Scott Ritter, Waging Peace book
Waging Peace: The New York Times and the Iraq War — Scott Ritter's study of how the paper of record laundered the Bush administration's WMD claims into war consensus. Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector (Marine Corps intelligence officer, UNSCOM 1991-1998) who famously resigned and spent 2001-2002 insisting Iraq had been disarmed, documents the media-manufacture of the 2003 invasion.
Content
- The Times' Judith Miller/Michael Gordon stenography of Ahmed Chalabi's defectors and Curveball's fabrications.
- The suppression and spin of contrary evidence — including Ritter's own on-record inspections data showing 90-95% disarmament by 1998.
- The broader mechanism: war consensus as joint product of intelligence manipulation and careerist journalism.
Ritter's later trajectory
Ritter became a prominent anti-war voice, and after 2022 a controversial commentator on the Russia-Ukraine war (pro-Russian forecasts, appearances on Russian media). Infrared cites his Iraq work as primary-source evidence of how empire manufactures consent — the same machinery later applied to Syria (see 2018 Douma Chemical Attacks) and Russia.