I heard the clip Rush played with this guy on Matthews show last night.
Matthews says "Suppose we were a good country, would bin Laden leave us alone?".
At least the CIA guy had the sense to say back to Matthews "WE ARE A GOOD COUNTRY".
and "suppose we had an evenhanded ME policy"
Matthews says "Suppose we were a good country, would bin Laden leave us alone?".
At least the CIA guy had the sense to say back to Matthews "WE ARE A GOOD COUNTRY".
MATTHEWS: After 22 years with the CIA, Michael Scheuer left the agency this past Friday. It is fair to say few people there knew more about Osama bin Laden than did he and does. Yet Scheuer says his warnings about the threat that bin Laden posed to this country fell on deaf ears. His complaints were made public in “Imperial Hubris,” a book critical of the CIA and the Bush administration.
Michael, you‘re a gutsy guy. When did you sense that bin Laden was going to be a danger to us?
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CHIEF OF CIA BIN LADEN UNIT: I think we found out shortly after we began chasing him in January of 1996 that he was much more than any kind of terrorist we had ever seen before.
MATTHEWS: What is his motive? Why does he want to kill us?
SCHEUER: His motive—his motive is to change our policies, sir. Notwithstanding what the president or Mr. Kerry said during the campaign, he really doesn‘t give a darn about our democracy or our society. He is after a change in policies which he views as lethal to Muslims.
MATTHEWS: Does he think, for example—let me try this—and I don‘t want to sound like an apologist. But suppose we had truly an even-handed policy in the Middle East. Suppose there was a Palestinian entity of some kind and it had reasonable borders and it was contiguous enough to be a working state, and we didn‘t back dictators like the Saudi royal family, people like that who are simply selling the oil to keep their fingers filled with rings and girlfriends in London, all right?
Suppose we were a good country and an even-handed country, all right?
Would that make him any less hostile to us?
SCHEUER: We are a good country, sir, to start with.
MATTHEWS: In other words, in his eyes.
SCHEUER: Yes, in bin Laden‘s...
MATTHEWS: What are the problems besides Middle East and the oil kingdoms?
SCHEUER: With bin Laden, his opposition is based on support for Israel, support for the tyrannies.
MATTHEWS: Yes. Does he want to eliminate Israel?
SCHEUER: I think he does. I think that‘s...
MATTHEWS: OK, well, that makes it simple. You can‘t do that.
SCHEUER: That‘s clearly his goal.
MATTHEWS: So there‘s no policy negotiation we could ever have with this guy.
SCHEUER: It has to be a changes in policies and a more assertive use of military force.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: No. What I‘m saying, there‘s no way not to be at war with this guy, from our perspective, is what I‘m asking you.
SCHEUER: Yes.
Right now, the choice isn‘t between war and peace. It is between war and endless war.
MATTHEWS: Was there any time that we could have avoided war against him?
SCHEUER: No.
MATTHEWS: So, basically, he started a war against us. We just got to beat him.
SCHEUER: Yes. That‘s exactly right.
MATTHEWS: OK. That‘s what I want to know.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, where is he?
SCHEUER: He is somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan, sir, along the border.
MATTHEWS: Somewhere up there in the northwest—the old northwest Malaccan territories of India, which is now Pakistan.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: Yes, sir. Some are.
MATTHEWS: Why is he protected there? What happened to Musharraf, our ally?
SCHEUER: Musharraf has bent over backwards, sir. Quite frankly, I would have bet my pension that Musharraf would not have done half of what he‘s done. He‘s done a tremendous amount for us.
MATTHEWS: But is he hiding him?
SCHEUER: I don‘t think he‘s hiding him.
MATTHEWS: Is he among those uncharted areas of the northwest?
SCHEUER: Yes. That‘s clearly the case, sir. He‘s lost in the largest mountains on Earth.
MATTHEWS: And has he got any political protection?
SCHEUER: Not political protection.
MATTHEWS: He has got a TV studio.
SCHEUER: Yes, sir, he does.
MATTHEWS: Where did he find that?
SCHEUER: When you have money, you can do most anything, sir.
MATTHEWS: Do you think he‘s been taken to Islamabad or places like that where they have modern facilities and allowed to appear in these videos we keep seeing?
SCHEUER: No. I suspect he is doing that in the field.
