Former CIA head: bin Laden remains powerful

Good morning, all.

Mr. Scheur's information is not a surprise to me. I'm not sure what his specific complaint is with the Bush administration's handling of the war. Perhaps some of you can enlighten me on that account.

My principle complaint with the Bush adminstration is this apparent deliberate blindeness, unwillingness, or inability to call the enemy as it is: Islam. Not Islamic extremism, not "hijacked" Islam, not terrorism, not "fundamental" Islam, or any othe rest of those soft-pedalling terms we have heard ad-nauseum. It is Islam wherein lies the greatest threat to the civilized world at this point in history. And our administration just can't seem to find the words to say it - or the courage to say it.

Thank you, Mr. Spencer, for your educational works. And my hat is off to Ms. Diana West of the Washington Times, as well as to Ms. Michelle Malkin, for their tireless research in defense of this great nation.

President Bush is speaking now about the WOT. He is getting a little closer to naming the enemy, but a close miss is still a miss. Still refuses to say that islam is the problem. Until we decide to rid our country of the ones who want to kill us we are not fighting this war. Bush still insists that the radicals have "twisted" islam. AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!

Scheuer simply states the obvious above. More interesting is the quality of Scheuer's mind, his understanding -- or complete failure to understand -- Islam. He has a kind of smiling, dumb earnestness about him, and his public pronouncements reveal someone so lacking in intelligence, knowledge of Islam, cunning, or finesse that one wonders about the entire C.I.A. Was this really the person who for a time was in charge of the "Bin Laden Desk"?

Does the C.I.A. now have not a stupidly-named "Bin Laden Desk" but an Islamic Desk, or let's be demurely diplomatic -- an "Anti-Jihad Unit," devoted to dividing and demoralizing "JIhadis" and those who support them, actively or passively (you know what that means)?

Michael Scheuer, so boy-scoutish in outward demeanor (think of a particularly thick Boy Scout, not a quick-witted one) never mentions the ideology of Islam. Scheuer's much more concerned with "unquestioning American support for Israel" about which he talks and writes so much, and which , in his sweetly-smiling sinister way, he insists is the root of the problem between Islam "and America." You see, if it is support of Israel, and not Islam itself, that explains Muslim attitudes, than Scheuer simply cannot mention the equally malevolent atittudes and hostile acts, persecution, mass-murder, of non-Muslims far away from the United States. Scheuer seems blandly uninterested in, even unaware of, what has been the fate of Chrsitians in Indonesia, in the southern Sudan, in northern Nigeria (Biafra War -- remember that? Remember the "Jihad" against which Colonel Ojukwu spoke in the Ahiara Declaration in 1969? Nevger heard of it, "head of Bin Laden desk" Mr. Scheuer? Why not?), in Pakistan and Kashmir and Bangladesh, in southern Thailand, in the Philippines -- oh, should I go on? Nah, you get the point.

We all think of C.I.A. agents as -- well, not necessarily like Riley, Ace of Spies (back in the U.S.S.R.), but perhaps like the kind of men who participated in a thousand ways, during the Cold War, in checking and checking and checking the growth and spread of Soviet power, military power, economic power, cultural power -- and helping to create those conditions which would force the more intelligent members of the Soviet ruling class, the Party members, to realize that Communism had failed, could not deliver, needed to be changed or abandoned. That is exactly what must be done with Islam.

But if people as ignorant of Islam as Scheuer are still in the C.I.A., or for that matter any of the other intelligence agencies, leaaving aside the security problem that an anti-Israel explanation of Muslim behavior (which inb many cases so tellingly reveals the pathological mental condition that lies so often, ill-disguised, behiind it), then are we, the United States, and the rest of the West, and the rest of the Infidel lands counting on those who have been entrusted with the task of halting and reversing the Jihad, whatever its local manifestation, and whatever the instruments of choice (terrorism being only one such instrument, and not everywhere the most effectivef), to thoroughly understand Islam, and the weak points that can be exploited within it, as well as the need to educate the Western public, to cleverly present -- the art of synecdoche to indirectly tell the truth needs to be mastered -- the menace of Islam to a Western public for which "tolerance" and "why-can't-we-all-get-along" and "all-religions-really-want-the-same-thing" and other Articles of Faith that, alas, are simply expressions of mental fashion -- in this case, a mental fashion that is not only foolish, but dangerous.

And that is because the Jihad-impulse is dangerous. As the old phrase, slightly emended, would put it -- "To Infidel children, and to our Infidel children's still-Infidel children, and to other living things."

Scheuer never mentions the history of Jihad-conquest, appears not to know where the texts come that Bin Laden himself -- Scheuer's supposed quarry --tantivy, tantivy, with A View to a Death in the Morning --alludes to, and quotes from, and so of course does al-Zawahiri and all the less-noted members of Al-Qaeda or oterh terrorist groups offering their justification, rooted in the canonical texts, for their acts, their beliefs, their hopes and dreams. On the flickering and dim screen of Scheuer's computer, and of his brain, none of this seems to have been perceived, or if perceived, to have registered.

