Michael Scheuer says Israeli lobby has tied American gov’t down like Gulliver

by on May 9, 2012 25
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In Chicago, WLS drive-time radio interviews former CIA official Michael Scheuer (thanks to this neocon site and Mark). Excerpts:

Sixteen years after the start of this war, we still hear Mr. Obama and John McCain and Mitt Romney and the British Prime Minister and the rest of them teling their electorates that we're at war because they hate women in the work place and they hate elections and liberties....

They're at war with us because of what our government does, not the way we live at home. As long as we are not adult enough to accept that... it certainly means that we ought to know that our policies are having an immense cost.

Host: What policies?

Surely our support for the Saudi Police state, our presence on the Arab peninsula, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Afghanistan, our unqualified support for Israel. The intersting thing sir is that these were all outlined by bin Laden in his declaration of war in 1996. Our political leaders in both parties have consistently told Americans in essence, forget what our enemy is saying, we know better what they're thinking than they do. So we're in this position that we believe that they're all madmen and there's only a limited number of them that we can kill one at a time.

Host: Would you change our policy with Israel and Saudi?

We can't sir, we can't do either one. The Israeli lobby controls our politics and the Saudi Arabians controls the most important reserves of oil. The United States government is like Gulliver, it's strapped to the ground.... We're stuck in the middle east and we'll have to keep taking the pounding we've been taking....

Because we've taken no cognizance of [our enemies' motivation], we've given the next generation away to the Islamists. We've made no dent in the appeal of people who want to get us out of their neighborhood...

You don't have to change your policies. If you want to support the Israelis [that's fine].. But we ought not to believe that the enemy is not inspired by that...

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Iraq, Israel Lobby, Media, Neocons, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics, War on Terror

{ 25 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. American says:
    May 9, 2012 at 11:16 am

    That’s actually pretty mild for Scheuer….I’ve heard him be much more forthcoming about US-Israel.

  2. LanceThruster says:
    May 9, 2012 at 11:40 am

    Scheuer has often been an enigma to me as I’ve heard him say many things that qualify him as a truth-teller, and others that I felt fall into the category of “Islamo-fascism” demonization.

    I regard him like anyone, I guess. I appreciate when they’re being truthful and candid, and question their agenda when their position conflicts with the facts as _I_ understand them (granted I’m not expert in anything).

    • ToivoS says:
      May 9, 2012 at 4:05 pm

      Lance I see your point but I think Scheuer is completely consistent. He was tasked as a CIA agent to fight Al qaida. He thinks that war should be fought and some of his rhetoric describing this fight sounds downright bloodcurdling. At the same time he recognizes that they are motivated by legitimate grievances. I have not seen him engage in “Islamo-fascism demonization” propaganda, however.

      • LanceThruster says:
        May 9, 2012 at 4:21 pm

        As my recall is fairly sketchy you could be correct and that I am mischaracterizing his statements. I just remember seeing him at different times on different programs where the impression I got from him one time was turned around on a later viewing.

        • CloakAndDagger says:
          May 10, 2012 at 12:24 am

          Scheuer is an America-firster (as I am). He is also a Ron Paul supporter (as I am). He is brutally candid about our pro-Israel follies and unwelcome intervention in foreign affairs. He is to be admired for his brave outspokenness for so many years, and nobody has been able to silence him. Bill Maher tried paint him as crazy a few years back – but was very unsuccessful at it.

          He doesn’t really care for Arabs or muslims, but he doesn’t much care for Israel either. It would be a stretch to call him an Islamophobe though.

        • CloakAndDagger says:
          May 10, 2012 at 5:55 pm

          His article on FP provides further insight into his philosophy:

          link to foreignpolicy.com

          What the founders and Paul advocate, and what the U.S. political elite have forgotten, might be termed the “Schoolyard Rule.” Most of us, in the halcyon days of youth, learned at recess that every action elicits a reaction: Push someone in the schoolyard, and you will be pushed back. We also learned that a single, cavalier push meaning little to you might quickly turn into a bigger fracas, complete with cuts, bruises, or worse, until Sister Mary Lawrence and her metal-edged yardstick arrived to stop the fight and restore order.

          We also learned the Schoolyard Rule’s corollary: If you are pushed during recess, you better push back — even if the instigator is bigger — and hope that the good sister arrives to save your bacon. If you do not push back, the pain you receive becomes a daily occurrence. Militant Islamists assiduously apply this corollary to defend a Muslim world they perceive as too-long passive in the face of murderous superpower pushing. The Islamists are pushing back and depending on Allah — in the role of Sister Mary Lawrence — to give eventual victory to the Muslim David.

