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
islamic blow target
If you look at groups in the Palestine region, Hamas and the Palestine Islamic jihad, more often than not in their first operations they would accidentally blow themselves up on the way to the target or the bomb wouldn't go off.
running islamic unique
He [Osama bin Laden] is clearly an odd combination of a 12th-century theologian and a 21st-century CEO. He runs an absolutely unique organization in the Islamic world. It's multiethnic, multilinguistic, multinational. He is a combat veteran, three times wounded. He has a huge reputation in the Islamic world for generosity and leadership. He's a man who speaks eloquent, almost poetic Arabic, according to Bernard Lewis.
country war islamic
The Western world doesn't really give enough credit to the importance in history of the Soviet invasion and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. For us it was a sideshow of the Cold War. For the Islamic world it was an unprovoked infidel invasion of a Muslim country not unlike Iraq.
islamic victory three
And the fact that the Muslim world, over the course of a decade, rallied and defeated a superpower is an extraordinary symbol in the Islamic world today. You have to remember they were soundly thrashed over the last century by the West, and in the last 50years, three times by the Indians, three times by the Israelis. And so a victory against the Soviets is huge.
strong islamic government
Any strong Muslim regime that threatens Israel, and we did. He said the Americans only want oil, and, of course, Iraq has the second-largest reserves. And he said that we will always replace God's law with manmade law. And finally that we intended to occupy and destroy Islamic sanctities. And I suspect that in our government, very few people knew that Iraq was the second-holiest place in Islam, after the Arabian Peninsula.
country islamic egypt
We now have some years of very reliable polling by Western firms in the Islamic world, in multiple Islamic countries. And invariably, the question that asks, "Do you view U.S. foreign policy as an attack on Islam and Muslims?" is maxed out. Whether it's Jordan or Indonesia or Egypt, you get 80,85 percent of people saying "Yes."
islamic men people
First of all, there's no separation of church and state in the Islamic world. They're one and the same. And so when President Bush or Senator Kerry or Prime Minister Blair says, "Look, adopt our secular democracy, look at how good we've done. We have a wonderful level of standard of living for our people," what many Muslims hear is, "Turn your back on God and follow what men say."
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.
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.
bin himself immune outside shown wants
Bin Laden has consistently shown himself to be immune to outside pressure. When he wants to do something, he does it on his own schedule.'
chance thinking
The thinking was that he (bin Laden) was in Afghanistan, and he was dangerous. But because he was there, we had a better chance to kill him,
agency focused less single sort time unit
The uniqueness of the unit was more or less that it was focused on a single individual. It was really the first time the agency had done that sort of effort.
arab bin few less lousy princes saved
The world is lousy with Arab princes. And if we could have got Osama bin Laden, and saved at some point down the road 3,000 American lives, a few less Arab princes would have been OK in my book.
bin following remarkably terms
Bin Laden is remarkably eager for Americans to know why he doesn't like us, what he intends to do about it and then following up and doing something about it in terms of military actions.