KEPW News interviews Scott Ritter in Washington, D.C.

Presenter: Reporting for KEPW News from Washington, D.C.:

Curtis Blankinship: HandsOffUhuru.org is asking for support at the sentencing hearing for the Uhuru 3 Dec. 16. They helped organize the Black People’s Conference on Nov. 2 before Election Day in Washington, D.C.

I spoke with keynote speaker, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector, author, and commentator Scott Ritter: Isn’t our policy in Israel and Palestine and Ukraine basically mostly about selling weapons? It’s not about winning the war.

Scott Ritter: Well, I’ll say it’s not about solving the solution. It’s not about solving the problem, it’s not about trying to bring an end to the conflict. I mean, any rational human being would say that if you’re going to be involved in something like a conflict that you should be seeking conflict resolution to bring the conflict to an end.

[00:01:04] What we’re doing here is we are claiming to pick a side, but we’re picking a side without a solution. So all we do is perpetuate the cycle of violence, and that means that because our primary means of supporting the side is through the provision of weaponry, it basically begins to look like it’s a giant scheme for, you know, for enriching the military-industrial complex here in the United States.

[00:01:36] I’m sure policymakers will say that, you know, we’re trying to win the war, trying to have our side win the war, but the fact of the matter is, for more than two years into a Ukraine conflict that we’re losing, and Israel’s not winning, all we’re doing is sending more weapons, which means more people die, the conflict goes on.

[00:01:55] And the irony here is that the result we claim that we don’t want to have, the other side winning, is exactly what’s happening. Hamas is winning, Hezbollah is winning, Iran is winning, Russia is winning. And I guess you could say that American weapons producers are winning, but the people we claim to be supporting aren’t.

[00:02:16] Curtis Blankinship: Right. And so this milieu of the Democrats that are funded by corporations, it seems like I either am funding the military industrial complex or with globalization, I’m funding Amazon and tech corporations and other corporations. It’s either one corporation or the other.

[00:02:39] Scott Ritter: It’s the same with the Republicans, I would say, with mainstream American politics. The bottom line is: Special interests are driving the ship, not the the genuine desires of the American people, whether the special interests are defense industry-related, pharmaceutical companies, big tech, oil, they seem to be the ones calling the shots on the policies, not the American people. And so you know, we end up underwriting all this with our tax dollars, but we don’t get any benefit from it.

[00:03:09] Curtis Blankinship: All right, and then you were the weapons inspector for Iraq. Why didn’t Nancy Pelosi and is it Chuck Schumer? They should have—they’re on the Intelligence committees. Shouldn’t they have investigated the Iraq War?

[00:03:22] Scott Ritter: Well, I mean, I’m they’re going to claim that they did investigate the Iraq War, but there are investigations and there are investigations. There are investigations that seek out the truth, and there are investigations that exist from the very beginning for the sole purpose of certifying a preordained conclusion.

[00:03:40] Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and others have a narrative that they’re trying to support, that Saddam Hussein was evil, that there were weapons of mass destruction, that we needed to go in. And so they’re going to fix the findings of their investigation to sustain that, as opposed to doing a genuine investigation into the root causes. Because if they did that, they’d find out that Saddam Hussein was a rational actor who could have been dealt with diplomatically, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq did not pose a threat to anybody.

[00:04:09] Curtis Blankinship: Well, I know you’re not an economist, but to me that’s what put us into the 2008 financial crisis, as we spend all this money on war, unnecessary war with the wrong country.

[00:04:19] Scott Ritter: What I would say is agree with you 100% that I’m not an economist, but note too that I’m not a medical doctor, but I know when I have a fever and I know when I have a cold. And I know there are things that contribute to good health and things that don’t contribute to good health. And I would say that the health of the American economy is not promoted when we are giving money away to causes like war and stuff instead of taking care of the issues at home that would benefit from that money.

[00:04:51] Curtis Blankinship: All right, so last question. What’s the solution and what I’m asking other people is, I’m from Oregon where we have Ron Wyden is: Why can’t we just throw out the defense contractors out of each state and tell and tell them we want that money for social programs that you’re spending on the war. Can’t we just throw, can’t we just stop all these defense contractors? I mean, we pass a military budget in a week, but we can’t pass a homeless plan.

[00:05:14] Scott Ritter: Yeah, the best way to stop defense contractors is to stop funding them.

[00:05:18] Curtis Blankinship: But how do we do that?

[00:05:19] Scott Ritter: Elect better representatives. But the problem is, in order to get elected nowadays, you have to have a lot of money, and that money comes from special interests. And one of the main special interests are the defense industries, the pharmaceuticals, it’s all interrelated.

[00:05:34] And if you’re somebody who’s generally going to shake up the system, the system will do whatever it takes to make sure that you don’t get elected. And if you do get elected, they’re going to make it hard for you to stay in office, especially if you’re a congressional representative with a two-year electoral cycle. The moment you win election, you’re going to have to start raising funds to defend yourself in a primary that the other side is going to be pouring money into. It’s impossible right now.

[00:06:00] If you want to solve the big problems that face this country, you have to take money out of American elections. You have to level the playing field so that it becomes a battle of ideas, not about a battle who has the deepest pockets.

[00:06:12] Curtis Blankinship: Yeah, what about free media time? Instead of spending all that time on sports, let’s just get free media.

[00:06:20] Scott Ritter: I think that’s part of it. If you’re going to take money out of it, one of the things that money brings is the ability to buy advertising and things of that nature. I think we level the playing field by having laws that provide equal time for all candidates so that the people get to decide who better articulates policies and things of that nature.

[00:06:40] Curtis Blankinship: But Obama famously took funding, small funding, from everybody, didn’t, he didn’t take large—

[00:06:47] Scott Ritter: Obama took large money. Everybody takes large money. They hide it. They you know it may not seem but they come up with the whole thing about political action committees and stuff you know. There’s money and then there’s money: the money that gets counted; the money  that doesn’t get counted. The money that doesn’t get counted is a huge amount of money we have to learn to control that as well.

[00:07:06] Curtis Blankinship: All right. Thanks for your time and your great work.

[00:07:08] Scott Ritter: Thank you very much.

[00:07:10] Curtis Blankinship: To support the Uhuru 3 and the Black People’s Movement, go to HandsOffUhuru.org. For KEPW News, I’m Curtis Blankinship.