Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein

by Scott Ritter

Book Overview

Scott Ritter is the straight-talking former marine officer who the CIA wants to silence. After the 1991 Gulf War, Ritter helped lead the UN weapons inspections of Iraq, and found himself at the center... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560258527
• ISBN13: 9781560258520
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Nation Books
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Finally, THE TRUTH

Vastly informative. Monumental. This book answers just about everything you wanted to know about Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programs. If the Iraq/wmd issue confuses you but you still want to make sense of it, this is the book that will unravel the knot for you. The book is written by a former weapons inspector who spent almost a decade ON THE GROUND in Iraq looking for wmd, so the author has extensive FIRST HAND experience. He is not just a journalist writing about things second or third hand. It is also refreshing to read a book on the subject by a person without a political agenda. In this book, Ritter tells you just about everything that the inspectors found (and didn't find) in Iraq over a period of many years, and does so candidly without the distorting filter of politics. It's also a great read. The writing style is direct and clear. Truly enthralling, spellbinding, entertaining. And yet it's scholarly also. Excellent in every respect. Ritter leaves no leaf unturned. One of the best nonfiction books I have read in a long time (and I read at least one book a week). Very good stuff.

Bush's Lies for War

As I said it for another book ("The New American Empire"), Ritter's book is also a great help to see through Bush's lies. Now, George W. Bush says that he accepts responsibility for taking the U.S. to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence. -This is all wrong. It was not the intelligence that was faulty; it was Bush's intentions to wage war against Iraq no matter what were the intelligence and the facts. He twisted the intelligence reports and invented lies around his already decided policy. That's why he is guilty of having launched a war of aggression on lies and deception, and on having violated, in so doing, international law. He should pray that he will never be brought before an international court of justice.

Fascinating account of Iraq weapons inspections, and CIA corruption

Kevin Bold, if you're going to write something, could you do us all a favor and make it coherent? No wonder conservatives like you just lost the special elections, with a political seachange awaiting you in 2006. Unlike Mr. Bold, I actually read this book--cover to cover--and came away with a much greater appreciation for the political trials and pressures that squeezed the weapons inspection program in Iraq during the 90's. Clearly, mistakes were made on all sides, and it is also clear that America never wanted inspections to succeed--to do so would have meant the lifting of sanctions. After fully understanding the history of weapons inspections in Iraq, replete with bad US intelligence, the Iraq War becomes even sadder. Ritter makes it clear that, after 1996 or so, UNSCOM was primarily trying to find documents, not stockpiles. It was clear that Iraq no longer had missiles or launchers to speak of, and no manufacturing capabilities. While this is not a book about the Iraq War, it will help illuminate the events that eventually led up to it, told from the perspective of an uncompromising and diligent weapons inspector.

Ritter inspires confidence

At a time of conflicting arguments concerning the disaster in Iraq, Scott Ritter is among the most credible voices around. A Marine intelligence officer during the 1991 Gulf War, who calls himself a conservative Republican, Ritter voted for George Bush in 2000, in large part because of the Clinton administration's attempts to infiltrate his UN Weapons Inspection team with CIA agents in an attempt to find a way to assassinate Saddam Hussein. When the candidate Bush who renounced the goal of "regime change" morphed into the president Bush who lied and deceived the country into a war of aggression, Ritter became an outspoken critic. His analysis of the Bush regime's motives and the chaos of its war policies is incisive and very persuasive. Every citizen should read this book as well as Ritter's earlier books.

Inside Testimony from A Hero for Our Times

Scott Ritter is a stand-up guy - of the highest order. Not only has he seen the entire tragedy of Iraq from the inception of Gulf War I through the brutal decade of sanctions, to the unfortunate denouement of U.S. policy in the current war, from unique vantage points first as military attache to Schwartzkopf in Gulf War I, later as U.N. Weapons Inspector in Iraq. Mr. Ritter's book provides direct, 'ground-zero' witness to the material facts surrounding the build-up to the war as no other can - his is the one testimony which is unbiased by the ideological slant, special interests, or simply hampered by armchair distance that almost all other accounts are. Thus, the book is required reading for those who want the most accurate and detailed inside account of the most important single issue of the war: the justification for our invasion.