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New revelations from Ritter

by Mark Gisleson

A startling revelation from former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in the New York Times today about the fate of the meticulously kept Iraqi WMD archives.

On April 8, they say, the buildings were occupied by soldiers from the Army's Third Infantry Division. For two weeks, the Iraqi scientists and administrators showed up for work but, according to several I have spoken to, no one from the coalition interviewed them or tried to take control of the archive.

Rather, these staff members have told me, after occupying the facility for two weeks, the American soldiers simply withdrew. Soon after, looters entered the facility and ransacked it. Overnight, every computer was stolen, disks and video records were destroyed, and the carefully organized documents were ripped from their binders and either burned or scattered about. According to the former brigadier general, who went back to the building after the mob had gone, some Iraqi scientists did their best to recover and reconstitute what they could, but for the vast majority of the archive the damage was irreversible.

Ritter has consistently been one of the administration's most intense critics on Iraq, but his brash manner has made him an easy target for spinmeister Karl Rove, who's bludgeoned Ritter's reputation with accurate but inflammatory quotes like this one:

“I want the president impeached because he lied to the Congress of the United States,” Ritter said. “He may well go out and tell another lie about weapons of mass destruction” being found amid the rubble in Iraq. But, Ritter said, any scheme to plant evidence would run afoul of professional soldiers like those he served with in Gulf War I. “I can tell you, my fellow officers won’t sustain that lie.”

And, of course, just to be sure Ritter's statements were downplayed, there was that "mysterious" story that surfaced about Ritter and child molestation* a while back. If Dante were alive today, he'd have to invent several new rings of Hell to accommodate all of the people who worked so hard to make this war possible. On second thought, most of the offending parties would probably fit in well on some of Dante's original levels:

The vestibule of Hell is a great dark plain where the souls of those who never really lived, even in life, who took no decisive course, who lived without blame and without praise, flee endlessly from hordes of angry hornets. A good place to put all those career diplomats and spooks who went along with the lies to avoid damaging their careers.

The third ring is set aside for the Gluttonous, who lie on the ground beneath a pelting storm of rain and hail. This level consists of those who lived in excesses. War rooters who'll end up here include Bill "Book of Virtues" Bennett, Andrew "Barebacking" Sullivan, Laura "crawling on the floor drunk" Ingraham, etc.

Arriving in the fourth level, the Avaricious and the Prodigal are divided into two camps and spend eternity rolling heavy weights against each other. This circle holds those who wasted, lived greedily and insatiably. Bush buddies Kenny Boy Lay and all the Halliburtonistas will spend eternity here.

This is the fifth ring wherein live the Wrathful and the Gloomy. They spend their time here either tearing at each other in anger or gurgling in the black mud below. This level contains all those who lived crude, vindictive lives. Not that there's anything wrong with having political opinions, but it's hard not to see this as the final resting place for so very many neocons, Zionists, Nader haters, McCarthyites, etc.

[T]he sixth ring, a wide plain dotted with burning tombs. And inside the burning tombs? Heretics, those who failed to believe in God and the afterlife. If God was who Bush thinks he is, this is where we'd find Senators Jim Jeffords, Chuck Grassley, Dick Lugar and other apostates who have challenged W. on Iraq and Homeland Security. For the purposes of argument, I'd lean more towards populating this ring of Hell with folks like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Lynne Cheney, all of whom prostitute their religious beliefs in the service of war and socio-cultural engineering.

For the eighth ring, home to Fraudulence and Malice, is known as the Malebolge. Shaped like an enormous amphitheatre, it descents for ten more levels. On each of these levels a different class of sinner is tortured. Horned demons whip the seducers and pimps, hypocrites struggle to walk in lead-lined cloaks, simonists are wedged into stone holes, the soles of their feet licked with fire. Barraters, those who bartered their public office for private gain, are ducked in boiling pitch by a particularly frolicsome band of demons known as the Malebranche (Evil Claws). Magicians, Diviners, Seducers, Fortune Tellers, and Panderers are here. Well, that's pretty much the whole administration in a nutshell. Any names you don't see elsewhere clearly belong here, and, in all probability, everyone mentioned above would probably be more at home on these levels with all their friends and colleagues.

[T]he ninth and final circle of Hell, Cocytus -- the frozen marsh where the Arch Traitor himself, is forever immersed up to his breastbone. Betrayers to those in which we should be forever faithful: God, Country, Family, are here....Satan's giant wings flap uselessly as he attempts to free himself, producing nothing more than cold winds that freeze the ice even harder. Satan has three faces: one black, one red, one yellow, with mouths gushing bloody foam and six eyes weeping. While he weeps, he relentlessly chews the bodies of three traitors -- Judas, Brutus, and Cassius -- whose terrible crimes were still less heinous than his own -- for Lucifer betrayed the greatest Lord of all. So now he suffers here, in the cold and dark at the farthest possible removal from the source of all light and warmth. I'll leave it to you to decide who belongs on the bottom-most ring of Hell. IMHO it really boils down to just who you think is the real POTUS, 'cause it obviously ain't George W. Top candidates include Karl Rove, Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, but feel free to suggest your own favorites.

Italicized copy courtesy of The Hannibal Library.

A silly exercise perhaps, but as we're unlikely to ever see any real justice in this matter in our own lifetimes, we might as well indulge in some fantasy. Feel free to send in your nominations for some new rings of Hell designed especially for this administration. It beats the heck out of reading about the mess in Iraq.

*Courtesy of Dan Kennedy, here's a better link to that story, which I had trouble finding via Google News this morning.

Posted by Steve Perry at August 25, 2003 9:49 AM

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