Scott Ritter to Endorse Dennis Kucinich!

More news forthcoming! But for now...
For Immediate Release
Contact: Leland Lehrman, +1.505.474.7998, leland@33o.com

What: Santa Fe, New Mexico Press Conference
When: Friday, January 30, 10:00 a.m.
Where: Capitol Rotunda, Santa Fe

What: Taos, New Mexico Talk: Seeking Peace in a Time of Frontier Justice
When: Friday, January 30, Taos, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Taos Community Auditorium, 145 Paseo del Pueblo Norte
Notes: Sponsored by the Action Coalition (Cliff Bain, 505-776-8486)

What: Santa Fe Talk: Seeking Peace in a Time of Frontier Justice
When: Sunday, February 1, 11:00 a.m.
Where: St. Francis auditorium, 107 W. Palace & Lincoln, Santa Fe
Notes: Free. Seating limited to 450. Book signing.

Former United States Marine and United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter, a leading critic of the Iraq war, will announce his endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich at a news conference Friday, January 30, at 10 a.m., in the rotunda of the State Capitol Building in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

After the press conference, Ritter will travel to Taos, New Mexico to present his analysis of the Iraq war and its aftermath in a public lecture, "Seeking Peace in a Time of Frontier Justice," Friday evening at 7 p.m. in the Taos Community Auditorium, 145 Paseo del Pueblo Norte. On Sunday, February 1, he will repeat the talk for a Santa Fe audience at 11:00 a.m in the St. Francis Auditorium, at the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, 107 W. Palace Avenue, in Santa Fe. Admission is free. Ritter will be signing copies of his most recent book, Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America. The event is sponsored by the
New Mexico Department of Peace Initiative, a volunteer group working to create an Office of Peace within the New Mexico state government, based on a similar proposal for a national Department of Peace that is a key plank of the Kucinich campaign platform.

Kucinich, a fourth term Congressman from Ohio, is co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He has led Congressional opposition to the Iraq War since the Bush administration first revealed plans for an invasion, and is the only one of the current presidential candidates to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution, which Congress passed in October of 2002. Kucinich currently proposes a ten-point plan to turn over nation building authority in Iraq to the United Nations and bring U.S. troops home within 90 days.*

Scott Ritter was a Marine intelligence officer during the 1980s and served as a ballistic missile expert under General Norman Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War. He was stationed in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 as a senior member of the U.N. weapons inspection team (UNSCOM). He participated in 30 onsite inspections in Iraq, 14 of them as team leader, and is credited with initiating aggressive intelligence-collection measures that nearly got him expelled from Iraq by the Hussein regime. Ritter resigned from UNSCOM after inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998 prior to British and American bomb and missile strikes, which he called a "horrible mistake."

Since then, he has appeared frequently as an analyst and commentator on most of the major television news networks, arguing that U.N. inspectors had accomplished the destruction of 98% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and that the Bush administration was unjustified in going to war against Iraq on the premise that Iraq posed an imminent threat to its neighbors or the United States. He has recently revealed personal knowledge of a systematic campaign within British and American intelligence agencies to plant false information in major media outlets to justify war with Iraq.

Ritter has a local connection: his aunt, Shirley Ritter Minett, lives in
Santa Fe.
For those interested, here is the New Mexico Democratic Party Schedule of Events this week. posted by Cyndy | link | | |
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