  3. seafoid says:
    May 9, 2012 at 12:00 pm

    2 things

    A comment about the French economy but it is just as valid about American lobby Jews

    “However, his column underplays the role of path dependency, where initial conditions influence what follows.”

    and look at this for a path :

    link to guardian.co.uk

    “The monsters from Wild Things were based on his own relatives. They would visit his house in Brooklyn when he was growing up (“All crazy – crazy faces and wild eyes”) and pinch his cheeks until they were red. Looking back, he sees how desperate they all were, these first-generation immigrants from Poland, with no English, no education and, although they didn’t know it in 1930, a family back home facing extinction in the concentration camps. At the time, all he saw was grotesques.

    My father belonged to a Jewish social club. The day of my barmitzvah he got word [through the club] that he had, no longer, a family. Everyone was gone. And he laid down in bed. I remember this so vividly. And my mother said to me, ‘Papa can’t come.’ And I was having the big party at the colonial club, the old mansion in Brooklyn. And I said, ‘How can Papa not come to my barmitzvah?’ And I screamed at him, ‘You gotta get up, you gotta get up!’ And of course he did. And the only thing I remember is looking at him when the guests burst into For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. And my father’s face was vivid, livid, and I knew I had done something very bad, that I had made him suffer more than he had to. This 13-year-old ersatz man.”
    They were traumatised people, his parents, angry, fierce, “nuts”, and understandably so.”

    Israel is so much unworked out trauma

  4. Robert says:
    May 9, 2012 at 12:20 pm

    Now that I’ve broken through on the issue of Osama Bin Laden being a CIA asset, and that he died in Dec. 2001, I need to reevaluate everything that I ever read on this. That includes Michael Scheuer, the “former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit”. Is he a dupe or is he a disinformation agent?

    He said that while at the CIA, there were 10 attempts on Bin Laden, only to be told to stand down. link to telegraph.co.uk

    I’m going to say that he was a dupe at the CIA, then a disinformation agent. After the bogus “killing” of Bin Laden last year, he is trying to subtly leak information like the above article, without being so explicit that he gets himself killed.

    • LanceThruster says:
      May 9, 2012 at 12:50 pm

      Thank you for those thoughtful observations. On reflection, that assessment seems quite plausible.

      • AllenBee says:
        May 9, 2012 at 1:07 pm

        agreed; Scheuer is Br’er Rabbit, zigging this way and that trying to serve his masters & stay alive.

        He was on C Span Washington Journal last week. link to c-spanvideo.org If his comments were reduced to a transcript, a reader would have to swear there were two adversaries talking: In one sentence, “Muslims rightly distrust the US,” in the next sentence, “We have no choice but to kill them.”

    • lobewyper says:
      May 9, 2012 at 6:42 pm

      I think there’s a whole lot of confusion here about Scheuer’s position. As I understand it from his book Imperial Hubris, he seriously criticizes US policies toward the Muslim world (support for Arab dictators, exploitation of Arab oil resources, suppression of Arab dissent in friendly-to-us regimes, unqualified support for Israel, etc.). He argues that from a Muslim perspective, the preceding amount to an attack upon Islam generally, and thus justify a defensive jihad against the US.

      He goes on to say that because US leaders have no discernible intention of mending their ways, our only remaining choice is to fight it out. In this fight, we will have to be ruthless and kill many innocents simply because it is often hard to distinguish non-combatants from combatants. And all this will be sad but necessary for our ultimate security.

      The implication of all this is not that Scheuer wants to satisfy some blood-lust he harbors toward Muslims. He would prefer that we change those of our policies that are viewed as hostile to Muslims to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. He just doesn’t expect the US to be able to recognize the need for changes.

      Scheuer is not a crazy, nor do I suspect he is in the misinformation biz. He is rather blunt-spoken, and may not have been totally consistent at all times since he began publishing. But to suggest that he was “a dupe” at the CIA seems extreme. (I post this with confidence that any errors I have expressed here will be swiftly and surely corrected by my fellow Mondoweissers!)

      • Robert says:
        May 10, 2012 at 1:45 am

        Lobewyper,
        I say with conviction that Scheuer was a dupe at the CIA because it is apparent that Bin Laden was working for the CIA all the way until his death in mid December, 2001. The CIA chief of station in Dubai visited him in July, 2001 (source, Le Figaro, CBS NEWS).

        So if bin Laden is working for the CIA, and Michael Scheuer is trying to kill him but is forced to stand down 10 times over, we can deduce that Scheuer is unaware that bin Laden is actually working for the CIA, and is therefore a dupe. There is another possibility that he was aware, in which case what he has said is wall to wall disinformation.

