Iraqi weapons inspector accused in online sex sting A former head of UN weapons inspections in Iraq has been charged with child sex offences after being caught in an online sting. Scott Ritter was a lone voice insisting Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war, and remained highly critical of US policy subsequently. He is accused of using the …
Correction, he has been caught twice in two similar stings - both in 2001 - so after he was no longer involved in weapons inspections but before the Iraq War.
No charges were made the first time, whilst with the second time, charges were dropped and sealed - so after a period of time, if he didn't reoffend, they would be effectively 'forgotten'. To the fevered conspiratiorial mind, no doubt that this is proof that Ritter was being 'warned' by the powers that be to shut up.
Yeah, he's been framed... right.....
"That'll teach him to disagree with the government lie about 'WMD'."
Not quite. Like a police officer in Podunk Pennsylvania has a direct line from the CIA calling to nab this guy. As others have mentioned, he's done it before. Yes, he used the I'm-being-persecuted-by-Cheney! excuse then. Some fools believed him. But, newsflash, those folks aren't running the Federal Government anymore. No WMDs were found in Iraq. Oswald shot JFK. Armstrong walked on the Moon. And Ritter thinks about making it with underage girls. No conspiracies.
Our government couldn't even find an underpants bomber when his father warned us about him! Do you really think they are coordinated enough to pickup the phone and call the local police to set something like this up? It's took us 3 days to get into the rubble of Katrina, I seriously doubt big brother had anything to do with this. Most likely he's just a perv.
If you bothered to look at the affidavit and read the last page all would be explained. Unlawful contact with a minor is defined and it’s claimed that “the defendant did intentionally contact a minor for the purpose of engaging in activities” and then lists the laws such activities break.
If it’s illegal to solicit a child for sex by various means (e.g. IM conversation), if you do that to someone who you think is a child, it ain’t going to matter if they were an adult posing as a child.
Nope. In the USA ...
If you think it's a child, but it's an adult ... you're fscked. Because the adult is a cop.
If you think it's an adult, but it's a child ... you're fscked. Because children have no responsibility for what they do when an adult is involved.
Basically, pornchat is risky any way you slice it.
He didn't know that the person on the other side of the IM was not a 15yr old. So while it was a trained police officer, he thought it was an under aged minor. Therefore he's guilty of committing the crime.
One has to wonder if he was 'paid off' or bribed by Iranian Intelligence officers.
That's a legitimate concern because he could have been blackmailed or bribed to make his comments.
I read about this in todays Metro where it stated he was chatting with the "girl" via IM (i.e. no images), he asked for a pic, "she" obliged, he started tossing one off on webcam (note that he was transmitting not rcving), "she" then said she was 15 at which point he said "oh shit" and turned off the webcam.
I know some offences are strict liability, but you can't have strict liability where the "child" is actually an adult who hasn't even posed as a child until the guy has done something that might be illegal if the other party was a child (phew!). If it's not strict liability then he stopped immediately uopn being told the other party was allegedly a child. Can't it both ways I'm afraid.
Just smacks of crushing dissent - it clearly isn't limited to Africa/Russia/China/Zim etc.
It's also reported that he also turned the cam back on so the 'minor' could watch while he 'finished the job'.
This isn't the first, second but at least the third time, Ritter has been caught in this kind of sting - two of these cases were before the G W Bush's invasion of Iraq, which Ritter has been such a critic of.
How's that for crushing dissent! Setting a person up before the thing they will be speaking out against has happened!
So me get this right... Ritter gets framed in April 2001 (so pre-invasion) in a sting but no charges are brought. In June 2001, he gets framed in another sting, where no doubt he wasn't actually waiting for the 16 year old he was alleged to have arranged to meet - although there are charges, they are dropped and the record sealed on the proviso he doesn't get caught doing anything for a period of time.
In 2003, America invades Iraq and Ritter is a vocal critic.
In 2009, he gets 'framed' for a similar thing for a third time.
I wouldn't say that a mind that thinks this is just a frame-up is cynical, just confused. If Ritter, risked a huge business loss to... Bush, Cheney & Co", (BTW, what were Bush's business links to Iraq), wouldn' t it have made more sense to frame him and discredit him during Bush's administration, rather than after?
Also, isn't it a bit risky using the same kind of frame-up three different times on the same person?
Just managed to read the article, and indeed it claims he was involved in two stings before involving "minors". Also the affidavit claims he turned the cam back on after knowing it was a "15" years old on the other end. If what is reported are the facts, then no, it is not a frame-up. Just a paedophile caught in a sting.
The fact that he had the balls to face Bush and his cronies doesn't seem to fit with a typical paedophile personality, but I'm not a psychologist.
