Bring back rendition! Arab spring has created 'intelligence disaster'

[Magda Hassan]

Arab spring has created 'intelligence disaster', warns former CIA boss
Michael Scheuer says rendition should be brought back as lack of intelligence has left UK and US unable to monitor militants

Charlotte Higgins
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 August 2011 12.26 BST

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA unit in charge of pursuing Osama bin Laden, said the Arab spring had 'delighted al-Qaida'. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
The Arab spring has "delighted al-Qaida" and caused "an intelligence disaster" for the US and Britain, the former head of the CIA unit in charge of pursuing Osama bin Laden has warned.

Speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival, Michael Scheuer said: "The help we were getting from the Egyptian intelligence service, less so from the Tunisians but certainly from the Libyans and Lebanese, has dried up either because of resentment at our governments stabbing their political leaders in the back, or because those who worked for the services have taken off in fear of being incarcerated or worse.

"The amount of work that has devolved on US and British services is enormous, and the result is blindness in our ability to watch what's going on among militants."

The Arab spring, he said, was "an intelligence disaster for the US and for Britain, and other European services".

Scheuer headed the Bin Laden unit at the CIA from 1996 to 1999, and worked as special adviser to its chief from 2001 to 2004. The author of a biography of Bin Laden, he now teaches on the peace and security affairs programme at the University of Georgetown.

He said: "The rendition programme must come back the people we have in custody now are pretty long in the tooth, in terms of the information they can provide in interrogations.

"The Arab spring has been a disaster for us in terms of intelligence gathering, and we now are blind both because of the Arab spring and because there is nothing with which to replace the rendition programme."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug...er-scheuer

[Jan Klimkowski]

Michael Scheuer seems to represent a particular hardcore viewpoint within the intelligence community. In old money, he might be called an "Arabist", but I suspect something far more sinister is at play.

Scheuer was, famously, the head of the CIA's "Bin Laden unit". Since Osama Bin Laden and The Base (Al Qaeda) are in large part a creation of American intelligence, Scheuer occupies an intriguingly ambiguous position.

In this light, consider the following:

In his second book, Imperial Hubris, a New York Times bestseller, Scheuer writes that the Islamist threat to the United States is rooted in "how easy it is for Muslims to see, hear, experience, and hate the six U.S. policies bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim:

U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall.
U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments."[20]
Scheuer contends that Al Qaeda is following a martial strategy that is more rational than it is given credit for among Western politicians and media. He cites Clausewitz's dictum that one must strike one's enemy's "center of gravity", and pairs it with an al Qaeda writer's assertion that "the American economy is the American center of gravity".[21]

In a videotape released around September 7, 2007, Osama bin Laden stated, "If you want to understand what's going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer."[4] The reference was to Scheuer's Imperial Hubris.

Meanwhile, consider his views on the nefarious influence of the Israel Lobby:

Scheuer has stated that the Mearsheimer and Walt paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is essentially correct. Israel, according to Scheuer, has engaged in one of the most successful campaigns to influence public opinion in the United States ever conducted by a foreign government. Scheuer said to NPR that "They [Mearsheimer and Walt] should be credited for the courage they have had to actually present a paper on the subject. I hope they move on and do the Saudi lobby, which is probably more dangerous to the United States than the Israeli lobby."[29]

In Marching Toward Hell, Scheuer laments "the war in Iraq that was instigated by U.S. citizen Israel-firsters and their evangelical Christian allies".[30] He continues,

Because both U.S. political parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Israeli government, there is no large-scale U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in the cards... If you doubt this, keep in mind the name Rahm Emanuel. Slated to be the president-elect's chief of staff, Mr. Emanuel has labored as a volunteer for AIPAC's various anti-U.S. causes, strove to ensure the defeat of anti-Iraq War Democratic congressional candidates in 2006, and in 1991, as a 32-year-old U.S. citizen, chose to serve with the Israeli Defense Forces rather than volunteer to fight for the United States in the war against Saddam's Iraq.[31]

I am not remotely surprized to find Scheuer calling for the return of Extraordinary Rendition. In truth, "rendition" is a euphemism for kidnap, torture and murder by western intelligence agencies subcontracting third world dictators to do the filthy deeds. And it has never gone away.

I am not surprized at Scheuer calling for its "return" because he was a major author of the programme all the way back when "Democratic liberal" Bill Clinton was in power. I'm sure "Democratic liberals" Obama and Hillary will listen favourably to such special pleading.

As a footnote, here's Scheuer on Libya:

Libyan insurgency

Scheuer has stated his objection to any involvement by the US in the Libyan insurgency, being particularly critical of the work of United States' UN representative Susan E. Rice, calling the whole affair "none of our business" and essentially a "recruiting tool for terrorists.".[36] His overall view being that the interests of US foreign policy are far better served by the current status quo, whereby the existing autocratic regimes are better able to suppress the threat he perceives from Al Qaida incursion than western style democratic systems. Sheuer believes that, irrespective of NATO ostensibly leading the bombing operations, "in the muslim world, this is Americans killing Muslims again, and it looks like it's for oil."[36]