        Very important question vis a vis Scheuer: why is he unaware that bin Laden died in Dec. 2001? That was after he left the agency. Dupe or disinformation.

        • lobewyper says:
          May 10, 2012 at 3:41 am

          Robert,

          This position of yours that Bin Laden died in Dec., 2001 implies that many individuals in the US government (not to mention Bin Laden’s own family)as well as Al Quada itself conspired for now 11 years maintain the “fiction” that he didn’t die until last year. (The CIA station chief’s July, 2001 visit, if true, took place of course BEFORE 9-11.) While I have no doubt our current government is capable of essentially any falsehood, it defies belief that such as conspiracy could be maintained in these “information age” times. The scenario you outline would make Bin Laden a complete traitor to his fellow Muslims (all of them), and according to Scheuer and others, the man took his faith pretty seriously. So, show us the evidence you’re right about this, please.

        • Pixel says:
          May 10, 2012 at 11:11 am

          lobewyper,

          There’s a lot of info on all of this that’s been out there for years.
          Just google anything you want to know and start reading.

          Regarding Bin Laden being a CIA asset at least until 9/11, research former FBI interpreter and whistle blower Sibel Edmunds, the most gagged woman in history of the U.S.

          Her website is BoilingFrogsPost.com
          .

          Some here may ask, “What does anything about Bin Laden, the CIA, 9/11, etc., have to do with ‘The War of Words in the Middle East’”?

          The answer is: Everything.

          Everything is connected.

          If you doubt that, keep an open mind, temporarily suspend your disbelief, and do some solid research on all of this. Then come back and tell me that it’s unrelated. Trust me, you won’t.

        • CloakAndDagger says:
          May 10, 2012 at 4:12 pm

          Some here may ask, “What does anything about Bin Laden, the CIA, 9/11, etc., have to do with ‘The War of Words in the Middle East’”?

          The answer is: Everything.

          Double ditto.

        • lobewyper says:
          May 10, 2012 at 5:55 pm

          Pixel,

          Thanks for the Edmunds website. I will check it out!

  5. DICKERSON3870 says:
    May 9, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    RE: “thanks to this neocon site [American Thinker]” ~ Weiss

    MY COMMENT: Or “Americun Stinker”, as the cads refer to it at Sadly No!

  6. DICKERSON3870 says:
    May 9, 2012 at 1:14 pm

    RE: “Our political leaders in both parties have consistently told Americans in essence, forget what our enemy is saying, we know better what they’re thinking than they do.” ~ Michael Scheuer

    MY COMMENT: And yet they also say (particularly in reference to Ahmadenijad’s supposedly saying “wipe Israel off the map”): “You have to take a man at his word.” ~ George W. Bush, circa 2007

    AND AS TO “we know better what they’re thinking than they do”,
    SEE: “Rush From Reality”, By Rick Perlstein, 02/26/09

    (excerpts) I’ve been listening to Rush Limbaugh for going on twenty years now. . .
    . . . And so, yesterday, I visited the funhouse again, to see what the hall of mirrors looked like after President Obama’s triumphant State of the Union address (68% of viewers had a very positive reaction…)—the day after, in other words, conservatism was ground into the dust once again.
    Rush came out of the gate blaring, declaiming the irrelevance of such poll. . .
    . . . He went on, of course. And on, and on, and on, and on. Came the first caller, who made the mistake of pointing to Obama’s actual language in the speech, and got interrupted by El Rushbo— “Pay no attention to what he says. He means the opposite in most cases. What he says is irrelevant.”
    . . . I knew I’d heard this before. This was the doctrine of the “principle of reversal” enunciated by John Birch Society founder Robert Welch. Welch explained that in order to understand what the Communists are saying, you have to translate it into its opposite. Though it was a principle, of course, that Welch frequently honored in the breach. When a Communist said something he thought was embarrassing, Welch hammered home that the Communist meant exactly what he said.
    The sole authority, of course, qualified to decide when a Communist meant the opposite of what he said, and when he meant exactly what he said was Robert Welch. . .