One wonders what he has read, what he knows. What does he know about the contents of the Qur'an? Is he familiar with the Calcutta Qur'an Petition, and the setting-out of the Jihad verses? Has he read, and if so which translation, with which notes, the Qur'an? What about the Hadith? And what does he make of Muhammad as uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil? Anything? Nothing? What does he think of what Muahmmad thought was proper to do to the prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, of the attack on the Khaybar Oasis, of the marriage to little Aisha, of the numerous attacks on those whose tongues were too satirical, such as Asma bint Marwan? And what about the history of Jihad-conquest? Has Scheuer thoroughly grounded himself in the world-view of many Muslims? Does he have any idea what they are taught should be the rightful and natural place of Islam, not here and there but everywhere? Does he know what fates are the rightful fates of all Infidels, who at best should expect to be treated as existing on sufferance, the sufferance of Muslims, who will, for the right behavior and the right payments, allow them to live, but in a state, ideally, of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity? Does he think this doctrine has gone out, no longer exists? Can he tell us what changes have been made in the canonical texts that would explain the disappearance of such teachings, or the attitudes and atmospherics that arise naturally, in a straight line, from them?

Of course he can't. Nor would he understand that over time, vast swaths of territory inhabited by non-Muslims, by Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others, conquered by Islam, were turned into places where, over time, a great many of those Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, were forced by their condition to succumb to Islam, for the dhimmi status was always difficult, and at times unendurable -- and not everyone was willing to withstand the pressure. How many Christians in the United States, if told that they could of course practice their religion, but would have to pay $50,000 a year, for each family member, to do so -- would remain Chrsitian? And what if they could not use cars (as dhimmis could not use horses), had to wear identifying garb and mark their houses, could not sue Muslims at court, could see their women taken by Muslims in marriage or concubinage but the reverse would never be allowed, and so on?

No, this is not the kind of thing that someone at Scheuer's mental levelcould conceivably take in.

So the question is not about Scheuer. It is about those who somehow allowed this dimwit to be the head, for some years, of this misnamed "Bin Laden Desk." The intelligence failures we have seen, again and again, are not nearly so much a "failure of intelligence" as in "a failure to find out what's going on here and there" but a more basic failure that prevents an understanding of the sources, the deep promptings, of Jihad, and why it will not go away, and cannot go away, but can only be constrained, and conditions created to break off, from the core of Sunni Arab Islam, here and there non-Arabs, or non-Sunnis, and to further create conditions that will permit even them to see that their own political, economic, social and intellecutal failures have nothing to do with the supposedly perfidious Infidels (who should no longer prop up, in any way but especially with the jizyah of foreign aid, Muslim peoples that happen to have been overlooked by the Gods of Oil and Gas)but with Islam itself.

New hires at the C.I.A. are necessary. No one who wants to deal with Islam should be hired, or retained, who has not thoroughly assimilated scholarship on Jihad and dhimmitude. Bat Ye'or's "The Dhimmi," "Islam and Dhimmitude," "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam" and "Eurabia," Robert Spencer's "Onward Muslim Soldiers" and "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance," Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of Jihad" and a few other works, including Antoine Fattal's work on the legal status of dhimmis, should be read -- should be required reading, in the full sense of that word. Not Recommended. Not Something to Consider. Required.

And no scheuers need apply. We've had enough of people at that level, in Europe and in North America. Look at the numbers of Muslims already allowed to settle behind enemy lines. What brilliant experts on Islam over the past few decades, in France, in Germany, in Holland, in Great Britain, allowed that to happen, without understanding the inevitable, if slow-moving, consequences?

A little intelligence, please,in the intelligence agencies. Is that too much to ask?

Here it is:

http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTEwdnZjMjFhBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEdGVzdAMwBHRtcGwDaW5kZXgtY3Nz/s/256829

Pathetic!

Bush even read from the Koran: "He who takes one innocent life..."
(that is not reported in the above article)

The one and only verse that doesn't exhort the 'believers' to go out and kill, but even that one, if read correctly, goes on to justify the killing cult.

Hugh:

Any thoughts to as why Scheuer is raising his head these days? Shilling a new book, looking for speaking engagements, missing the limelight or just trying to do damage by suggesting that the Bush admin is screwing up on something?

All of the above. Quanto sopra. A, B, C, and D.

Mainly of course that word which begins with the letter "C" and fittingly for the figure in question rhymes with Stupidity: Cupidity.