There were no WMD's, this has since been confirmed by years of troops and Inspectors marching around Iraq. Saying Iraq didn't have WMD's doesn't mean that Ritter could not be a paedophile. If he is a paedophile it doesn't mean he wasn't telling the truth about WMD's, these are not mutually exclusive. Because he has been charged doesn't mean he's necessarily guilty, or necessarily innocent......
Wait for the case to come up in court and the evidence to be produced. it would not be beyond the bounds of belief that he's guilty, equally it would not be the first time vindictive security services around the world have fitted someone up......
Given he's a known "troublemaker", I suppose he should really count himself lucky he didn't "fall down the stairs" after he was arrested, or find himself dead in a field with suspicious needle marks...
No way of knowing for sure, of course, but for the time being at least, "crude frame-up" gets my vote. Or at the very least, plain entrapment...
There's no conspiracy going on here - he's getting caught by small town police units. Sure, they're all operating under the control of the FBI/CIA/NSA/<insert right wing militia of choice here>. This guy needs to be put in jail. He's obviously got a problem, and the fact he's been caught in random stings tells me he is doing this a lot in order to get nabbed twice. He's a local guy here in upstate NY, and the first time he thought he was meeting a minor at a Burger King restaurant in Menands/Watervliet NY. This time he was under the impression he was performing on his webcam for a 15yo girl. The dude is sick, and can't control himself. It's time for society to help him control himself.
Enough already - this guy is obviously a danger, and needs to be dealt with. Hopefully they won't allow him to sweep his offenses under the rug this go around.
NOT a pedophile.
Interested in legally underage girls, at best - with youth-biased culture, who can blame him? - but he really should just watch Girls Gone Wild if he needs to see some firm etcetera.
A pedophile is sexually interested in CHILDREN; that is to say, not having developed sexual characteristics such as breasts, inconvenient growths of hair, and the ability to reproduce.
I am growing to detest this lack of distinction because it leads to bullshit like that Missouri teenager being prosecuted for producing child porn because she took pictures of HERSELF.
Of course, this guy doesn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed if he falls for a sting not once, not twice, but three times.
.... and some people find comfort in the "no smoke without fire" attitude - right up to the point where someone comes banging on THEIR door...
To be damned out of hand, it used to be enough to be black, or at least a damn foreigner. Later, "commie" was added - to huge and terrible effect. These days it's terrorism and paedophilia. Real enough problems, but cynically and massively misused as handy tools to criminalise more and more people, making the population more manageable through threat.
Fling enough mud and you don't have to prove your case - the accusation is enough for the uncaring masses to shrug and carry on as usual - no smoke without fire, mate. The threat of accusation of 'unspeakable' crime becomes enough to bring people to heel, or if all else fails to destroy their credibility. It's a tactic as old as man himself. Effective simple because it hardly ever fails. Effective because people never ever remember their history - choose never to remember.
I don't know if this guy is guilty or not - or even, if he's guilty, of what he's actually guilty of in real terms. I do know this case has a bad smell, and there are plenty of us who don't care to simply hold our noses in search of a quiet life.
And I think you need to add paranoids to the list you rambled on about above. Getting caught THREE TIMES trying it on with what he thought were under-age girls makes him a criminal and a paedo, and obviously one that can't control his urges despite being highly intelligent. These are not mere accusations, the guy has been caught twice before and this is the third time. If you want to ignore that and propagate conspiracy theories then that just makes you naive and gullible. You are so het up about all these "injustices" against blacks, foreigners and communists you clearly forgot that Ritter is none of the above. You are so determined that there has to be some conspiracy by "The Man" against all "the people" you just can't see that, regardless of what he has done in his professional life, Ritter has a very serious and criminal problem in his private life, one that makes him a potential threat to under-age girls. I suggest you take off the rose-tinted specs, stop letting others spoon-feed you ideas, and get back into the real World.
"I do know this case has a bad smell"
You are implying that there is some ulterior motive behind this case, without having any actual evidence to that effect, and you imply that some shady establishment is behind a campaign to shut this guy up, again without any evidence.
Isn't that Mudslinging, too?
For one thing, a great many children were killed or maimed during and after our invasion of Iraq, arguably worse than this fellow could do flat out.
It seems rather unlikely that the CIA would be framing this guy now, less so at the time, also that it took this long. But after all they don't necessarily agree with the U.S. president himself about what needs to be done and how. There was already one nest found of CIA people still carrying out President Cheney's secret orders in mid 2009, long after he was supposedly gone.
I also wonder if the CIA has a drug or a ray that turns you into a child molester. Really. Discrediting your critics is a valuable weapon if you want to do what they do in an apparently free society. More useful than killing - and you can do that afterwards and make it look like suicide. There are medical cases of uncontrollable sexual urge following brain injury - really - so you'd just need to microwave exactly the right part of their head, and Bob's your nasty uncle.
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