Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer
Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, author, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. One of his assignments during his 22-year career was serving as Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Stationfrom 1996 to 1999. He also served as Special Advisor to the Chief of Alec Station from September 2001 to November 2004...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
CountryUnited States of America
christmas christian war
The war in Iraq - if Osama was a Christian - it's the Christmas present he never would have expected.
safety community special
The U.S. intelligence community is palsied by lawyers. When we were going to capture Osama bin Laden, for example, the lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden's safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him. We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair. They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard. The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community.
country war islamic
The second part of that war was that Muslims came from all over the country to Pakistan, and they met each other. For the first time those men had an awareness of the Islamic world as a whole, not of just Egypt or Algeria or Indonesia, but of what Muslims call the Uma, the Islamic community. And that's an extraordinarily important thing. And that emanated in Pakistan.
war thinking self
It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.
violence arabia saudi-arabia
Most dramatically, and perhaps least noticed, is the violence inside Saudi Arabia itself.
believe thinking terrorism
I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable...Yes, I think it's probably a near thing.
islamic years knowing
You can forgive your leaders for not knowing the intricacies of Islamic history. You cannot forgive them for not knowing their own. And when you look at American democracy, where did it start? It started, if you need to pick a point, at Runnymede in 1215. We have now been at this process, we and our English-speaking allies, for 800 years.
dog exercise thinking
No one wants to abandon the Israelis. But I think the perception is, and I think it's probably an accurate perception, that the tail is leading the dog - that we are giving the Israelis carte blanche ability to exercise whatever they want to do in their area.
dirty thinking bombs
A nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device. Yes, I think it's probably a near thing.
believe thinking mass-destruction
No one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States. I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable.