Scott Ritter

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Scott Ritter : biography

15 July 1961 –

William Scott Ritter, Jr. (born July 15, 1961) was a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, and later a critic of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter stated that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities. He became a popular anti-war figure and talk show commentator as a result of his stance.

In 2001, Ritter on two occasions was detained and later arrested on charges of soliciting minors for sex on the Internet that were both dismissed. He was arrested on similar charges in 2010 that led to a conviction and sentence of one and half to five and a half years.

Military background

Ritter was born into a military family in 1961 in Gainesville, Florida. He graduated from Kaiserslautern American High School in 1979, and later from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a Bachelor of Arts in the history of the Soviet Union and departmental honors. In 1980 he served in the U.S. Army as a Private. Then 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. He served as the lead analyst for the Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force concerning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran–Iraq War. Ritter’s academic work focused on the Basmachi resistance movement in Soviet Central Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, and on the Basmachi commanders Fazail Maksum and Ibrahim Bek. During Desert Storm, he served as a ballistic missile advisor to General Norman Schwarzkopf. Ritter later worked as a security and military consultant for the Fox News network.

Arrests and conviction

Ritter was detained in April 2001 and arrested in June 2001 in connection with police stings in which officers posed as under-aged girls to arrange meetings of a sexual nature. The first incident did not lead to any charges. He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child" after the second, but charges were dropped after he completed six months of probation BBC April 12, 2011. Accessed April 12, 2011. and the record was sealed on condition that he avoid further trouble for a period of time. After this information was made public in early 2003, Ritter said that the timing of the leak was politically motivated. The Guardian, January 24, 2003

Ritter was arrested again in November 2009 over communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site. Police said that he exposed himself via a web camera after the officer said she was a 15-year-old girl; Ritter said he was not made aware of the ostensible age of his correspondent before the act. The next month, Ritter waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was released on a $25,000 unsecured bail. Charges included "unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communications facility, corruption of minors, indecent exposure, possessing instruments of crime, criminal attempt and criminal solicitation". access 2010 1 15 Ritter rejected a plea bargain, testified in his trial and was found guilty of all but the criminal attempt count in a Monroe County, Pennsylvania courtroom on April 14, 2011. Retrieved April 14, 2011. In October 2011 he received a sentence of one and a half to five and a half years in prison.

Opinions on U.S. policy toward Iran

On February 18, 2005 Scott Ritter told an audience in Olympia, Washington that George Bush had signed-off on preparations to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and that these preparations would be completed by June 2005. On the same occasion, he also made reference to the Iraqi elections, saying that the United States had manipulated the 2005 parliamentary election, changing the percentage of United Iraqi Alliance votes from 56% to 48%.

Ritter reiterated and clarified his statements about Iran in a March 30, article published by Al Jazeera.

In a June 20, 2005, article published by Al Jazeera, after noting that the Iraq war, which supposedly began in March 2003, in fact began with military operations authorized by the president in late August 2002 and executed in September 2002, Ritter wrote: "The reality is that the U.S. war with Iran has already begun."