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By Scott Ritter
The Nation
Wednesday 24 January 2007
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In April 2001 I was invited to Washington, DC, by a group of Republican Congressmen collectively known as the Theme
Team. The subject was Iraq. It seems that the Theme Team, responsible for monitoring the ideological pulse of America,
was somewhat perturbed that a self-described Republican and former Marine officer, not to mention a former UN weapons
inspector, was trash-talking America's Iraq policy. While this sort of action might have been acceptable during the
tenure of a Democratic President like Bill Clinton, it was not part of the grand design when it came to the presidency
of George W. Bush.
The conference room was packed with more than seventy Representatives and their staffs. I provided an opening in which
I stressed that the case being made against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, centered as it was on the issue of WMD, did not
hold water. I chastised the Republican lawmakers with a warning: If they continued to support the policy of confronting
Saddam's Iraq over a trumped-up charge, they would not only get America involved in a war it could not win but would end
up destroying the credibility of the Republican Party, and turn control of the Congress, and eventually the Presidency,
to the Democrats. There were questions asked, and answers given, and in the end most thanked me for what they called an
"illuminating" meeting.
Then they proceeded to do nothing.
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