MATTHEWS: Last time we saw him, he was on a burro and he had dialysis problems, right?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: How the hell did a guy on dialysis riding a burro escape from the strongest military force in the world, us?
SCHEUER: Well, first, I think a great deal of the dialysis problem is disinformation from al Qaeda. Second, aside from our special forces in Afghanistan, the military doesn‘t do an awful lot in Afghanistan.
MATTHEWS: Did we let him go in Tora Bora?
SCHEUER: Sure.
MATTHEWS: Was that our fault?
SCHEUER: It was our fault we didn‘t use our own troops, sir. We picked...
MATTHEWS: So we chose the better part of valor. We chose not to expose our troops to go in and hunting through caves.
SCHEUER: That‘s certainly what it looked like to me, sir, from my perspective, yes. And we hired as our surrogates people who were longtime friends of Osama bin Laden.
MATTHEWS: Is he like the tough kid who takes on the big shot, and, therefore, he is popular in it is own community? Is he the kid—is he a hero in the Islamic world?
SCHEUER: Absolutely a hero. You know...
MATTHEWS: OK. Why?
SCHEUER: First of all, there‘s no other leaders. You don‘t see many “I Love Mubarak” T-shirts around.
But the second point is, he speaks—for Muslims, he speaks the truth. They believe that our policies are indefensible.
MATTHEWS: OK. When you go to the Middle East, you see this quiet looking guy sitting around playing chess or smoking those pipes.
SCHEUER: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Hookah pipes, or watching “The Flintstones” on television or whatever they‘re watching, “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They‘re relaxing all day. Are they thinking about bin Laden and why they like him?
SCHEUER: I think that‘s right. I think he‘s the most popular figure in the Muslim world at the moment.
MATTHEWS: Because he spits in our face. And he also kills us by the thousands.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Do they like that?
SCHEUER: Well, they like that because they believe their religion is under attack by the United States.
Bin Laden could not be as popular as he was or as he is if it wasn‘t for our policies. We are his main ally.
MATTHEWS: Were you shocked by the killings of that filmmaker in Holland recently?
SCHEUER: I was shocked, yes, not surprised.
MATTHEWS: By the Islamic community there. They—you cannot speak against Islam. You just can‘t do it. If you speak against Islam, you‘re killed.
SCHEUER: Well, it‘s very much in vogue with what bin Laden wants.
Bin Laden has sought always to incite individual attacks on...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Does he want Sharia, absolute Muslim rule, where no one has freedom of speech?
SCHEUER: He wants—certainly wants the Sharia law. I‘m not sure if I would say that that means no freedom of speech.
The Afghans, for example, are among the most democratic people on Earth in term of a small-d democrat. There‘s a lot of talk that goes on. But religious principles, yes.
MATTHEWS: Well, they don‘t believe you‘re allowed to criticize Islam.
SCHEUER: No. Well, no Muslim does. So that‘s not a question of free speech.
MATTHEWS: Well, not like it, as opposed to encouraging fatwas, etcetera.
SCHEUER: Yes. I‘m sorry. I missed that question.
MATTHEWS: I mean, does he believe you should be able to be killed just because you speak ill against Islam?
SCHEUER: I don‘t think so.
I think the 9/11 Commission, report, for example is wrong. The 9/11 Commission report identifies bin Laden and his followers as takfiris, who kill Muslims if they don‘t agree with them. They‘re not takfiris. They‘re just very devout, severe Salafists and Wahhabis.
MATTHEWS: Does he have the money to do it again?
SCHEUER: Sure.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Nine eleven.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: ... 9/11, yes, it wasn‘t that expensive, first of all. The recent spate of oil increases, $50-a-barrel oil means a lot more money flowing to Osama bin Laden from donators around the world.
MATTHEWS: If you had to place your bets on the most ruthless, most heartless gamble of your life, would you bet he will hit us with nuclear?
SCHEUER: If he has got it, he‘ll use it. It will be a first strike weapon.
He doesn‘t want it for a deterrent.
MATTHEWS: He doesn‘t want a blackmail us.
SCHEUER: No, sir, he doesn‘t. He wants this war—he doesn‘t want to fight this war forever. A lot of people mistake him as someone who can‘t get along without fighting. But that‘s not clearly the case.
