Scott vs. Niccolo

Former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, is at odds with Machiavelli and Bush over means and ends.

Democracy as practiced in the United States and Great Britain is far from perfect. However, as long as democracy is practiced with an unbending adherence to the principles of the rule of law, this far from perfect system will remain among the best man has ever had.

But it requires an unyielding embrace of the notion of the means achieving the ends, and a complete rejection of any notion of the ends justifying the means, ever.

He makes the tendentious claim:

Far from being liberators, both nations have the status of illegal occupiers. Far from being in the company of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, George Bush and Tony Blair are in league with Adolf Hitler when he fabricated an excuse to invade Poland in 1939, and Saddam Hussein when he violated international law and invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present."