Scott Ritter Would Prefer You Keep Focusing on Iraq, Not Him

The New York Times Magazine's Matt Bai has a new story featuring an in depth interview with Scott Ritter, the U.N. weapons inspector who loudly questioned our reasons for entering the Iraq War and who was later convicted in an underage sex sting.

The New York Times Magazine's Matt Bai has a new story featuring an in depth interview with Scott Ritter, the U.N. weapons inspector who loudly questioned our reasons for entering the Iraq War and who was later convicted in an underage sex sting.

Bai depicts Ritter as being as defiant of public opinion on the issue of his crimes as he was on the issue of the lead-up to the war. In the interview, Ritter's not particularly happy with America for paying so much attention to his trial. Bai writes:

What really agonizes Ritter is that Americans seem to care about his forays into chat rooms, or about Michael Jackson’s doctor or the Kardashians’ wedding, but not about the moral crisis that Iraq unleashed on the land.

[...]

"I'll just ask the fundamental question," Ritter said, looking at me squarely across the table. "My personal missteps — how many Americans have died as a result of that? None. Other than my family, how many victims were there? None. And yet, in refusing to engage in a responsible debate about Iraq, how many Americans died? Thousands. And America seems to have no problem with that."

That refusal to more penitently examine his crimes, Bai writes, may have done him in with the judge who sentenced him to a maximum of five and a half years in jail.

The rest of the piece offers a great look into the mind of a man whose public and private records differ so greatly and can be found here.