As the Bush administration tries to hoodwink the masses that Iraq is a threat to the United States, Daniel Ellsberg just released a new book--SECRETS: A MEMOIR OF VIETNAM AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS. Ellsberg rose to fame with the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and, despite being indicted and labeled a traitor, helped change the history of the Vietnam War. "Secrets" details how several presidents, both Democrat and Republican, consistently lied to the people about why the war was being fought, and how people like Ellsberg, working inside the government, were prevented from sharing the truth with law makers.

A former Marine Corps officer, he is on the book talk circuit expressing a very grim concern about an invasion of Iraq. Reflecting on the administration's "Nuclear Posture Review," the leaker of the Pentagon Papers fears Israeli and US nuclear weapons could be launched against Iraq within months. On the Diane Rehm Show, Ellsberg spoke admirably of Mordechai Vanunu, the whistleblower serving 18 years in prison for revealing the existence of Israel's nuclear arsenal. He also praised Scott Ritter, like Ellsberg a member of the elite, who is being attacked for taking an unpopular antiwar position.

When it became known Ritter, the former weapons inspector, was willing to come to Baltimore, area peace groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, raised funds and worked with the Traprock Peace Center in Massachusetts. An estimated 220 people came to Stony Run Friends Meetinghouse on August 22 to hear the burly ex-Marine say: "The truth of the matter is that Iraq has not been shown to possess weapons of mass destruction." He rightly pointed out Iraq never expelled the weapons inspectors, as Richard Butler, his former boss, did in 1998 on orders from a desperate Clinton administration, enveloped in a seedy sex scandal.

I had heard Ritter speak at Shriver Hall earlier this year, so I knew his message that Iraq is not a viable threat to its neighbors. However, his antiwar stance is bewildering, as he voted for Bush, described himself as an ardent conservative and believer in a strong military. And he supports unleashing the "dogs of war," if the commander-in-chief orders the U.S. military to attack.

However, at least two people at Stony Run seemed to visibly move him. Art Laffin of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in D.C. was part of the panel which spoke after Ritter's talk. He expressed disappointment that sanctions, as a weapon of mass destruction, were not mentioned and then brought out photographs he took of suffering Iraqi children who have since died. Ritter seemed transfixed and remarked that he had great empathy for the situation in Iraq, as he has two children. Then during the questions and answers, Sister Ardeth Platte, now in custody in Colorado facing charges for a Plowshares disarmament action, told him he must disobey the commander-in-chief when he issues an illegal order.

Peter Marudas, former chief of staff for Maryland Senator Paul Sarbanes, was also in attendance. I would later speak with Joanne Berry, a Sarbanes aide. Yes, Marudas was there to provide a briefing for Sarbanes. I have little doubt that the Ritter visit, as well as the protests of the Baltimore Emergency Response Network (BERN) and others moved a hesitant Sarbanes to vote no to the war resolution.

At Ritter's urging, others in the audience formed Citizens for Peace to pressure Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski. It is my opinion that protests they organized outside Mikulski's office were the major reason she also voted no. The ripple effects may have contributed to getting Maryland Representatives Ben Cardin, Elijah Cummings and Connie Morella to also cast no votes. This is a remarkable achievement by Maryland activists.

While Ritter is persona non grata to the Bush administration and the Washington elite, he was loved at Stony Run. In a scene unique in Baltimore peace and justice annals, some 200 pacifists wildly applauded a man who has run with the dogs of war.

The son of an Air Force officer, he grew up on military bases and played football for Franklin & Marshall College. Afterward he joined the Marines and was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1984. From 1988 to 1990, Ritter worked in the Soviet industrial town of Votkinsk in a Defense Department [sic] program that monitored missile disarmament. There he met Marina Khatiashvili, who would later become Ritter's second wife.

