[Jaysun]

On CBS's "Early Show" Monday, the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit during the Clinton administration, Michael Scheuer, said the al-Qaida leader "is alive today" because Clinton and his top lieutenants refused to kill him. "It's just an incredible kind of situation," said Scheuer, "for the American people over the weekend to hear their former president mislead them."

Is this man, Michael Scheuer, credible? I know nothing of him.

[shankbear]

He was THE C.I.A. guy with boots on the ground.

Aside: Read The Looming Tower.

[digger48]

VERY credible!

[bagman]

I read his Through Our Enemies' Eyes (with some long subtitle), which was mainly written before 9/11/01 and was revised before publication after that. Scheuer used open information in writing the book which is an examination of the world from the viewpoint of al-Quaeda and Bin Laden. It's a good book, and I recommend it.

Imperial Hubris was written later, and, in it, Scheuer contradicts some of his points in Through Our Enemies' Eyes, claiming that he had gotten it wrong in the first book. Given that the second book is more of an attack on Bush, some skeptics suspect that facts in the first book got in the way of arguments in the second, so the facts had to be denied. Unfornately, I've forgotten what was at issue here. So, Scheuer has an agenda. I would rank him high above Richard Clarke, but then Clarke's reputation for veracity ranks only slightly higher than Clintons, IMHO.

[Sans-Culotte]

Is this man, Michael Scheuer, credible? I know nothing of him.

Based on this comment of his: "We're at war because of what we do in the Islamic world", I'd say not.