I would not be at all surprised to see him emulate that former marine, a certain Mr. Rushing who is now shilling, where angels fear to tread, for al-Jazeera. In Scheuer's case, he would be a natural. He clearly has a thing about Israel -- "a thing" being a discrete way of putting his insistence that America's "unthinking support" explains the hostility of Arabs and Muslims. He may really believe that there is nothing dangerous or menacing about Islam. He may really believe that it is only a question of changing American policies. He may really not give a damn about the demographic conquest, the islamization, of Europe. He may never have paid the slightest attention to the Sudan, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, or a hundred other places. He may not have figured out that just maybe Bin Laden is not all that important, and that there are a hundred or a thousand other groups, and a million individuals, and tens or hundreds of millions of those who support them and cheer their deeds of derring-do.

Let's see if Scheuer ends up, directly or indirectly on the Arab Muslim payroll, most likely working for some Arab-funded group, possibly some phony "Dialogue of Civilizations" group in which he will be paid for his natural proclivities. Focus attention on Israel and American policies -- "Why do they hate us" -- and explain that Islam is just fine, nothing to worry about, and stop bringing up the Sudan, or Indonesia or the murder of Hindus in Bangladesh and Buddhists in Thailand. No fairsies.

Ritter, Rushing, Scheuer, Sheehan -- names that share a trochaic lilt, a falling rhythm, up and then down. One hopes that is not to be the fate, through the actions of the venal or the stupid, or the stupid and the venal, among us, of what freshmen like to refer to as Western Civ.

Thanks, Hugh. I wonder, with a name like "Scheuer", is he of Germanic origins or is he just another self-hating Jew who ain't overly bright and got even more befuddled by spending years in the CIA.

Frontpage Magazine has some good infdormation on Michael Scheuer

http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&cof=AWFID%3A9edb6131425a5b04%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontpagemag.com%2Fimages%2Ffp_index_logo.gif%3BLH%3A91%3BLW%3A283%3BBGC%3A%23FFFFFF%3BT%3A%23000000%3BLC%3A%230000CC%3BVLC%3A%230000CC%3BALC%3A%230000CC%3BGALT%3A%23008000%3BGFNT%3A%23000000%3BGIMP%3A%23000000%3BDIV%3A%230000CC%3BLBGC%3A%23FFFFFF%3BAH%3Aleft%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontpagemag.com%3B&domains=frontpagemag.com&q=michael+scheuer&btnG=Search&sitesearch=frontpagemag.com

Hello everyone!

I am still reading JW every day, but my new circumstances (new job, new baby) gives me almost no time to comment. Nonetheless I would like to follow up on Hugh's trenchant analysis of the ever eggregious Michael Sheuer.

I don't believe that Sheuer is as ignorant about Islam as Hugh lets on. I have read his book "Imperial Hubris" (bought by someone else!). He knows quite a few obscure facts about Islam and jihad (like Muhammad banishing all the Jews out of the Arab peninsula and Bin Laden's ambition to re-create the caliphate).

This make Sheuer all the more contemptible. In effect; What kind of person knowing these things would not focus all of their moral outrage towards Muslim supremacists?

Answer: a post-modernist anti-Semite.

Here is my review of "Imperial Hubris." Check it out and vote on it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/1574888625/ref=cm_rev_next/002-2771930-8584028?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=507846&s=books&customer-reviews.start=21

Oh I forgot;

The title of my review is "Cognitive Dissonance." It is written under the pseudonym "Nelson Mondragon."

I don't know and I don't care about Scheuer's origins. The phrase "self-hating Jew" -- I doubt that Scheuer would fall into that rebarbative category, if one were to allow oneself to use it, in any case. The phrase is not one I would ever use; I don't even know what it means. Scheuer could be anything at all, a member of Opus Dei or a 32nd-degree Mason, a Shriner, a member of Kiwanis, a Mugwump, a Little-Ender, a Beagle Boy, a Ruritanian, a Paphlagonian, a Nusquamite What matters to us, the innocent Infidels whom he is supposed to be intelligent enough to protect, is his naive and uncomprehending take on the very matters about which we are told he is supposed to be an "expert," matters connected to Islam. Scheuer's failure need not have anything to do with his presumed background. Why should it? The only thing that matters is intelligence, or a lack of it, and knowledge, or a lack of it, and the presence or absence of certain mental pathologies that, alas, seem fated never to disappear, though they can now and again be analyzed, mocked, outlawed, or otherwise constrained by custom and by law.

Scheuer's failures may be attributed to his 1) ignorance 2) stupidity and 3) eagerness to find fault with Israel as the source of the problem, which reflects a pathology exhibited by anywhere from 10% to 20% of a given population in Western countries, and is not limited to those identified as being Paphlagonians or Nusquamites.

