Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
The NYT has to be sympathetic toward him, since he gave them so much fodder.
I am repulsed by Ritter’s actions and his subsequent arrogance, but not so much the NYT’s reporting of it. It is enlightening. I was not aware.
Nevertheless, the human condition is often a complex series of strange and inexplicable paradoxes. One may be a superb example of humanity in one area, and a cretin or felon in another, sometimes simultaneously.
Ritter negated whatever he had done earlier. I am reminded of Vietnam Ace Cunningham, whose aerial accomplishments were unparalleled at the time, as also were his later criminal activities unparalleled for a Congressman later.
As the old bridge engineer’s saying goes: You may build a 1,000 bridges, but……..
flit, I expect no mercy for Ritter in this house. If I were a resident of that small town, I’d be furious that 20% of my police force is jacking around on the computer pretending to catch pedophiles. I am certain he feels himself morally superior and a savior of innocence while gazing longingly at other men’s packages online, but he’d have done better to get out in the town and find a tire that needed changing.
None of this has any bearing whatsoever on his credibility regarding Iraq WMD. And vice versa, nothing of what he’s said regarding Iraqi WMD bears on his troublesome sexual predilections. Separate demons. But at least it’s clear that Bushitler didn’t set him up, he did it to himself.
And as for Cunningham, I don’t think his graft was at all unparalleled, only his conviction for it.
Beauty is skin-deep, but shitbag goes to the core.
From the article:
“He understands the Arab world in a way that few Westerners I know do. You have no idea how smart he is.”
Well, he for sure seems to share some of that culture’s provclivities, at any rate. But that ‘how smart he is’ comment doesn’t seem to wear well in the face of facts.
Funny; none of the online bio’s about him seem to mention the conditions of his separation from the Corps.
Not mentioned in the article (at least as far as I read it before becoming bilious), but prominent in his write-up on wikipedia – - this was apparntly his THIRD arrest for online creepage with putative prepubescents.
Yeah, I have no problem with using the “ex-Marine” epithet on this guy.
Here’s a couple of the quotes that stood out to me:
“But if we’re just going to get into the realm of reality,” Ritter went on, “how much worse do you want it? We’re bankrupt, morally and fiscally, because of this war. The United States is the laughingstock of the world.” Yeah, Scott – you’d know about being morally bankrupt, right? I mean, who better to stand on their soapbox and proclaim their moral superiority than someone who… well, you get the idea.
What really agonizes Ritter is that Americans seem to care about his forays into chat rooms, or about Michael Jackson’s doctor or the Kardashians’ wedding, but not about the moral crisis that Iraq unleashed on the land. They keep talking to Scott Ritter about justice for what he has done, and yet no one is paying for the larger crimes he believes were perpetrated against the society. That’s because it shifts the focus from what Scott Ritter has done to society at large or government as a whole. This is where his appalling arrogance really shines – when he can be so OUTRAGED!!1! at the “moral crisis” of America and demand that it all be thrust into the open, yet claim in the same breath that engaging in explicit sexual acts in front of a supposed 15-yr old is solely a private matter between him and his wife.
The definition of sociopath comes resoundingly to mind, when reading those quotes.
He’s ‘gone native,’ and along the way is offering solid proof of the basic incompatibility of Western and Islamic society.
In Islam, his acts are not immoral but those of the US are, seeing as any attack on an Islamic regime by unbelievers, even if defensively, is profoundly immoral within Islam.
Repulsive little git, ain’t he?
A sex offender preying upon minors….I am surprised the article did not complement him for driving slowly through school zones.
The guy sounds like a clinical paranoid. All this stuff isn’t his fault, it’s that a morally bankrupt system is out to get him!!11!
The contention that he was right about Iraq is just ludicrous. He said there weren’t WMDs, then he said there were. One of those assertions was bound to be correct. What an amazing genius!
When the first allegations of Ritter’s, er, legal issues came to light, I felt certain that he had been compromised by a hostile security service sometime during his inspection tour — nothing else seemed to explain the severe (and very vocal) turnaround in his stance on the WMD issue. After reading this interview, I’m not so sure. A very odd man.