He is very highly regarded among people who watch youtube vids of people talking with or without beards.
He was a marine in intelligence/He was in the marines, forget the rankm I'm thinking, captain .. hang on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter
Career
Military background
In 1980, Ritter served in the U.S. Army as a private. In May 1984, he was commissioned as an intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps. He served in this capacity for about 12 years.[28] He was the lead analyst for the Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force concerning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran–Iraq War.[29] His academic work focused on the Basmachi resistance movement in Soviet Central Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, and on the Basmachi commanders Faizal Maksum and Ibrahim Bek.[30][31]
During Desert Storm (1991), as a Marine captain, he served as a ballistic missile intelligence analyst under General Norman Schwarzkopf. Ritter filed multiple internal reports challenging Schwarzkopf's claim that the US had destroyed "as many as 16" of Iraq's estimated 20 mobile Scud missile launchers, arguing that they could not be confirmed.[5][32] In 1992 Ritter was quoted in a New York Times op-ed saying "No mobile Scud launchers were destroyed during the war."[32] He later worked as a security and military consultant for the Fox News network. In an interview with Democracy Now! in 2003 he said he had "a long relationship [...] of an official nature" with the UK's foreign intelligence spy agency MI6.[33]
UN Weapons inspector
Ritter worked as a weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission from 1991 to 1998, which was charged with finding and destroying all weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related manufacturing capabilities in Iraq. He was the chief inspector in fourteen of more than thirty inspection missions in which he participated.[34]
Ritter was among a group of UNSCOM weapons inspectors which regularly took Lockheed U-2 imagery to Israel for analysis, as UNSCOM was not getting sufficient analysis assistance from the United States and the United Kingdom. That was not authorized by UNSCOM, the U-2 jet had been loaned to UNSCOM and caused him to be subjected to criticism and investigation by U.S. authorities. Iraq protested about information being given to Israel.[35][36]
Operation Mass Appeal
Beginning in December 1997, Ritter, with the approval of UNSCOM head Richard Butler and other top UNSCOM leaders, began to supply the UK's foreign intelligence service MI6 with documents and briefings on UNSCOM's findings to be used for MI6's propaganda effort dubbed "Operation Mass Appeal": "I was approached by the British intelligence service, which I had, again, a long relationship with, of an official nature, to see if there was any information in the archives of UNSCOM that could be handed to the British, so that they could in turn work it over, determine its veracity, and then seek to plant it in media outlets around the world, in an effort to try to shape the public opinion of those countries, and then indirectly, through, for instance, a report showing up in the Polish press, shape public opinion in Great Britain and the United States. I went to Richard Butler with the request from the British. He said that he supported this, and we initiated a cooperation that was very short-lived. The first reports were passed to the British sometime in February of 1998. There was a detailed planning meeting in June of 1998, and I resigned in August of 1998.[...] This is an operation—Operation Mass Appeal, that had been going on prior to UNSCOM being asked to be the source of particular data, and it's an operation that continued after my resignation."[33]
Last weapons inspections in 1998
In January 1998, Ritter's inspection team in Iraq was blocked from some weapons sites by Iraqi officials who said that information obtained from the sites would be used for future planning of attacks. UN Inspectors then left Iraq, shortly before Operation Desert Fox attacks began in December 1998, using information which had been gathered for the purpose of disarmament to identify targets which would reduce Iraq's ability to wage both conventional and possibly unconventional warfare. UN weapons inspectors were thereafter denied access to Iraq. Ritter spoke on the PBS show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: "I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons program."[37]
When the United States and the UN Security Council failed to take action against Iraq for their ongoing failure to cooperate fully with inspectors (a breach of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1154), Ritter resigned from the United Nations Special Commission on August 26, 1998.[38] In his letter of resignation, Ritter said that the Security Council's reaction to Iraq's decision earlier that month to suspend co-operation with the inspection team made a mockery of the disarmament work. Ritter later said in an interview, that he resigned from his role as a United Nations weapons inspector over inconsistencies between United Nations Security Council Resolution 1154 and how it was implemented: "The investigations had come to a standstill, were making no effective progress, and in order to make effective progress, we really needed the Security Council to step in a meaningful fashion and seek to enforce its resolutions that we're not complying with."[37]
On September 3, 1998, several days after his resignation, Ritter testified before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services and the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and said that he resigned his position "out of frustration that the United Nations Security Council, and the United States as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq."[39] According to him Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright had supposedly "blocked more inspections in 1997 than Saddam Hussein did," a charge which Albright disputed.[40]
During the testimony on September 3, 1998, Ritter was asked by then-Senator Joe Biden about his position on inspections, which Biden criticized as "confrontation-based policy."[41] According to Barton Gellman, Biden questioned if the inspector was trying to "appropriate the power 'to decide when to pull the trigger' of military force against Iraq," with Biden saying that the Secretary of State would also have to consider the opinion of allies, the United Nations Security Council and public opinion, before any potential intervention in Iraq.[40][42] Later on, Biden stated that the decision was "above [Ritter's] pay grade."[41][42][40] According to Gellman, Senate Democrats joined Biden and "amplified on the Clinton administration's counterattack [against] Scott Ritter" with exceptions such as John Kerry, while Senate Republicans "were unanimous in describing Ritter's disclosures as highly damaging to the credibility of the Clinton administration on one of its core foreign policies."[40]
Ritter's testimony was disputed by Richard Butler, chief UN arms inspector for Iraq, who claimed that Ritter made factual errors and harmed UNSCOM's mission. The previous chief inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekéus, said that Ritter was "not in a position to know all of the considerations that go into decision making on the commission," and defended Albright's support for UNSCOM. Albright publicly disputed Ritter's claims in a speech, saying "In fact, the United States has been by far the strongest international backer of UNSCOM. We have provided indispensable technical and logistical support. We've pushed and pushed and pushed some more to help UNSCOM break through the smoke screen of lies and deceptions put out by the Iraqi regime."[43]
FLASHBACK � CLIP: WAR HAWK BIDEN TRASHES SCOTT RITTER FOR OPPOSING AN IRAQ WAR
https://youtu.be/wCHVdJ_9W5I?si=TQyj6ctv0xc5G6oT
https://youtu.be/wCHVdJ_9W5I?si=TQyj6ctv0xc5G6oT
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A great listen this one....[more]