Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem -- Once and for All First Edition; First Printing Edition

Ritter's analyses of the failed Clinton policies is good reading for anyone who wants to learn from history.

Since the original publishing of Endgame in 1999, the world has bore witness to the second Gulf War and the subsequent incarceration of the perpetually troublemaking Saddam Hussein. No matter where you stand politically on the war in Iraq, however, the beauty surrounding Scott Ritter's memoirs of his tenure as a UN weapons inspector is that it enlightens us to the realities of dealing with both a secretive, noncooperative regime in Iraq as well as the many indecisive American presidential administrations who couldn't quite make up their minds about how to take care of Saddam.Ritter gives us a powerful firsthand account of Iraq's frequent noncompliance with UNSCOM inspectors, recounting the frustration of dealing with a regime that played a tense game of chess with the international community --- hiding secret technology it did not wish for inspectors to uncover yet cooperating enough so that it would not be found to be in "material breach" of UN arms control regulations.So what's the bottom line? Well, the whole world knew that Saddam and his cronies were being blatantly dishonest with UNSCOM and often did whatever they could to throw them off the trail of their weapons programs, but what motivation did they have to be transparent anyway? The US eventually made it clear that even if inspections proved that Iraq had completely abandoned its WMD program, sanctions would not be lifted until Saddam Hussein was removed from power --- an event that could only succeed with the direct military support of the United States, as we saw in Spring 2003. Indeed, American foreign policy makers spent over a decade trapped in an ineffective policy of containment that continued until the very day US troops marched on Baghdad.Ritter's Afterword, written shortly before the commencement of the second Gulf War, leaves us with a haunting last word of caution: "The unfortunate reality is that if the United States proceeds with its invasion of Iraq, we may succeed in overthrowing Saddam Hussein while losing the war on terror. Our unilateral military action will push many moderate and intellectual Arabs and Muslims into the bin Laden camp by giving credence to the concept that the United States has in fact declared war on Islam and the Arab World." Only time will tell the veracity of that statement.

By resigning in protest and being free to accurately tell the truth, meant that an aggressive program to discredit Scott Ritter from the highest levels of the Clinton administration was a certainty. Even if he were only partially right, he should go down in history as a modern day patriot for the civilized world. Ritter saw in the UNSCOM inspection arm of the United Nations the potential for creating precedents that would guide future programs to contain the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He states in detail how the Clinton administration subverted the inspections into a vehicle to sustain the sanctions on Iraq longer than the international community desired. This resulted in a complete collapse of the inspection program and will likely evolve into the end of sanctions on Iraq. . Ritter clarifies the reality. As deceitful as Iraq was, an endgame required that with some level of co-operation the Western world would receive benefit from true elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. If there is a good defense of the Clinton policy it would be intertwined with its stated desire to end the era of Saddam Hussein. Ritter shows how the Clinton inter circle saw sanctions as a tool to bring him down. In light of the views of the international community, this has been shown to be a dreamy eyed approach. Between the push of USA and the pull of the contrary forces of the international community, Ritter shows the Secretary General of the United Nations as little more than a cork bouncing in the waves.In the broader picture this book should cause you to think about abusive governments. Brutal dictatorships are extremely difficult for its citizens to overthrow. (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Yugoslavia, China and on and on.) While knowledgeable people were fully aware that Iraq is run by gangsters in every sense of the word, he added details that we did not know. This is not propaganda, the most accurate word is gangster. Ritter’s book only adds to the overwhelming information about these thugs....The United States boldly needs to restore bi-partisanship to international relations. Until citizens demand more depth and integrity from the media there is little hope for well conceived international relations. The book provides powerful information on why you should be concerned. The book reveals how close Iraq was to having long range nuclear missiles at the start of the Gulf war. Chemical and biological weapons were well developed. Israel was a prime target well before the Gulf war and has much to lose as the international community proceeds to give up on its past efforts to eliminate these weapons as proscribed by the surrender terms signed by Iraq. No matter what Saddam does from this point forward, history will record that he has been the greatest fool on the stage of world leaders. Iran war, Kuwait war and weapons retention—each was a bizarre act. All the time underneath his feet is vast oil wealth. With western technology as opposed to its historical dependence on backward Russian technology, the potential for even more discoveries in Iraq is provocative. It is not a fantasy to imagine the proved oil reserves could be doubled. French oil exploration assistance subsequent to the Kuwait invasion created considerable promise. At the end of the book, Ritter’s advise appears to complex and to dependent of multiple actions from various nations. His desire to get the message out on a timely basis rushed the books research and construction. History should treat him well nonetheless.

The one emotion all readers will come away from with this book is a sense of frustration. Not only because of the roadblocks and shell games that Iraq was doing but also that the U.S. was and is in the position that we have to do this monitoring in the first place. The author of this book was the lead weapons inspector for the U.S. group during the mid 90's until Iraq throw him out for spying. He divides his book into two main sections, the hinting for the weapons and what should be done moving forward.The details of the weapons systems they were looking for and the methods the Iraqi went to in order to hind them was very interesting. There is even humor in the book when the author talks about how inept the Iraqi's were with many of the attempts to hide information. I especially liked the military commander that was told to move all the machines used in nuclear experimentation but he left all the diagrams, test plans and results and the machine operating manuals there because they only told him to move the equipment. The author even finds a few ways to detail some genocide in the book just we do not forget what Saddam uses these weapons for.The second part of the book is the authors plan to solve this problem. I will not ruin the book for you, but it is interesting. This is a good book that is interesting to read. The author is a very confident and somewhat brash man and that comes through in the writing. He does a very good job of not bogging the reader down in too much detail about the fine points of the chemical processes or laundry lists of ingredients. The book is worth the time to read if for no other reason to prep you for what may start happening all over again.