Michael Scheuer Watch #12: Expletive Deleted
11.09.2007 - 12:58 PMI had predicted that as our hero’s ideas and associations became better known, he would be compelled to move from the mainstream media to the far-out margins. Yesterday, as evidence that this shift was under way, I linked to a Scheuer rant on a website called The Jingoist (now only available here), adjacent to all sorts of other rants like “Israel: Perpetual Criminal, Perpetual Liar” and one detailing French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s hidden ties to the Israel’s Mossad.
My imputation of Scheuer’s guilt by association –– and there is such a thing as such guilt, if not in a court of law than in the realm of public opinion –– has evidently struck a nerve. On his website anti-war.com, Justin Raimondo, a self-appointed flack for our hero, has offered a post in which he emphatically argues that Scheuer has not moved to the margins. Scheuer, he says, wrote his rant not for The Jingoist but for his own website, and The Jingoist simply purloined it without permission.
Connecting the Dots is interested in constructing an accurate picture of our hero. But uncertainties abound. I do not know where Scheuer’s work first appeared, and I am not ready to take his or his flack’s word for anything, or take sides in a fight between The Jingoist and anti-war.com. Members of the 9/11 Commission have called into question our hero’s integrity. And our hero has also yet to clear up allegations (leveled by me) that he has prevaricated about when and why he was awarded a medal by the CIA.
But putting aside all such questions, and putting aside the fact that The Jingoist bills itself as a “partner site” of anti-war.com, and assuming for the sake of discussion that Justin Raimondo is right and that anti-war.com was the original home of Scheuer’s ranting, would this daisy chain of assumptions lead us to conclude that Scheuer has not strayed to the fringes and remained in the mainstream?
Readers can judge for themselves. For if The Jingoist is in Holocaust-denial territory, anti-war.com is not far behind. A good place to begin is the long series that anti-war.com has devoted to the many Israeli “art students” who in the run-up to September 11 came to our country ostensibly to sketch, draw, and paint, but were actually working deep under cover, spying on Americans.
Here is one entry by Justin Raimondo himself, entitled 9/11: What Did Israel Know –– And When Did They Tell Us?:
A secret government report (originating with the Drug Enforcement Agency) detailing the highly suspicious activities of these aspiring Israeli “artists” was . . . uncovered, and a series of stories appeared in the international media . . .
Those of us who identified the Israeli “art students” as part of a spy operation in the U.S. were absolutely correct, that the Israelis were not only conducting covert operations against U.S. government facilities but were also watching the hijackers very closely, and that some people will go to any lengths to avoid considering some very unpleasant and politically explosive possibilities . . .
Suffice to say here that the Israeli role in the events leading up to 9/11 is, at best, highly suspicious. Certainly the news that their agents were close neighbors of Mohammed Atta and an accomplice leads to some disturbing juxtapositions. Did the “art students” stand behind the terrorists in line at the local supermarket? Did they bump into each other in the street –– and what, pray tell, did these dedicated Al Qaeda cadre think of a group of Israelis living in such close proximity?
What happened to these art students? And how did they make their escape? Why did all the Jewish employees stay at home on the day that the Twin Towers were destroyed? Is anti-war.com fringe or mainstream? Connecting the Dots is eager to know.
Connecting the Dots also must briefly call attention to the language in which these would-be members of the mainstream media talk.
Yesterday, we saw Michael Scheuer write:
I forthrightly damn, and pray that God damns, any American –– Jew, Catholic, Evangelical, Irish, German, Hindu, hermaphrodite, thespian, or otherwise – who flogs the insane idea that American and Israeli interests are one and the same.
In Raimondo’s post today, he asks: “How dumb is Gabriel Schoenfeld?” and answers ”Pretty damned dumb.” As his argument unfolds, he speaks of my “dumb-ass peroration” and labels me “a vicious nut-bar.” All this appears in a post entitled Gabriel Schoenfeld is an Ass-hat.
A reader of Connecting the Dots, who happens to have a Ph.D. in child psychology, has already sent me a query and a comment: “What is an ‘ass hat’? My son’s favorite insult these days is ‘poop nose,’ which is far more evocative. The rhetorical level here seems to hover somewhere between second and third grade.”
A complete guide to other items in this Michael Scheuer Watch series can be found here.
