03 September 1998
CONGRESSIONAL REPORT, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1998
(Ritter discusses UNSCOM, Iraq policy at Senate) (800) Washington -- Scott Ritter, the U.S. Marine who headed a key inspection unit in UNSCOM (the United Nations Special Committee) until his resignation last week, was the sole witness at a joint hearing of the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Relations Committees September 3. The hearing was briefly held up on a procedural matter, as Democrats objected to the fact that senior Administration officials, traveling with the President overseas, were not able to attend the hearing and give their views. This led Majority Leader Trent Lott to take the highly unusual step of suspending the floor session of the Senate so that the hearing could proceed. Armed Service Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond began the hearing by stating that "If Saddam (Hussein) will not let the U.N. weapons inspectors resume their inspections, then the U.S. must exert its leadership in the Security Council and, along with our allies, take military action to exact severe consequences for Saddam's refusal." "The so-called 'diplomatic solution' alone is not a viable long-term approach," the South Carolina Republican said. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, sitting in for the absent Jesse Helms, looked back to the agreement U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan brokered in February, noting that "the threat of force at that time gave credibility to international diplomatic efforts and made the Annan agreement possible. The Administration accepted the Annan agreement, but threatened 'the severest consequences' if Iraq failed to comply with the agreement. That threat of force is essential and must remain." "If there is Iraqi non-compliance and non-cooperation, we ought to not just threaten force, but employ it," Lugar stated. "We should consider doing so with or without international cooperation. The stakes involved are not trivial." Ritter's opening remarks challenged a statement Secretary of State Albright made earlier this week that while Ritter has been a good inspector, he "doesn't have a clue about what our overall policy has been." Indeed, Ritter said, "I do have a clue, in fact several, all of which indicate that our government has clearly expressed its policy one way and then acted in another." "The United States," he added, "has undermined UNSCOM's efforts through interference and manipulation, usually coming from the highest levels of the Administration's National Security Team." Ritter's purpose in appearing at the hearing, he said, was "to appeal to the Administration and to the Senate to work together to change America's Iraq policy back to what has been stated in the past -- full compliance with the provisions of Security Council resolutions, to include enabling UNSCOM to carry out its mission of disarmament in an unrestricted, unhindered fashion." More than 20 senators attended the hearing, each of whom expressed respect for Ritter's work with UNSCOM and the importance of the questions his testimony raised about U.S. policy toward Iraq. Joseph Biden (Democrat, Delaware), the ranking minority member on the Foreign Affairs Committee, took Ritter to task, however, for focusing on inspections while failing to see the larger picture to which the Secretary of State alluded in her remarks two days earlier. In effect, Biden said, Ritter was trying to force the Administration to choose between inspections and war. Such a decision, he stated, "is above your pay grade." But Senator John McCain, who spent several years as a prisoner of war during the Viet Nam War, countered that it was very useful to have the viewpoint of someone of Ritter's pay grade. "What's disturbing so many of us," he added, is the difference between the Administration's strong statements about the need to use force in the face of Iraqi intransigence this winter and its relative quiescence this summer. For his part, Ritter recounted how teams he was to lead on challenge inspections in July and August were blocked by the Security Council just as they were about to begin. Both the United States and Great Britain, wary of igniting a crisis, agreed that the inspections should be help up, he said, citing both UNSCOM's executive chairman and deputy chairman as his sources. "We had precise information," he said, "hard intelligence" that the sites the teams were about to visit held ballistic missile components that Iraq had retained despite seven years of U.N. sanctions. Asked how long it would take Iraq to restore its chemical and biological weapons programs, Ritter said: "within six months of a go-ahead by the president of Iraq." By contrast, reconstituting the country's ability to nuclear capabilities would take "several years," he added. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, noted that with UNSCOM's inspections on hold, the United States and its Gulf War allies are "sliding into a policy of containment. ... We've got a major set of choices."
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