Hey, everybody. I'm really pleased to have back on the show, Scott Ritter.

The Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and the author of disarmament

in the time of Perestroika arms control in the end of the Soviet Union. He served in the Soviet Union

as an inspector implementing the nuclear control treaty. He served in General Schwarzkopf staff

during the Gulf War and from 1991 to 1998 served as the chief weapons inspector with the United

Nations in Iraq. Mr. Ritter is currently rights on issues pertaining to international security,

military affairs, Russia and the Middle East as well as arms control and on proliferation.

And I think I can say about you that many people regard you as a archerian because you do not

always, you're not diplomatic and you don't always follow the kind of the official or orthodoxies

and it's gotten you in a lot of trouble over your career. But you've had an extraordinary record

of presians. In fact, Matt Byth and the York Times, which you know the Times had apologized

for its support of the Iraq war and later it said that your view was the most prescient of all the

people who are talking about the war at that time, Americans during the late 90s when you were

serving as a weapons inspector and then right up to the war to the Gulf War in 2001,

regarded you as this kind of unique truth teller that your opinion was something that people could

trust and it was bracing in many ways the way that you were willing to depart from official

proclamations and orthodoxies. I had you. I was a very very strong admirer of yours

during that period. I had you on my TV show and I ran a fire with Mike Papantonio and talked to

you for the first time and I'm very very interested in talking to you now because I'm interested

in your taking the Iraq war. You have a long history in the Soviet Union and you understand the

uses of power, a military power in that part of the world. I'd love to start kind of with an

overview of what you think the military situation is now in Ukraine. The dominant narrative that we

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