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November 9th, 2007 at 1:33 PM
I’m unmoved by Raimondo’s assertion that the Scheuer posting appearing on Jingoist means nothing on the grounds that Jingoist appropriated it without permission.
Clearly the Jingoist blog guy felt that Scheuer’s post would make a fine companion to all the other twisted rants there, and of course it did. It speaks volumes about Scheuer’s views that his writing is welcomed into that arena, with or without his permission.
As to Raimondo’s example of Schoenfeld’s column appearing without permission in that oddball Centcom dot info site, the effect is the opposite; Schoenfeld’s work sticks out like a sore thumb because it is a measured, mature analysis that doesn’t make a fool of its author, while everything else on that site does exactly that.
Raimondo continues to indict himself and Scheuer while believing he is producing acquittal.
And his answers to the five questions at the end reveal more madness. It is just plain misleading to say that Scheuer is not an official or unofficial adviser to Paul. He has appeared with Paul on more than one occasion, including this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAt6Pf7jZjA
Raimondo’s juvenile spew of insults adds nothing to his case, but helps solidify my confidence that he is simply not to be taken seriously.
Dave in Texas
http://davogrande.blogspot.com
November 10th, 2007 at 10:33 AM
What puzzles me is what the Holocaust and “Holocaust-denial” has anything to do with this issue. To me, it is childish and puerile.
Why is any debate on American domestic and foreign policy tied to the Holocaust and Holocaust denial? I do not see the connection.
The “Holocaust” is a Greek term which originally meant burnt offering in sacrifice. It gained intellectual prominence when Raul Hilberg, an Austrian Jew himself, published a book entitled The Destruction of European Jewry in 1961. Since then, the subject of “Holocaust studies” has flourished. But why focus on the plight of Jews only. That is racist and inhuman and inhumane. Over 50 million people, all non-Jews, died in World War II. Why are we focused out the Jews only?
This focus on the Holocaust shows that there are hidden agendas and motives at work here.
What you appear to be saying is that if you do not accept the Jewish version or “narrative” of history, you are somehow suspect and amoral? But I don’t follow the logic there. Why does everyone have to have the Jewish narrative of World War II shoved down their throats?
Why can’t we think critically and openly?
Neocons supported the Bosnian Muslims and Albanian Muslims in the Balkans and they both had Nazi Waffen SS Divisions in World War II that murdered Jews and non-Jews as well. Bosnian Muslims and Albanian Muslims (neocons called them “Kosovars”) murdered Jews during your Holocaust! Why can’t the neocons understand this. Neocons are in self-denial and repress reality.
Neocons have supported the Iraqi War which researchers have found has resulted in a Muslim Genocide or Holocaust. Why isn’t this Holocaust of Muslims of any concern to neocons? Over a million Muslims are alleged to have died because of neocon warmongering. Why are neocons only concerned when Jews are the victims? Why so racist and self-centered a focus?
I think we have to get away from the Jew baiting tactics of the neocons and focus on principles. Gabriel Schoenfeld is too self-obsessed with Jews and Jewishness to even notice any of the wider issues involved here. Can you please look at the issues and get away from the ad hominem focus.
November 10th, 2007 at 11:59 AM
Gabriel Schoenfeld: I hope you are having as much fun composing the Scheuer Watch posts as I am having reading them. Great work. On a serious note, however, your post at Powerline explaining what this all means is disturbing. How does the person on whom you have trained your spotlight rise to such an important position of responsibility and power in our national defense and intelligence systems and how many more of his type have entrenched themselves in similar positions at those bureaucracies?
I know Sommerset believes he is asking deeply probing questions in his post. I suggest he scamper back to The Jingoist or antiwar.com to start a discussion. I am sure he will be pleased with the responses he gets.
November 11th, 2007 at 5:48 PM
Sommerset said–
“Schoenfeld is too self-obsessed with Jews and Jewishness to even notice any of the wider issues involved here. Can you please look at the issues and get away from the ad hominem focus.”
IF anyone’s obsessed with Jews here, it’s Scheuer.
“Neocons have supported the Iraqi War which researchers have found has resulted in a Muslim Genocide or Holocaust. ”
What researchers? What genocide? If any one group is most responsible for dead Iraqis, it’s Al Qaeda. That’s why the surge is working; locals are sick of being murdered by Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists, the prime perpetrators of any holocaust-like activity I can find in my newspapers.
