Scott Ritter Quotes

If Russia has intelligence that Ukraine is using an otherwise protected civilian target for military purposes, and if a decision is made to attack the target using force deemed proportional to the threat, then no war crime has been committed. Indeed, given what The Washington Post has documented, it appears that it is Ukraine, not Russia, which is committing war crimes. According to Richard Weir, a researcher in Human Rights Watch’s crisis and conflict division quoted in the Post article, the Ukrainian military has “a responsibility under international law” to either remove their forces and equipment from civilian areas, or to move the civilian population from the areas where military personnel and equipment are being stored. “If they don’t do that,” Weir said, “that is a violation of the laws of war. Because what they are doing is they are putting civilians at risk. Because all that military equipment are legitimate targets.”... While the Ukrainian government, American politicians, and human rights groups can make allegations of war crimes by Russia in Ukraine, proving these allegations is a much more difficult task. Moreover, it appears that, upon closer examination, the accuser (at least when it comes to the Ukrainian government) might become the accused should any thorough investigation of the alleged events occur.

What separates these sites from the others is that Iran claims the allegations about them are a product of Israeli intelligence, and as such are deemed to be fabrications designed to provoke Iran. “No country,” Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s ambassador told the Board of Governors before its vote on the June 19 resolution, “opens its territory to the inspections only based on continuous allegations provided by its own enemy, even if it is evident that the result of which will prove those allegations to be false.” Iran’s position... does not appear to be out of fear over what would be discovered—indeed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the United Nations in September 2019 that, “If the U.S. Congress ratifies the JCPOA and lifts all sanctions permanently, Iran is ready to pursue the immediate ratification of the Additional Protocol in the Iranian parliament as a permanent law.”... Indeed, Foreign Minister Zarif noted in a tweet that “an agreeable solution is possible” for the IAEA’s request for access to the two nuclear sites in the country—but not if Iran was subjected to pressure in the form of a Board of Governor’s resolution predicated on Israeli intelligence. “We’ve nothing to hide,” Zarif tweeted. “More inspections in Iran over last 5 yrs than in IAEA history. An agreeable solution is possible, but Res will ruin it.” Zarif’s warning was of no avail.

The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to (Charter of the United Nations) Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction. While it might be in vogue for people, organizations, and governments in the West to embrace the knee-jerk conclusion that Russia’s military intervention constitutes a wanton violation of the United Nations Charter and, as such, constitutes an illegal war of aggression
the uncomfortable truth is that, of all the claims made regarding the legality of pre-emption under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine is on solid legal ground.

The administration of President Joe Biden has promulgated its vision of the US role in the world today in a new document, the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS). This outlines a leadership posture built on the premise of US diplomatic, economic and military superiority on the global stage. The critical notion underpinning this strategy is that US democracy serves as a center of gravity around which a rules-based international order rotates. But the partisan political divide in the US, combined with the growing global multipolar challenge led by Russia and China, makes the promise of US global dominance little more than an empty narrative.

I consider myself to be a true friend of the Israeli people. But I define friendship as someone who takes care of a friend, who just doesn't use or exploit a friend. And, you know, there's that old adage: 'Friends don't let friends drive drunk'.

I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation.But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U.S. forces to be in significant risk. If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will respond, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U.S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work. But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L.A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.

Here we are, 2022, and we have a bunch of people running around as if they’ve invented the concept of nuclear security and nuclear-based muscle flexing. No, we’ve tried it before in the 1960s, we did the whole arms race thing. And we realized at that point in time that we’ll quickly bankrupt ourselves and get nothing from it if we continue to try to build bigger and better missiles, more warheads, all this stuff. One of the first things we had to teach ourselves back then is that you can’t win a nuclear war. You can’t win it. It should never be fought. And that’s when we embraced something that one would normally say shouldn’t be embraced: the notion of mutually assured destruction. That is, if I use a nuclear weapon against you, not only will I kill you, but you’re going to use a nuclear weapon against me and you’re going to kill me.

The US and Russia have stopped all substantive cooperation in the field of arms control, in terms of both implementing existing treaties and negotiating future agreements. There is little likelihood that this cooperation will resume any time soon, leaving both nations locked in a potential nuclear arms race unconstrained by the limits of arms control treaties. The potential for nuclear conflict is greater, as a result, than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

A report prepared by the Global Network Against Food Crises, an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger, which acts under the auspices of the World Food Program, shows that in 2021 global levels of hunger surpassed all previous records — with close to 193 million people acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance across 53 countries and territories. This represents an increase of nearly 40 million people compared with 2020. According to the report, the outlook for 2022 is for further deterioration of global hunger levels, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which is having severe repercussions on global food, energy and fertilizer prices... he geopolitics of famine is such that millions of lives are held hostage to conflicts far from the nations most in need. Hopefully, the US, Russia and the UN will be able to reach an equitable balance before it is too late.

Intent, motive and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.<br \> Circumstantial evidence, just like direct proof, can be used to prove the elements of a crime, the existence or completion of certain acts and the intent or mental state of a defendant. Generally speaking, a prosecutor, to obtain a conviction, needs to show beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant committed a certain act and that the defendant acted with specific intent... The burden that exists to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt “is fully satisfied and entirely convinced to a moral certainty that the evidence presented proves the guilt of the defendant.” In the matter of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 attacks, this burden has been met when it comes to assigning blame to the United States.

We should stop pretending that the US is a functioning democracy; Citizens United proves we are not—when the courts grant citizenship powers to corporations, money and greed become the nation’s lifeblood, not the will of the people.

The Ukrainian National Police committed numerous crimes against humanity in Bucha. Biden, in seeking to shift blame for the Bucha murders onto Russia, is guilty of aiding and abetting these crimes. Congratulations America... we've created yet another Presidential war criminal!

The UN stopped using Chalabi's information as a basis for conducting inspections once the tenuous nature of his sources and his dubious motivations became clear. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the mainstream US media, which give prominent coverage to sources of information that, had they not been related to Hussein's Iraq, would normally be immediately dismissed.

A lot of people talk about the Israeli lobby, and think that Israel is behind a lot of this. But I've studied it up close... Rather than Israel dictating policy to the United States, a cabal of neoconservatives have used the Israeli lobby as a facilitator. If this was all about Israel dictating policy, we'd have skipped Iraq and gone straight to Iran... The big picture in the Middle East is China... It's about leveraging control over Middle-Eastern and central-Asian oil, in order to dictate the pace of China's economic growth over the next 30 years. Because China's the biggest threat in the eyes of the neoconservatives... that’s going to threaten American global economic hegemony... You deal with China indirectly at this point in time because you don't want direct confrontation.

Most geopolitical analysts can agree that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has detrimentally impacted the global economy. This is especially true when it comes to food security, with supplies disrupted, prices skyrocketing, and shortages created that run the risk of causing famine. The US and European Union have accused Russia of “weaponizing food” by cutting off Ukrainian grain and Russian fertilizer from global markets. Russia, in turn, blames the food supply crisis totally on Western sanctions. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. The ongoing crisis has disrupted the economies of both Ukraine and Russia, denying them access to income-generating global markets. It has also contributed to the high level of inflation in both the US and EU. But one thing is certain: The populations of the countries that need Ukrainian wheat and Russian potash the most are paying the highest price, with millions facing the prospect of hunger and starvation...