    SOURCE – link to ourfuture.org

    • DICKERSON3870 says:
      May 9, 2012 at 1:39 pm

      P.S. ALSO AS TO “we know better what they’re thinking than they do”, SEE THIS FROM WIKIPEDIA [Team B]:

      (excerpts) Team B was a competitive analysis exercise commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1970s to analyze threats the Soviet Union posed to the security of the United States. . .
      . . . The Team B reports became the intellectual foundation for the idea of “the window of vulnerability” and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Ronald Reagan.[4]
      Some scholars and policy-makers, such as Anne Cahn of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, later criticized the Team B project’s findings.[5][6] . . .
      . . . According to Fred Kaplan, “In retrospect, the Team B report (which has since been declassified) turns out to have been wrong on nearly every point.[27]. . .
      . . . Team B came to the conclusion in their report[28] that the Soviets had or could develop an entirely new anti-submarine detection system that used a system that did not depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable by contemporary Western technology, even though no evidence existed for it or its deployment, other than money spent on research, and when the Western experts believed that such a system would be impossible. When the CIA argued that the economic chaos in the Soviet Union was hindering their ability to produce an air defense system, Team B countered by arguing that the Soviet Union was trying to deceive the American public and claimed that the Russian air defense system worked perfectly. Some members were even considering promoting a first strike policy against the U.S.S.R.[8][11][29]
      Team B also concluded that the Soviet Union did not adhere to the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, but rather believed it could win a nuclear war outright. Pipes — in his “Commentary” article — argued that CIA suffered from “mirror-imaging” (i.e., from assuming that the other side had to-and did-think and evaluate exactly the same way). . .

      SOURCE – link to en.wikipedia.org

      P.S. “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but facts will never sway us.” ~ Neocon Creed (This creed also works for Team B, Republicans, Fox News, Fundies, etc.)

    • DICKERSON3870 says:
      May 13, 2012 at 10:29 pm

      P.P.S. ALSO AS TO “we know better what they’re thinking than they do”, SEE: The Right’s False Prophet, By Kenneth B. McIntyre, The American Conservative, 5/10/12

      (excerpts) . . . In ‘Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America’ Paul Gottfried, the Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, offers an explanation of the Straussian phenomenon that is concise and compelling. . .
      . . . The second direction from which Gottfried approaches Strauss leads through an examination of the Straussian method and its products. Gottfried provides a critical account of the method and also notes the ahistorical, quasi-legendary, and often hagiographic character of the interpretations that the method produces. The Straussian method consists of two distinct doctrines, neither of which is particularly clear or convincing. First, Strauss asserts that understanding the work of a philosopher involves the reproduction of the author’s intention. Unfortunately, and as Gottfried argues, Strauss never explains what he means by “intention,” nor does he explain how one might reproduce an author’s intention. The second doctrine, however, renders the first irrelevant. Strauss argues that authentic philosophers hide their teaching from the casual reader and only initiates into the true philosophic art can decode the esoteric meaning of such texts. For Strauss and the Straussians, this is not an historical claim but a theoretical one, and it yields an interpretative strategy both naïve and paranoid.
      The results of the Straussian method read like they were written by the intellectual offspring of Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Bergen. It may seem difficult to distinguish between the oracular pronouncements and the intellectual ventriloquism, but that’s because there is no real distinction to be made. As Gottfried notes, there is uncanny similarity between the Straussian reading of texts and the postmodern deconstruction of language. The esoteric claims provide cover for Straussian interpretive preferences and shield against criticism from anyone outside the clique. . .

      ENTIRE BOOK REVIEW – link to theamericanconservative.com

  7. lysias says:
    May 9, 2012 at 3:15 pm

    The Hill: US-Israel ties reaffirmed in House vote (Apr. 9, 2012):

    The House on Wednesday approved legislation aimed at reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, in a unanimous vote that left no doubt where members of both parties stand on the issue.

    Members approved the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, H.R. 4133, in a 411-2 vote. One Republican and one Democrat voted “no,” while one Republican and eight Democrats voted “present.”

    Well, 411-2 isn’t quite unanimous, but it is nevertheless quite an impressive vote.

  8. lobewyper says:
    May 9, 2012 at 8:59 pm

    O.K., I’m going to try this again. Scheuer’s point is that UNLESS the US mends its ways (i.e., attacking Muslim countries, supporting repressive pro-US Muslim regimes (e.g., Saudis). supporting Israeli repression of Palestinians, etc., etc.), there will eventually be a major bloodbath in the course of which we will have to kill a lot of Muslims (including innnocents who often cannot be distinguished from asymmetrical combatants). He is convinced that the US is a target for Muslim radicals primarily of our foreign policies, and that they need to change, but won’t in time due mainly to our dependence on cheap oil and our being the Lobby’s servant. I don’t see him as deserving of all the criticism that has been levelled at him here. My $.02.

  9. clubroma says:
    May 10, 2012 at 3:36 am

    Scheuer is right when he talks about Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the US. I remember reading it many years ago and it may still be available on some site. Its only about 7 or 8 pages long but he mentions the Palestinian situation about 10 times.
    Its not just Al Queda that is inspired by the Palestinian situation. I think you’ll find that all the so-called ‘Islamic extremist groups’ use the treatment of the Palestinians to inspire and recruit membership.