“Over a million Muslims are alleged to have died because of neocon warmongering.”
An allegation that is utter nonsense, unsupported by any documents or substantiated news reports– and that’s just the figure, let alone the part about the cons and neos and war and mongering.
“Why are neocons only concerned when Jews are the victims?”
At least he agrees that sometimes Jews are victims. That’s probably better than you’ll get from Michael Scheuer.
Dave in Texas
http://davogrande.blogspot.com
November 11th, 2007 at 7:41 PM
With the release of World War IV, Podhoretz placed the Bush Doctrine into bite sized mouthfuls and I began to see the greatness in our President’s vision…though I saw his plank of spreading Democracy as woefully naive and impractical. Heck, Lebanon hasn’t had an official Census since 1932, and the likes of Saudi Arabia fix the result of their census data to guarantee an improper redistribution of oil Nationalization profits…I turned to Walid Phares, whose work Future Jihad is a testament to his years of dedication to a craft and imagination. Yet, though both of these men created works that resonated with reason, the Democracy = Freedom plank just seemed pie in the sky and for some reason both of these scholars predicted a (40 year tribulation styled) Long War against Islmanist extremist jihadist fascismo. And then, blam Walid Phares’ new book is on the very topic of Jihad against Democracy and a seeming leap of faith into the land of individual rights and votes. His work leads the conscious reader to Emerson’s “Jihad Inc.” and the blinders simply begin to fall away from the tide and onslaught we face.
Few if any people in the media or academia suggest that we annihilate the enemy, everyone speaks of fighting this enemy as seeking to Win the Peace rather than Win the War. Watching the Media, you’d think the enemy has overrun our forward bases and holds hostage the quarter of a million men seeking to establish Democracy and Freedom for the people in troubled conflict zones who never wanted or asked for the gift (prefering to live in squalor and ‘neath the heal of dictators to escape the torment of American Imperialism) and would rather we just disappeared from the planet, being the cause of every travesty and the source blood of every evil on the planet and the planet’s very death through Global Warming…a procession of historic failure and brutal debauchery of foreign and domestic policy that should force every American to kneel five times a day and whip themselves with a stripped US Flag, whose ends tipped with Cowboy styled spurs would sufficiently bloodlet us to the point of a sacrificial lamb and would perhaps grant us the third rung of hell rather than the greater pits reserved for the likes of our leaders. Now, I am not saying the news leans left, I am saying that it is spiraling downward into guilt mongering…and guilt mongering leads to one thing, self punishment for the common good.
And in walks Michael Scheuer to CNN and he is dynamic and speaking of jihad without blanching, he is speaking of a war with Muslims and the failure of policies and that we should be taking the fight to the insurgents…which is a refreshing shift from the tuck tail and run crowd, and he seems to know what he is talking about, he is an ex-spook and that means he is in the know of at least the private not-to-be-known classifiables. And he is “the” expert of Alec Station and knows everything there is to know about bin Laden, Wright’s The Looming Tower paints him as a tireless, sleepless researcher, dedicated to the point of breaking to the pinpoining of the 9/11 mastermind.
And then, on National Airwaves, Scheuer spouts that we could have stopped 9/11 and killed Osama bin Laden, and then he blames the Clinton Presidency for being week and you can almost hear all of the necks of the Republican Right kneejerk snapping to pay attention across the land, rivoted by this bearded foaming four-eyed mystery of spookdom. That is why he has grown to prominence in the Media, he blamed Clinton for something, and at the same time he said we should take the fight to the Jihadi scum…and that is what people want to hear in America. We could care less about rules and Freedom for those who are oppressed, that is sometime in the distant future yet…all Americans want is the satisfaction of killing every single Terrorist we can so that we can make our world a better place…it is simple, it is carnal, it is revenge and it is justice. We are not concerned in America with the little details.
