Author: Scott Ritter
Foreword/Introductio: Seymour Hersh
Publisher: Viva Books
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 312
ISBN/UPC (if available): 1845110889
Description
Scott Ritter is the straight-talking former Marine officer whom the CIA wanted to silence. After the 1991Gulf War Ritter helped lead the UN weapons inspections of Iraq and found himself at the centre of a dangerous game between the Iraqi and US regimes. As Ritter now reveals in this explosive book, Washington was only ever interested in disarmament as a tool for its own agenda: regime change. Operating in fog of espionage and counter-espionage, Ritter and his team were determined to find out the truth, we now know, was that Iraq was playing a deadly game of double-bluff, and actually had no WMD. But to have revealed this would have derailed America’s drive to topple Saddam Hussein.
Iraq Confidential charts the disillusionment of a true patriot, who came to realise that his own government sought to undermine weapons control in the Middle East. Ritter shows us a world of deceit and betrayal, in which nothing is as it seems. Ricocheting between trigger-happy Iraqi soldiers in the desert and duplicitous spymasters in Washington, this book provides tantalizing glimpses into the real workings of international diplomacy – Ritter reveals the truth about Saddam’s so-called secret SCUD force, the chief CIA intelligence source ‘Curveball’, the involvement of the Israelis and the full extents to which the CIA simply commandeered the UN disarmament mission. A host of characters from M16 to the Romanian intelligence services flesh out this powerful narrative, which will radically affect the ongoing debated about Iraq.
Contents
Foreword by Seymour Hersh
Preface
Glossary
Maps
Prologue: In the Eye of the Storm
PART ONE: BAPTISM
A Delicate Balancing Act: September-December 1991
The Bumbpy Road to Independence: December 1991-February 1992
Showdown in Baghdad: March-July1992
Counterattack: August-October 1992
Assassinating the truth: October 1992-January 1993
Shifting the Goalposts: February 1993-March1994
PART TWO: CRUSADE
New Friends: March-November1994
A Fresh Start: December 1994-July 1995
Adventures in Amman: July-November 1995
A Breach of Trust: November 1995-January 1996
The Listening Post: January-March 1996
Blowback: June 1996
The Poison Pill: July-August 1996
The Con Game: August-December 1996
White House Blues: January-March1997
PART THREE: BETRAYAL
THE Truth Emerges: March-May1997
Unraveling Concealment: June 1997
New Direction: July-October 1997
False Starts: October-December 1997
The Death of Inspections: January-August 1998
Epilogue: All those Lies
Notes
Index