Sent to the Persian Gulf in 1991 as a captain assigned to a battle damage assessment unit, he concluded U.S. pilots were not destroying any of Iraq's Scud missile launchers, only decoys, or had misidentified the targets. This contradicted what the coalition commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, was saying. Investigative reporters would later confirm Schwarzkopf was wrong.

Ritter began working for UNSCOM in September 1991, playing "a perilous game of hide and seek" with "one of history's most devious and brutally efficient dictatorships," as he wrote in his 1999 memoir. William Arkin reviewed Ritter's book ENDGAME: SOLVING THE IRAQ PROBLEM--ONCE AND FOR ALL (Simon & Schuster 1999) for THE NATION [May 17, 1999]: "On paper, the alpha dog is a pussycat." The reviewer does not much like the book, but does agree with Ritter's call for "a nonconfrontational opportunity for the Baghdad regime to 'confess' in exchange for a sure end to sanctions."

While in Iraq, Ritter was denounced as a spy. But he argues he only collected data for the inspection program and that others supplied it to the CIA, violating the impartiality of UNSCOM. The U.S. government "corrupted" the inspection process by planting spies, and it manipulated UNSCOM to suit the politics of regime change.

Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW featured Scott Ritter's Oct 15th speech at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, and I flashed back to the brutally-honest talk in a school auditorium by Luke [Jon Voight], the damaged Vietnam veteran in the film COMING HOME. For the real-life warrior, there was an overflow crowd of between 700-800 students and neighbors at the event sponsored by the student chapter of Amnesty International. The chickenhawks present the war with Iraq as an antiseptic exercise. Ritter, who has tasted war, gives you the blood, the broken bones, the tears and the body counts.

Just as the elite attacked Ellsberg, Ritter has been dodging flak. NEWSWEEK criticized Ritter for accepting $400,000 from an Iraqi-American to fund his 1/2-hour documentary, "In Shifting Sands: The Truth About UNSCOM and the Disarming of Iraq." The movie depicts Iraq as a "defanged tiger" with a populace, after a dozen years of economic sanctions, ravaged by the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

He said the movie money was a loan from the man's personal assets, adding he took pains to make sure the money was not coming from the Iraqi government. The FBI conducted an investigation of the transaction and found no problem. The Bureau has investigated Ritter three times and absolved him every time. Also investigated was his second marriage to a Russian citizen. In response to his critics, he describes himself as a "good American patriot," trying to save U.S. forces from needless death in a politically motivated invasion of Iraq.

In August 1990, George Bush Sr. came to Baltimore to speak to the VFW convention and called for war with Iraq. BERN organized a demonstration outside the Convention Center and brought body bags to represent the victims. Little did we know that people in Iraq would still be dying more than a decade later.

On Aug. 26, 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney, a prominent chickenhawk, spoke to the Veterans for Foreign Wars national convention in Nashville. He presented the administration's case for war against Iraq, which hinged on Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, all outlawed since 1991 by a United Nations Security Council resolution). Ritter tells us Cheney is prevaricating and cannot produce any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

In an op-ed in THE SUN (Sept. 1, 2002) entitled "Send inspectors first," Scott Ritter wrote: "To ask them [the Armed Forces] to do so in support of politically driven motives would not only disrespect those to whom we look for protection, but also dishonor American democracy as a whole. It is up to our nation as a whole to ensure that is not, and never will be, the case."

(A two-hour video of the August 22 session includes a 30-minute presentation by Scott Ritter, a panel of local citizens, and question/answers. To obtain a copy, mail your check of $29.00, payable to WILPF, 135 Glen Argyle Road, Baltimore, MD 21212.)

Max Obuszewski is a member of the Baltimore Emergency Response Network since its inception. He can be reached at mobuszewski-AT-afsc.org.

See also the report by DC Indymedia journalist Chris Strohm on Scott Ritter's November 11 talk at University of Maryland College Park dc.indymedia.org/front.php3 .

See also the speech Scott Ritter gave at the California Institute of Technology on November 13 www.sass.caltech.edu/events/ritter.shtml .