opportunity to rebuke that stupid idea.

[batvette]

Disarmed?

"Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter said Iraq is capable of reconstituting a chemical weapons program within a matter of weeks."

"I believe Iraq will seek to reconstitute a militarized nerve agent that will be used in a last ditch defense of Baghdad, and I think the Iraqi government's efforts to acquire significant stockpiles of atropine are an indication that this is the direction that Saddam Hussein is heading," Ritter said on CNN's "Crossfire."

CNN Nov. 2002

[BahrainiScribe]

Iraq is occupied by the USA. Country is destroyed. The USA, in effect, influences/dictates a lot of its policy, especially as relates to Iraq's security. How can we consider Iraq anything but an occupied country?

Does Iraq's government have the moral, political and actual power and ability to rule Iraq without the USA occupation? If we answer no to any part of this last question, I can't see how we can consider Iraq anything but an occupied country.

[NorthCitySider]

Hitchens is wrong. We still owe a massive debt to the Iraqi people. More debt than ever before.

[MrPootisman]

@sinistar99 I cannot add more than "Mors aut lībertās".

[sinistar99]

Why does Hitchens continue to say that Bush was in the position of taking the word of Saddam Houssen, when there were hundreds of weapons inspectors on the ground varifying the presence of weapons or not? It makes no sense.

[sinistar99]

@MrPootisman I would say the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed are in fact worse off, yes.

[sinistar99]

I think it is a cheap rhetorical ploy that Hitchens is using to say we can't speak of the loss of life when deciding if a war is just. He's basically taking a lawyer's tactic of getting the evedence which damns a murderer inadmissable on the basis of a technicality. Of course the cost in human lives should be taken into account. If human lives don't matter --if we're not allowed to "speak for the dead" as Hitchens puts it then why go on about the Kurds? This is rhetorical slight-of-hand.

[sinistar99]

@PhillyDickinson "Well don't do it then." Spot on?

Spot on as a disingenuous rhetorical ploy to get some cheap applause. Nowhere was Ritter defending the regime of Saddam. It's in little cheap quips like this that we see the chinks in the armor of Hitchens' arguments.

[MrPootisman]

@infox1000 No doubt, but now that a majority of US, UK Polish and others from the coalition of the willing troops have already returned. at the height of the intervention there were 170,000 US soldiers in Iraq now there are 50,000. This force remains until Iraqi Police and military can regain a status to which it would be able to deffend its own people. I can only direct you to an interesting article "Soldiers remaining in Iraq expect little will change as mission evolves" in "stars and stripes