IRAQ CONFIDENTIAL: THE SAME OLD SHIT FROM SCOTT RITTER

Today's Guardian has an edited extract from Scott Ritter's new book, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy. It's the same old stuff. For example, Ritter explains that he knew Saddam had given up his Weapons of Mass Destruction because the secret police – he graciously refers to them as Iraq's secret service – apparently told him so:

The Mukhabarat's priority was to get sanctions lifted - Iraq's number one national security priority. Its director had been told by Saddam Hussein himself that Iraq had disarmed, and no longer had any interest in developing any WMD capability. But sanctions could not be lifted until Unscom inspectors reached that conclusion for themselves.

Funny, those inside the regime weren't quite so sure:

So the Mukhabarat's objective was not to obstruct our work; quite the reverse, they had an interest in getting the Iraqi experts who were our counterparts to cooperate. Their problem was that these officials were petrified of the Special Security Organisation, run by Saddam's son Qusay Hussein. If their cooperation with Unscom was seen as compromising the regime's security, the consequences for the individuals involved would have been brutal.

So, according to Ritter, Saddam couldn't get his own scientists to do what he wanted them to. That doesn't sound like the maniacal dictator we all know and hate. Poor guy's family was obviously more dysfunctional than I thought.