I hate lumping individuals into group membership -- "Christians," "Jews," "Hindus" etc.) It drives me wild. I also hate having to ever use, which I may have once or twice, such words as "leftist." There are other ways to write and think. When I do so, I wince and blanch, and I justify it to myself as necesary for pedagogic purposes. The belief-system of Islam is so powerful, so immutable, and asMuslims themselves are taught to divide the world between Believers and Infidels, there are times when one is, in effect, using style indirect libre and attempting to offer a Muslim-eye view of the world. One hopes that others understand, and forgive, this vulgarity made necessary by the requirements of haute vulgarisation. If there is no escape or exit from this, it is because those who march on the path of Allah have made sure that it is one-way only, and we who comment on that path find ourselves also confronting the problem of a sens unique.

Hugh -

It is mistaken to suppose that an intelligence agency - any intelligence agency - can "defend us". Intelligence is passive. It can only collect information upon an enemy after the enemy has taken some action upon which to collect information. Action taken in response to an intelligence finding must, necessarily, be reactive. (The intelligence finding must be "after the fact" of an enemy action.)

I am not an apologist for the CIA. I suspect that most of the money invested in it is wasted. If I had to choose between investing $1 billion in the CIA and $1 billion in one thousand new M1 Tanks ... I would probably go for the tanks.

The idea that, somehow, an intelligence agency can defend us probably arises in Hollywood. Throughout my life, I have been subjected to a host of movies depicting the bold, action-oriented lives of intelligence agents. While James Bond makes good cinema, it makes lousy national defense. This is because the fiction has little bearing upon reality. Yet, the fiction has probably influenced many of us - including politicians who help make defense policy.

To be effective, I believe an intelligence agency must serve at the pleasure of the military. The military should control the intelligence agency's budget and direct its activities. After all, what is an independent intelligence agency to do with a finding but file a report? Such agencies have no air force, navy, or army. Intelligence agencies are not configured for action; they never have been.

As a youngster, Hugh, I once served America near the point of the spear. There were just infantry, artillery, and fighter-bombers on the scene. Military police? No. CIA? Only in the cinema.

PS: I will feel much better when W is willing to say, "The problem is islam". And, when we are mass-producing Daisy Cutters.

"Scheuer's failures may be attributed to his 1) ignorance 2) stupidity and 3) eagerness to find fault with Israel as the source of the problem"

I'll vote for numbers 2 and 3. Sheuer knows quite a bit about Islam, but he is too stupid and morally shallow to come up with a decent sythesis.

"I also hate having to ever use, which I may have once or twice, such words as "leftist.""

That is precisely why I have adopted the term "postmodernist." This term pretty much sums up the moral bankruptcy that currently dominates academia, the media, and much of the modern left.

Andrei:

Double congrats and Shana Tova.

Hugh:

Knowing where Scheuer and his types "come from" helps parsing what they say so you can possibly negate it more easily.

If you don't understand what "self-hating Jew" suggests or the historic importance and implications of this mind-set, check Melanie Phillips's website for her review of Kenneth Levine's book on the Oslo complex and how the description applies, in the example cited, to Amos Oz. I happen to think it's important because so many of these Jews are the useful idiots of Islamists, among other dangerous forces.

Scheuer has been exposed as a leftist Bush hater who was about to be run out of the CIA before he resigned. The fact that someone so incompetent was head of a "Bin Laden" task force explains many of the problems with the CIA.Scheuer and agents like him are the reason Pres Bush chose Porter Goss to head the CIA. One of the things Goss is doing is removing incompetent CIA agents like Scheuer who care more about undermining Pres Bush then defeating the enemy.I'm guessing Scheuer has resurfaced in an attempt to regain some of his lost luster as "Bin Laden expert".

UBL lives to see the nuke.

The government does nothing. Witness the latest Johnny Jihad in Norman, OK who raised every red flag, right down to purchasing AN, but nobody "connected the dots."

Yep, got them real-good like brains at work at the 'intelligence' agencies.

Bin Laden is alive and well. He is sitting in his in cave, as a coward would, awaiting the most opportune time to INSTRUCT his people to attack. A coward does not fight.

WE people do NOT idolize him, WE PEOPLE WANT TO ANNIHILATE him!

Roxanne, you Nailed it. This is why Bush appointed a new man to head the CIA and clean it out, altho it will take years... the Democrat-appointed bunch are deeply entrenched in there.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0905/jkelly093005.php3

http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2004/11/leakers_of_lang.php

http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/archives/002930.html

al-Zawahiri is the main spokesman for al-Qaeda because in all probabilty bin Laden is dead.

If bin Laden died because of his poor health, al-Qaeda would never reveal that because of his
propoganda value.

If he was killed by the Americans, they would
never reveal it either so as not to create
a martyr.

bin Laden has been absent for a long time which is
uncharacteristic of him.

One shouldn't speculate but in this case it is appropriate since many would have the motive to
conceal his death.