Bin Laden Not 'Admirable'

Summary


Former CIA senior analyst Michael Scheuer offered little in the way of insight on the mentality of the nation's top intelligence agency. "I think without question we're losing the war on terror, sir," Mr. Scheuer said last Sunday on "Meet the Press." Fair enough, especially coming from one in the know. But this former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit, and anonymous author of "Imperial Hubris," a book that criticizes the administration's handling of the war, has some bizarre ideas that we hope don't become administration policy any time soon.

Top among Mr. Scheuer's reasons why Osama bin Laden considers the United States an enemy is our "unqualified support for Israel." The solution? "Perhaps being more insistent on some arrangement with the [Israeli] settlements." So bin Laden declares war against America in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was treating uber-terrorist Yasser Arafat as a legitimate statesman, and his grievance in 2004 is American support for Israel? Moreover, by Mr. Scheuer's reckoning, bin Laden is a "remarkable man, a great man in many ways," not to mention an "admirable man" because he "changed the course of history." On the latter point, it was the U.S. response to September 11 that altered history.

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Bin Laden Not 'Admirable'

Make no mistake, Mr. Scheuer is no apologist for bin Laden. He understand...

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