What will happen after we bomb Iran by Scott Ritter

[Ry]

<EMBED SRC="http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_02_20_scottritter.mp3" HIDDEN="TRUE" AUTOSTART="TRUE">
From anti-war.com radio.

This is a text of the end of the interview where Ritter says what he thinks will happen if Iran is attacked.

Well, I always remind people that the Iranians are not stupid. They are very worldly. They understand the Middle East better than we do. They understand Europe better than we do and, frankly speaking, I think if you took Iranian high school students and had a test on American geography and politics, it might become apparent that they understand America better than we do. They don't want war. They've been to war. They've seen war. They've experienced it. They've buried hundreds of thousands of people. It's the last thing they want, but if we push them in that direction; if we look for enemies and we pick Iran as our enemy, they will wage war, and it will be a war that is very well thought out.

I always remind people of the cockiness of the Israeli army, and again, I am a friend of Israel. I've worked very closely with the IDF – but they are very cocky. Especially when it comes to conflict with Arab fighters. They believe that the Arabs are cowardly, lack technology, and will fire a few rockets and fire a few shells and then run away before they are captured.

Well, the Israeli's got a bloody nose in Southern Lebanon this summer by Hezbollah. Hezbollah kicked their ass. Hezbollah did a darned good job, and I just tell people, Hezbollah were the students. The teachers were the Iranians. We are getting ready to go up against the masters. The students kicked the hell out of Israel. We should keep that in mind as we prepare to take on the masters.

I'm not saying that Iran is going to conquer America. They are going to defend themselves, and they are going to be very very careful about how they do this. They are not going to let themselves get trapped into a losing engagement. They know the area. I would say that if we put an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, then we stand a good chance of losing that aircraft carrier. I would say that if we put troops on the ground, we stand a good chance of loosing those troops. And people say, well, in three weeks we took Baghdad. There's nobody who can take us on.

Well, you know what, General Patton made a hell of a run from Normandy to Germany during World War II, yet 6 years later North Korea kicked the crap out of us in the Korean peninsula. If we think for a second that Iran is going to be a repeat of Iraq, we are in for a big wake up call, and this is just the military aspect of it.

Then there's the economic aspect. The Iranian's know what makes us tick. They are going to shut down oil production. Not just their own but the entire Middle East. No oil is going to be coming out of the Persian Gulf, and what's that do? Well, right now we have the global oil production capacity running with an excess capacity of about 1.52 percent. This means we are just barely producing enough oil to meet the global demand. That demand is increasing.

If you shut down the Iranian oil and the Persian Gulf oil, and God forbid if Hugo Chavez and Venezuelan oil stops pumping oil in protest, we are looking at negative 20 to 30 percent production capacity. That means there is not anywhere near enough oil to feed global demand.

Do you think for a second the Indians and the Chinese and all those other developing economies are going to stop seeking access to oil because America was dumb enough to commit economic suicide by attacking Iran? No! America is now going to have to compete on the global market for a finite resource, and the price of oil is going to go through the roof. I've heard of people talking about $250, $300, $350 a barrel. If you get up that high, it just doesn't matter anymore because the price of oil is reflected in the price of everything.

If we start paying that much for a barrel of oil, we are going to get into a hyperinflation cycle that's uncontrollable. I just tell Americans I saw a photo once of a German in the 1920's during the Weimar Republic when they got hit with hyperinflation. He was taking a wheelbarrow full of money to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread. We could be in that kind of situation.

All these Americans living on the margin… Look, I don't know what percentage of Americans are living paycheck by paycheck, but if you own a house, you have a mortgage. If you lost your job and didn't have a paycheck, in two cycles you'd be homeless and on the street. I'll tell you what, America, get ready for that reality. Iran is going to kick our butt.

We may thump our chests and have the F-15s and F-18s and go in there and bomb and blow things up, but at the end of the day they are still going to be in Iran; they are still going to function. America is going to be hurting. We don't have much more capacity to suffer the kinds of losses that we are suffering in Iraq, and I don't just mean human life.

I'm one of these people who bleeds for every American that dies, but recognizes the reality of war. I say, "in 4 years we've only lost 3,200?" We lost 6,000 in a matter of days on the beaches of Iwo Jima. We lost thousands at Omaha. We lost thousands in every battle we fought. That was real war. Now we are talking about a real war with Iran. Not this insurgency garbage we are playing with the Iraqis. Not just tiddlywinks. We are going to be doing the real thing. We're going into the Super Bowl. We may not win.