MATTHEWS: You mean he would like to lob one horrible bomb at us, kill tens of thousands and then say he won and slip into the night?
SCHEUER: Well, not slip into the night, but then begin to take over the governments in the Middle East, sir, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Egyptians.
MATTHEWS: Well, how would that happen?
SCHEUER: With us out of way, his...
MATTHEWS: Oh, we would pull out of the Middle East.
SCHEUER: Yes, his operating belief.
MATTHEWS: So, his operating goal is to get us out of the Middle East, out of supporting Israel, back over here, not using the oil from over there.
SCHEUER: No. He‘s already said publicly that you can have all the oil you want. I can‘t drink it. We‘re going to sell it to you at a marketplace.
MATTHEWS: OK. We‘re coming back with Michael Scheuer to talk about the shakeup at the CIA, where he‘s been for 22 years.
You‘re watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Coming up, the shakeup at the CIA. Will the new round of resignations make the agency stronger? We‘re coming back with retiring CIA officer Michael Scheuer when HARDBALL returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: We‘re back with Michael Scheuer, who left the CIA on Friday, after 22 years working there. Two of the top people in the CIA‘s directorate of operations resigned. It‘s no secret this is an agency in turmoil.
Is the CIA in a meltdown mode?
SCHEUER: I don‘t think so, sir.
I think there‘s a lot of consternation with the new management team. It comes with any change of management. But the resignations were very I think painful for the clandestine service. For the first time, in Mr. Kappes, we had a deputy director of operations who had, forgive the trite phrase, but who had walked the walk and talked the talk.
He was an operator who had done hard things in hard places. And for the first time in a decade, we had a very, very serious operations officer as our DDO.
MATTHEWS: But there‘s no problem with the neocons, the ideologues in this administration, watching the CIA come apart. They‘ve been at war with you guys over there, haven‘t they, with Langley?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I read the papers every day. I want to tell you, whether you agree with me or not, publicly or not, I see a war that is going on constantly. The CIA leaks stuff detrimental to the administration, detrimental to the Defense Department. It goes back and forth. It‘s about leaking. It‘s new leaking.
It‘s constantly a war between the CIA, who seems to be skeptical of this war with Iraq, and the ideologues in the Defense Department and the vice president‘s office, primarily, that are at war with you guys over there. Isn‘t that true?
(CROSSTALK)
SCHEUER: To some extent, I guess it is true.
But the truth of the matter is, they probably don‘t like the idea of the war—of some of our opinions about the war in Iraq. If anything, cinched bin Laden transmitting from bin Laden to bin Ladenism in a worldwide movement, it was the war in Iraq. It doesn‘t make any difference really what the threat was from Saddam. There‘s a whole another issue of Iraq.
MATTHEWS: Sure. The going to war with Iraq, for whatever reason we had to go, whether it‘s geopolitical, ideological or this sort of lame argument for WMD, did it encourage the bin Ladenism in the world?
SCHEUER: Absolutely. You created it...
MATTHEWS: So, Mubarak, who you just disparaged a minute ago, was right when he said going to war with Iraq has created 100 new bin Ladens out there.
SCHEUER: More than that, sir. It has created an Afghanistan in the middle of the Islamic world. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, it was a backwater.
MATTHEWS: So all the political underpinnings of bin Ladenism, they‘ve the horror that hit us 9/11, have been enhanced and strengthened by our decision to go to Iraq.
SCHEUER: Absolutely. And most of this...
MATTHEWS: Well, the CIA knows this, right?
SCHEUER: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Why don‘t they tell it to the president?
SCHEUER: Well, I‘m sure Mr. Tenet must have told them.
MATTHEWS: He never did.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Tenet is only now for a half million dollars out there telling people on the lecture circuit he suspected their arguments for the war in Iraq. He never went public.
SCHEUER: I wasn‘t—sir, I wasn‘t in the room with the president and Mr. Tenet. But I can tell that you that the people who were working against Osama bin Laden were assured from the first day that much of the work we had done in the last decade would be undone by that war.
MATTHEWS: I can‘t wait to read all the books of all the guys who secretly opposed the war with Iraq, but didn‘t tell anybody during the war buildup.
We‘re going to hear it from Tenet. We‘re going to hear it from Powell. All these guys are going to hand-wring and say, oh, that was a bad war. But why didn‘t they speak out or quit as we were going into that war?
