Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #457257 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 316 pages

From Booklist
As a U.S. Marine officer in the Gulf War, Ritter served as a ballistic missile advisor to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf and then became a high-up UN weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998. Now he is a vociferous, controversial critic of the Bush II administration and the Iraq War. In his latest expose, Ritter trains his inspector's eyes on Iran, meticulously analyzing the rhetoric about Tehran beginning with the first Bush presidency when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, then skeptically parsing the protracted, politically tangled wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and vehemently objecting to what he sees as excessive American alignment with Israel. The most interesting figure to emerge from Ritter's flinty yet invaluable inquiry is John Bolton, current U.S. ambassador to the UN and a neo-con instrumental in pushing for regime changes in the Middle East "at any cost." In closing, Ritter offers shrewd observations about why things have cooled off regarding Iran as the midterm elections loom and cautions that war with Iran would be catastrophic and must be averted. Donna Seaman
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About the Author

Customer Reviews

American Militarism on steroids
Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh have made at least two appearances at The New York Society for Ethical Culture in the past year to discuss US foreign policy issues concerning Iraq and more recently Iran. The October 16, 2006 appearance covered the issues of Mr. Ritter's current book Target Iran. Transcripts and podcasts are available.

It is Mr. Ritter's contention that the Busch administration's primary tool of foreign policy is that of regime change. Any efforts by those nations that are so targeted to engage us in diplomacy have and will be rebuffed. This administration will not talk to those it considers it's enemies. This has been challenged in the media by the James Baker group, but it remains to be seen if they will effect any changes.

Target Iran, according to Mr. Ritter, in based on press coverage in the Middle East and private confirmation of those stories by members of our intelligence community. The story is that America is already working inside Iran with dissidents to identify targets. We are also said to be negotiating the details of staging areas for our base of attack for this widening of the Middle East war. Once that is completed, this administration intends to attack.

The public is and will be sold the same scenario in which (ala Downing Street memo), the facts will be fixed around the policy.

Why will this happen? One element is the influence of Israel. Iran is perceived, and not incorrectly, as a major threat to Israel. But Ritter makes the point that Israeli and American interests are not identical. After the recent events in Southern Lebanon, watching our congress and our administration give their complete support to whatever Israel was going to do, it's hard to see much separation.

Whatever the threat to us from Iran, Mr. Ritter says it's very much overblown at this point and should not lead to war. Iran, according to Ritter, approached this administration several years ago to normalize relations and limit it's nuclear research. They were rebuffed. Mr. Busch can only visualize regime change.

If this goes forward as Mr. Hersh and Ritter both seem to think is inevitable, what are the chances of success? According to these gentlemen, the results will be utter catastrophe. Iran will immediately shut off the oil spigot. Venezuela will create a hemispheric crisis by acting in sympathy and fail to honor their US contracts. US troops in Iraq will be under attack by the Shia and possibly because of a religious fatwa in response to our attack. Iranian missiles will be directed against the Saudi oil fields to further disrupt the world markets. The world economy will be plunged into a massive recession. This could lead to a ground invasion of US troops most likely from Uzbekistan that could easily turn into a trap. Our ground troops are seriously depleted and under equipped at this point already. Here is where Ritter says this administration could use field grade nuclear weapons to break the back of Iran. He thinks this is the ultimate deal breaker because it absolutely assures us that radical Arabs will find a way over time to deliver a nuclear bomb to an American city.

These scenarios seem outlandish, except there are so many radical Republican sources cheering on war with Iran, that one cannot expect this administration to not once again respond with a military solution as the first order of business. Of course, they visualize success not the failure predicted by Ritter.

The massive failure of our government during Katrina and the fiasco in Iraq are both symptoms of the same problems in the Busch administration. What if war with Iran leads to the doomsday scenario that Ritter and Hersh talk about. This book is a sober assessment of these issues and should be read widely by the public.

The potential of a Democratic House of Representatives in the near future will not change the scenario described by Ritter. American militarism is ascendant. As Ritter says, if the war in Iraq were going well, the public would be very satisfied. The fact that the war is against all tenets of international law and was an immoral act on our part is not something that most of us seem to worry about. Too many Democrats only talk about running a competent war.

Negotiation versus Regime Change
Scott Ritter provides chapter and verse on how conflict with the Axis of Evil nations could have been avoided with direct negotiation. The mullahs of Iran sought to negotiate with everything on the table, including nuclear weapons and a treaty with Israel. North Korea still wants direct negotiations. So did Saddam. We don't negotiate with regimes we want to remove. Bush prefers to "take them out" no matter how many Americans die.

Critical Piece of the Puzzle, Not the Whole Picture
Scott Ritter was proven correct about Iraq not having weapons of mass destruction, and this alone demands our respectful attention to his views of the foolishness of attacking Iran.

There are other reviews of the substance of this book that are excellent, so here I just wish to contribute three supporting observations:

1) Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror by LtGen Thomas McInerney and MajGen Paul Vallely, was published in 2004 and lays out the complete plan for US military domination of the Middle East, with Iran following Iraq, and then Syria etcetera. As lunatic as the plan may be (see my review for more details) it is a plan that will be carried out as long as Dick Cheney remains Vice President and George Bush Junior remains a fool who is clearly in way over his head.

2) Howard Bloom, who understood the coming Sunni versus Shi'ite world war for the soul of Islam, writing about it in The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History, now warns of a likely Iranian masterplan that first used Ahmed Chalabi to lure the American neo-cons into Iraq, and now has lured four carriers, two strike groups and an amphibious group within range of the supersonic Sunburn missile that carried a nuclear warhead, can explode a carrier, and travel at 3.0 Mach straight line, or 2.2 Mach when zig-zagging.

3) In addition to Scott Ritter's excellent analysis of how Iran can turn off the oil supply in Iran, portions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and Kuwait, it is helpful to consider the extreme vulnerability of the US land supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad. A slide by Webster Tarpley showing this vulnerability is posted above.

Ritter gets a lot of respect from me--his integrity took him from a relatively minor position as a Marine Corps field grade officer, and elevated him to the role of speaker of truth for the public. I think he is right--the US will attack Iran, ostensibly in support of Israel--and this will be the greatest disaster of the 21st century, setting off a true world war between Sunni and Shi'ite in which the Christians are the "collateral damage" while the Jews experience a new form of genocide. I just shake my head, feeling helpless, wondering what it takes to get Scott Ritter's important knowledge in front of Congress.