Horton: In your book, Target Iran, you bring up the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons if our soldiers are stretched too thin and are left vulnerable to attach by the Iranians. It's a possibility that the Americans could get ready and deploy nuclear weapons to defend our soldiers when we pick a fight that we can't finish.

Ritter: George W. Bush is simply a man who does not know war. He has surrounded himself with people who do not know war. Condoleezza Rice does not know war. Dick Cheney doesn't know war. None of these people know war. And so when they strut their stuff and stick out their chest and play the great commander in chief, they are playing games here. This is not reality based. Harry Truman knew war. He fought in WWI. He knew war. He saw war firsthand. Harry Truman was man enough to take a bloody nose in Korea and not use nuclear weapons. He told MacArthur to pound sand when MacArthur wanted to use nuclear weapons to stop the Chinese coming across the border. He knew that America could regroup and come back and reengage and fight the war down to our terms. Maybe not a total victory, but at least something that saved face. George Bush isn't man enough to do this. He's going off on an adventure. I'm not the only one who is prognosticating disaster here.

There are people saying we are in for tough times, and when these tough times emerge, what is George W. Bush going to do? Is he man enough to say, "Oops, got over extended and got slapped. Let's back up, regroup, go back in and see what we can pull out of this fire here?" Or is he going to say, "No one does this to America!" even though we picked this fight? What if the Iranians sink an aircraft carrier or cut off 80,000 troops?

George W. Bush has come up with a couple of ideas that should scare every American and every citizen of the world. First, there is the notion of the "usable" nuclear weapon. No longer are we talking about nuclear weapons that are a deterrent. We have developed families of nuclear weapons that are designed to be used in conventional conflict. The next thing that should scare everybody is the utilization policy for nuclear weapons. Under the Bush administration we now acknowledge that America has the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively in a non-nuclear environment.

They've set certain criteria for this which includes scenarios in which significant numbers of American troops are placed in harms way with no real hope for conventional help to mitigate against the impending doom. So we would use nuclear weapons to break the back of those who are threatening these American troops.

I'm telling you right now that if we bomb Iran, we are not going to achieve our objectives. Iran will strike back in a way that is going to hurt us in the short term. There will be tremendous pressure put on this president to escalate the conflict rapidly to end it fast because it is hurting America economically.

This will result in American boots on the ground, but we won't have enough boots on the ground to dictate the flow of combat on the ground. The Iranians have 70 million people. They have hundreds of thousands of troops. They are fighting on terrain that they know. They have prepared the traps and they will trap us. They will threaten our troops with annihilation, and George W. Bush is not a big enough man to say, oops, let's back up and regroup.

He could drop a nuclear weapon. If he drops a nuclear weapon on Iran, just think about that in the Muslim world today. The infidel has just dropped a nuclear weapon on a Muslim nation that did not threaten anybody; that did not start this fight. This is a fight started by the Christians, by the Infidel.

Musharraf is in a very precarious situation in Pakistan. Why do I pick on Musharraf and Pakistan? Because they are a Muslim state that happens to have nuclear weapons – 40-60 of them. They have the potential, they have the fissile material for another dozen or two-dozen weapons. If Musharraf is overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists who are outraged by American use of nuclear weapons against Iran, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together and figure out that fissile material will find its way into the hands of Muslim Fundamentalists who will do everything they can to exact revenge on America.

That's why I tell Americans, pick a city. If you want to bomb Iran, pick a city – not an Iranian city, but an American city – because we are going to lose one, at least one. If we use nuclear weapons against Iran, this game will not stop until an American city is obliterated by a retaliatory nuclear strike.

[Decentralized]

Very scary indeed.

