By Jonathan Curiel

The U.N. weapons inspectors heading to Iraq are doomed to failure -- not because they're incompetent and not because Iraq knows how to hide a trove of nuclear and biological weapons. No. In the view of Scott Ritter, the engineers and scientists who'll peek into Saddam Hussein's buildings will fail because the Bush administration has undermined their work -- even before they start.

"The Bush administration has no intention of disarming Iraq through inspection," says Ritter, who was a U.N. arms inspector in Iraq for seven years. "Their intention is regime removal and using the weapons inspections as a way to trigger military action that will achieve regime removal, which in itself violates international law. The inspections process is a sham."

Ritter, in a telephone interview from his home in upstate New York, also questions whether Iraq actually has factories and facilities that are producing weapons of mass destruction.

Ritter knows his views are controversial. He knows some people believe he has become an apologist for Hussein's government and someone who reflexively criticizes President Bush's stance on Iraq. (In September, Ritter stood in front of the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad and said "the rhetoric of fear" created by Bush would lead to a war that is "a historical mistake.") Ritter doesn't care. The ex-Marine says he has not done a bizarre about-face since testifying before a House committee in 1998 that Iraq was close to developing biochemical and nuclear weapons. "People who criticize me today fail to recognize that when I testified in 1998, I testified as a detective defending the UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) investigation process," he says. "I was testifying about all the leads I was investigating. You should know that a lead does not constitute incontrovertible proof. A lead needs to be investigated. And in most cases, a lead turns out to be false or exaggerated. It doesn't mean you don't investigate it. What you can't have while you're investigating is somebody planting evidence or doing an illegal search and seizure or unauthorized wiretap. That's a violation of due process."

It was the United States that violated these precepts during the previous U. N. weapons inspections when it planted spies among weapons inspectors and dictated when the inspections could be done, Ritter says. And it's the United States, he warns, that won't give the new inspections a chance to work. He says the inspectors need a minimum of six months -- and, preferably, two years -- to realistically comb through Iraq's cities and countryside. Hawks in the Bush administration (he refers to them as "a narrow slice of neoconservative America that happens to be ensconced in the White House") won't wait that long before initiating a military campaign, he says.

"The first trigger for war will come up in the first week in December, when Iraq is obligated to provide a declaration listing the totality of its holdings in terms of weapons of mass destruction," Ritter says. "The U.N. resolution says that the 'Security Council decides that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution constitute a further material breech of Iraq's obligation and will be reported to the council for assessment.' Reported by whom? The United States will be the ones doing the reporting."

"The window for military action opens in December and closes in March," Ritter says, referring to such factors as the cooler winter weather and long nights that would make it easier for U.S. troops to wage a campaign in Iraq. "The Bush administration will have its (troops) in place by mid-December. So, what we're looking at is reporting by the United States of Iraqi noncompliance and a further breach. They will report to the council and, regardless of the council decision, take into account what Colin Powell said -- that the president will not allow himself to be shackled by the Security Council regarding action in Iraq, and the United States will initiate military action in December." Since resigning his U.N. post in 1998, Ritter has steadily increased his criticism of U.S. policies in Iraq -- and his own profile. He has written two books, including "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis," (which has just been reissued in paperback) and directed and written a documentary about Iraqi weapons inspections, "In Shifting Sands," which the Roxie Theater in San Francisco screens every Saturday at noon. Ritter appeared Thursday night at the Roxie, on a visit squeezed into a schedule that finds him this month speaking before the Dutch Parliament, other European audiences and groups around the United States.

U.N. officials are expected to arrive in Baghdad Monday, with U.N. weapons inspectors following in the next week -- all part of a political chess match that may culminate in a U.S.-led military campaign and the deposing of Hussein's regime. Ritter says the previous inspections, which ended in 1998 and destroyed more weapons than were destroyed during the Gulf War, effectively eliminated Hussein's weapons capability. He says the Bush administration has lied to the American public about the extent of Iraq's weapons capabilities and Iraq's connections to al Qaeda.

"I'm not saying Iraq is innocent," he says. "I want to take (Hussein) down. But I want to do it in accordance with the rule of law. This is about war with Iraq and American democracy. One thing I ask every American to do is take a long, hard look in the mirror and say, 'Am I willing to die for Iraq?' The American armed forces belong to the people of the United States of America. Therefore, it's incumbent upon the people of the United States of America to determine if that cause is worth dying for. Right now, Iraq definitely does not constitute a worthy cause."

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