Ex-CIA official: Bush plays into al-Qaida's hands
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/11493109p-12406316c.html
WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden is much less focused on trying to destroy Americans' way of life than on changing U.S. policies in the Middle East, a newly retired CIA terrorism expert said Friday.
The "genius" of bin Laden's approach is that it has united Muslims from countries around the world as never before, said Michael Scheuer, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's bin Laden unit from 1996-99.
"He has created an organization that is absolutely unique in Muslim history," he said.
President Bush's decision to invade Iraq last year has worsened matters by fueling the growth of this global Islamic insurgency - "a back-breaker" in the terrorism fight, he said.
During a wide-ranging breakfast with reporters, Scheuer also said he has no doubt that bin Laden wants to unleash a nuclear attack on the United States, perhaps with one of about 100 "suitcase bombs" believed missing from the former Soviet Union.
Scheuer said bin Laden would most likely acquire nuclear weapons from Russian sources - "some sort of a Mafia organization" - rather than from Pakistan, an Islamic country with nuclear weapons and with a history of spreading its nuclear know-how. The main reason Russia would be a likely source, he said, is the vastness of the Russian nuclear weapons complex and the rampant corruption there.
Bin Laden already "clearly has a presence in the former Soviet Union (and) he has shown a strong willingness to work with un-Islamic people if it furthers his game," Scheuer said.
Bin Laden also received authorization from a Saudi religious cleric in May 2003 to use nuclear weapons against the United States, he said. The edict said that bin Laden could kill millions of Americans because the country was responsible for killing many Muslims.
He also said bin Laden's al-Qaida network likely already has operatives in the United States who could obtain radioactive material from a research laboratory or medical facility and set off a "dirty bomb."
While still at the CIA, the 22-year agency veteran wrote the book "Imperial Hubris," whose author was identified only as "Anonymous" and which sharply attacked Bush's handling of the war on terrorism.
On Nov. 12, as Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., was taking the helm at the intelligence agency, Scheuer resigned, saying he wanted to join the national debate about how the United States should respond to bin Laden.
He said Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry both misread bin Laden in declaring during the campaign that the terrorist leader seeks "to destroy our way of life."
"The genius of bin Laden is to focus on our policies, rather than our lifestyle," he said. "I don't think (bin Laden) gives a darn about elections, women going to school, liberties. All of those things he probably doesn't like. But his genius is knowing he's not going to get anybody to support him if he's opposing our drinking Budweiser."
He said Bush played into bin Laden's hands by invading Iraq, considered Islam's second-holiest place by Shiite Muslims.
Someone should have warned Bush in advance that the war would put the United States, with troops in the Arabian Peninsula, and Israel, which polices Jerusalem, in control of Islam's three holiest sites and fan anger among the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, Scheuer said.
The war has broadened bin Laden's appeal, as he has been winning the propaganda battle over satellite television and the Internet, recruiting new members in countries near and far, Scheuer said.
"We've watched the Palestinians for 50 years, and they can't agree to cross the street together," he said. "Bin Laden has Saudis and Egyptians and American Muslims and Japanese Muslims and Malaysians, Filipinos. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's ... certainly got us on the run."
Scheuer also criticized national security officials during the Clinton administration - and a CIA operations chief - for failing to push attacks in the late 1990s that might have killed bin Laden on any of 10 occasions when his whereabouts were known.
In May 1999, he said, the agency had "firsthand, eyes-on information" about bin Laden's whereabouts in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for five straight nights. But senior officials decided not to shoot, he said, for "fear of collateral damage, fear of Western opinion that we were gunslingers."
Scheuer said he takes seriously the possibility that al-Qaida might obtain nuclear weapons because, since 1996, bin Laden "has pursued weapons of mass destruction in a manner which was unlike any other so-called terrorist group we had ever seen."
Scheuer described bin Laden as "an odd combination of a 12th-century theologian and a 21st-century CEO."
"You don't have to like him," he said, "but you do need to respect him, because he has a greater ability to hurt the United States than we have ever really acknowledged."
Scheuer said that in his view, bin Laden's taped speech broadcast four days before the election had several purposes. Bin Laden wanted to warn the United States of an impending attack, because he was criticized in the Muslim world for failing to do so before the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, and to do "whatever he could do to make sure Mr. Bush was elected," he said.
"Mr. Bush was the best foil for him to operate against," Scheuer said, because of the way the president defends the very policies bin Laden uses to incite Muslims.