[nycsnakeeyes]

i wonder what dickhead move the dickhead president bush gonna make next concerning this. u are right, this administration do not know war and as we all know now they do know lies and how to use them to manipulate the american public into thinking we re winning a war when we re really on the losing end of it

[cassanovafrankenstein]

We don't got nuthin to fear from the iranians, just look at the spartans. Only 300 of 'em with 6-pack abs held off the whole persian army.
The immortals got their asses kicked too.
America can kick irans ass, we can lose most of our cities on the east and west coast and still function OK. But it won't come to that.
All we have to do is send in some apache helicopters and some stealth bombers and Iran will fold up, and since the leadership is so mean the iranians will welcome us with flowers. They love america. Then we can teach them to not be so anti-semitic and change the school curriculum to teach about the enlightened democracy and brotherly love that Israel feels towards it's muslim friends.
Once we do that we'll have bunches of oil from Iraq and Iran and the price of gas will go down to .50 cent a gallon. We can run the pipelines through Israel because they're the most modern and advanced country and will do it the most efficiently, and since Israel is such a good, trustworthy friend of ours the oil will be guaranteed to flow.
Don't worry, our govt knows what it's doing. Trust them. They have information we don't got. Just get behind them and feel confident that the bestest, most morally superior govt of the bestest most powerful country in the whole wide world will save the day and make the world a better place for all people.
Don't be part of the problem, be a part of the solution. The final solution.

[Sayanim]

In that article, Scott Ritter sounded like a mediocre version of Alex Jones to me :

He kept speculating and throwing apocalyptic scenarios here and there, mentioned the puppet Bush as if Bush was the one behind the wheel, mentioned nothing about the zionist jewish supremacists whithin the american administration from the pentagon to the white house and the cia.

He didn't offer any remedy such as the arrest of all the zionist traitors in the usa administration as well as the arrest and prosecution of the professional zionist liars - in the mass media - in charge of deceiving and misleading the naive and stupid people of usa.

To my knowledge Scott Ritter never challenged the official version of 911 loudly and forcefully, which Alex Jones at least does.

Instead what Scott Ritter does, is to underline his allegiance to Israel in the begining of his article ("I am a friend of Israel. I've worked very closely with the IDF ").

I say Scot Ritter is a fraud. Have him arrested along Michael Moore and their zionist masters.

[GamerS]

We don't got nuthin to fear from the iranians, just look at the spartans. Only 300 of 'em with 6-pack abs held off the whole persian army.

LOFL!

[Tabui]

The purpose of the coming war in Iran is to have the US army destroyed and the armies in the middle east as well.

The oneworlders want no standing army left except the UN army.

The americans, of course, as the freest country in the world are a thorn in the eyes of the one worlders. Thats one reason why u see so muchpropaganda against the US at this point.

But back to the purpose of the war with Iran:
-to destroy remnaining middle east armies (for the Russians to march in swiftly and if possible as "liberators"
-to destroy the US army to not be able to intervene on its own behalf.

So at some point the onion is going to be skinned by one more skin and the Russians will be doing the "liberating". They will be marching there into the middle east via Afghanistan and go all the way to the horn of Afrika.

then the Ruaaians are going into Skandinavia and then to Europe.
THIS is the war plan for WW3, no other.

[cassanovafrankenstein]

Speaking of the onion, your post is classic onion satire.

[Phys]

In that article, Scott Ritter sounded like a mediocre version of Alex Jones to me :

He kept speculating and throwing apocalyptic scenarios here and there, mentioned the puppet Bush as if Bush was the one behind the wheel, mentioned nothing about the zionist jewish supremacists whithin the american administration from the pentagon to the white house and the cia.

He didn't offer any remedy such as the arrest of all the zionist traitors in the usa administration as well as the arrest and prosecution of the professional zionist liars - in the mass media - in charge of deceiving and misleading the naive and stupid people of usa.

To my knowledge Scott Ritter never challenged the official version of 911 loudly and forcefully, which Alex Jones at least does.

Instead what Scott Ritter does, is to underline his allegiance to Israel in the begining of his article ("I am a friend of Israel. I've worked very closely with the IDF ").

I say Scot Ritter is a fraud. Have him arrested along Michael Moore and their zionist masters.

I can see your point, though. I was thinking a few of the same things myself.

[Ry]

The movie 300 is pure propaganda. If the Spartans and Greeks were so strong they would have invaded Persia not the other way around. The Greeks had 10 times the armor of Darias's force which was not even Persian it was mostly Arabs. Alexander the Great of Macidonia came down and fished what his father started and took all of Greece and then the rest of the known world. He sacked Athens completely and his father had already beated the Spatans not 300 of them but all of them. That is what happens when they fought people with equal technology. A;exander also defeated the Persians but he had a hard time with it. He had no troble taking Greece. He burned entire cities to the ground.