One of the problems of not allowing the American people to read what bin Laden has said is that in October 2001 just after the war began in Afghanistan, he gave a speech that had two parts to it.
Michael ScheuerSo in a sense, that little war in the Levant had a horrendous effect in terms of the stability of countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, over the long term. Because once again, it proved to Muslims that their governments couldn't protect them and would side with the enemy.
Michael ScheuerThere is a direct correlation between what al Qaeda says and what it does. And the one thing that has been the gold standard of correlation has been bin Laden's 1995 - or was it 1996? - pledge that every attack is going to be more powerful than the last. If you go back to the first attack in Yemen in 1992 and chart it out, every attack has been more powerful, more destructive than the last one.
Michael ScheuerAny strong Muslim regime that threatens Israel, and we did. He said the Americans only want oil, and, of course, Iraq has the second-largest reserves. And he said that we will always replace God's law with manmade law. And finally that we intended to occupy and destroy Islamic sanctities. And I suspect that in our government, very few people knew that Iraq was the second-holiest place in Islam, after the Arabian Peninsula.
Michael ScheuerThe U.S. intelligence community is palsied by lawyers. When we were going to capture Osama bin Laden, for example, the lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden's safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him. We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair. They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard. The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community.
Michael Scheuer