SCHEUER: I don‘t have the answer to that, sir.
MATTHEWS: Why did Tenet stay on if he disagreed with the war?
SCHEUER: I don‘t know if he disagreed with it or not, sir. He was the...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Why is he saying so now on the speaking tour?
SCHEUER: I...
MATTHEWS: You guys are secret keepers.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: You really are.
Let me ask you, without naming names. Did most of the top people in the CIA believe that it was a mistake to go to Iraq?
SCHEUER: I would think that that is a shared view in terms of trying to finish off the bin Laden problem, sir, yes.
MATTHEWS: Did they believe that when Secretary Powell, who has just resign, that he had the true facts when he went to the U.N. and made the case for war or didn‘t he? Was that a sales pitch, rather than a fact-based argument?
SCHEUER: The only part of that I know about, sir, is that the—I happened to do the research on the links between al Qaeda and Iraq.
MATTHEWS: And what did you come up with?
SCHEUER: Nothing.
MATTHEWS: Well, why didn‘t somebody say that to the president?
SCHEUER: We did. Well, I don‘t know. Again, there‘s a difference...
MATTHEWS: Dick Cheney never stops talking about that connection. He is still talking about Prague. He doesn‘t quit.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: He‘s in the Laurie Mylroie tradition over there, which is to believe any connection to justify the war.
SCHEUER: When you talk about CIA analysis, sir, it‘s one thing when it is produced. It is another thing when it is delivered. Mr. Tenet made himself the briefer in chief to the president.
MATTHEWS: Did he make the case for war when it wasn‘t there in the facts?
SCHEUER: I don‘t know that, sir. I have no idea.
MATTHEWS: Who wrote the brief for the secretary of state when he went to the U.N.?
SCHEUER: I suppose part of it was written by the agency and part by the State Department.
MATTHEWS: Six trips over there by the vice president, Scooter, his chief of staff, what was that about? Why did the vice president go to the CIA to get a case for war when you guys say there wasn‘t a case for war? He came back with one.
SCHEUER: Sir, I‘m not—again, my knowledge of Iraq is very limited and limited to the al Qaeda aspect of it.
MATTHEWS: Is it possible that the case for war made outside the CIA based upon illusory information?
SCHEUER: I don‘t know. I know our consistent process of reevaluating ties by Iraq, between Iraq and al Qaeda, was driven by the analysis done at DOD.
MATTHEWS: I hate to think what history is going to say about this war. They‘re going to say there was WMD, because we know that. They‘re going to say there was no connection to al Qaeda, because we know that now.
And all the arguments we put forth to the world will be found bogus if you‘re right, because, if it wasn‘t for the CIA, where did we get the information justifying the war? Is there some other agency I should know about?
SCHEUER: Not that I know of, sir.
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you. You‘re great. Gutsy guy. I know you‘re careful. And I‘m breaking you here, because this is HARDBALL.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: And don‘t call me sir anymore.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: Michael Scheuer, what a gutsy guy. By the way, that‘s him down here, Michael Scheuer. Change the jackets. Michael Scheuer wrote this book, “Imperial Hubris.” He‘s a tough nut to crack.
Thank you, sir.
SCHEUER: Pleasure.
I saw the guy on 60 misinfomintues.
I don't know what to make of him.
I do know one thing, that is the CIA and White House are in a power struggle. Goss is exactly what the agency needs right now.
What happened is the during the Clinton admin, the agency circled the wagons and tried to consolidate as much power as possible.
Now the White House needs people briefing the president and that is becoming a problem because some of the officers are carrying thier own agenda.
I think perhaps this guys is one of the officers from the old regime. Who in his own world weilded some power, but now is being asked to be team player. Unfortunatley, he feels somewhat miffed that he has never been given the credit he is due. Thus he writes a book, so he can grab the spotlight that he had lost after 9/11.
Post 9/11 there were a lot of people digging into what used to be his baby.
I heard him say that, when Rush played the clip today. It's stunning that Matthews could come out with such a comment.
Hey Matthews, if you happen to come across this thread, my advice to you is move to Cuba.
ObL hasn't attacked them, that must be the kind of "good country" you'd rather live in.
You deserve to live there, not sure even they deserve you however.