One Republican against Bush
By Amelia Hansen San Mateo Times


Monday, June 30, 2003 - SAN MATEO -- The keynote speaker at Sunday's 2003 Peninsula Symposium and Benefit for Peace, Justice and Human Rights railed against President Bush and left the audience with a straightforward message for the 2004 presidential election: "Remember the A-B-C's -- Anything but Bush and Cheney." The message was met with unsurprising enthusiasm from the crowd. But the speaker himself had a bit of a surprising background: Scott Ritter, former U.N. chief weapons inspector, is a self-professed conservative Republican who admitted to the audience he voted for Bush three years ago.

Since then, Ritter said, Bush has lied to the American public about the true situation in Iraq, particularly in regard to the weapons of mass destruction, which American forces, to date, have failed to locate.

"I leave the door open that they still may find something," Ritter said to the group of 100 or so people gathered in the darkened auditorium at the San Mateo Performing Arts Center on Sunday. "But even if anything is found, it won't be anywhere near what they said it was -- thousands of tons of biological weapons."

Ritter's new book, "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America," published by Context Books, is due out next week.

A 12-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and an intelligence officer who served as a central weapons inspector between 1991 and 1998, Ritter said if no weapons are found, Bush's decision to wage war on Iraq should be condemned -- whether he lied or made an honest mistake.

"If Iraq is in possession of weapons of mass destruction, they are in violation of international law," Ritter said. "If they aren't, then we are in violation of international law." Click For Rest Of Story