The Media smacks us around with US Soldier body counts and devastation even though it is small and we have won two wars with less loss of life than a US Civil War afternoon skirmish. But every American is wondering how many of the enemy we have killed. We want to see the body counts. We want to see the devastation we have wreaked. We want to see the faces and smiles of the children we have liberated. We want to cry in jubilation over how our boys are heroically driving our wedge of anger between the Muslims and the extremists. But then, the Media drives these thoughts asunder and forces us to question the righteousness of our cause and forces us to determine why we were attacked and then Blam we all realize that a spate of books has been written about a subject that has taught us all the word “Spate”…and we are woefully behind, so we forget about trying to catch up, sink back into our party line dogma, learn what our senators and governors and top line thinkers are saying on the subject, and we parrot the half learned rhetoric to our friends showing that we are in the know.
We don’t know who Podhoretz is, we can’t tell you who Steyn is, who is this Phares guy that Fox is pushing now? We have no concept of their being two sides to the Republican coin, and we don’t understand how our Congress is not working together in a time of war. There it is, the pulse of the nation…we are as a nation ignorant of the wheres and whys and whos of the war that should be called a liberation effort. We are watching multiplying chaos with no contextual backing for any of the theories we hold, and lacking sorely on historical truth and understanding of the last 60 years, since our education process stops in highschool at around World War II.
So, while the world has moved on, while Israel was formed, while the CIA was formed, while the Korean War was fought, while the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Era went by, while the Iran Contra and Oil Embargo and the Israeli destruction of Arab Armies flew by, and while we took stabs at Islamic Terror here and there with the first Bush’s Gulf War and a few dozen Tomahawks in Clinton’s go-round that were the inevitable fallout of the Cold War’s end and Communism’s fall — while all of this was going on the Power of the United states grew, the size of Palestinian Refugee camps grew…and too the Media grew and grew and grew in prominence, vastness, carriers, publishing houses and print media outlets and Freedom of thought and exploration, and a new pioneering spirit rose as Al Gore invented the internet to couple with an ever growing Left leaning Tenured high priest class of Professors, causing a trickle down leftward bent on the educational prism and spectrum of light and lo, the nation polarizes over the course of thirty years of what each side calls disinformation, not knowing who to blame.
Scheuer’s success is not a mystery, it was perfectly timed…it was a fresh voice in the black hole of bin Laden and al Qaeda…it was a first hand account of the Enemy. And here was a rabid guy saying we should ramp up and kill all of the insurgents right when our government was considering a troop surge…he must be right, it is time for a major offensive. And then, everyone bought his book and read the first twenty or thirty pages and put it on their bookshelf saying to themselves, “Ya know, this guy is right,” without ever considering the entirety of the book’s value.
Welcome to soundbite valley, that place nestled cozily between The Mountain of Reason and the Mountain of Freedom.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:41 AM
Gary Johnson writes–
“”And then, everyone bought his book and read the first twenty or thirty pages and put it on their bookshelf saying to themselves, “Ya know, this guy is right,” without ever considering the entirety of the book’s value.”"
IN a publisher’s weekly article from March 2005–
(http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA512903.html)
– self-reported publishers’ sales figures show that Scheuer’s book sold less than one third as many copies as Tommy Franks’ “American Soldier” and less than half as many as Suzanne Somers’ “The Sexy Years”. He was outsold by Sean Hannity, Dr. Phil, several cookbooks and a guy who teaches us how to dress your family in corduroy and denim.
By March 2005 Scheuer’s book at sold just over 200,000 copies, about one fifth of one percent of the population of the United States.
I submit, Mr. Johnson, that the ‘entirety of the book’s value’ has been well considered by the American public. And given Scheuer wrote the book as part of a planned media assault on Bush during the 2004 election season, its ineffectiveness as a changer of public opinion is further underlined. Bush won the election by a margin of popular votes equal to more than fifteen times the number of sold copies of ‘Imperial Hubris’.
For every copy sold, Bush received almost 300 votes.
Hubris, indeed.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:19 PM
Dave,
Why would you submit that 1/5 of 1% or (1/15 of 1% as your case may be) allows that the ‘entirety of the book’s value’ has been well considered by the American public? Regardless of when he wrote the book, for what purpose…he has the words “Best Seller” headlining his paper back no longer anonymous publication of the same regardless of how high on the list it was. But I spoke not one wit of the election or the sway of public minds…I spoke of attention and notice on CNN and FOX as a “different” sort of expert. Perhaps it was a part of a media blitz planned by the evil minds of the Open Society Institute… Perhaps it was just a guy who wanted to rant and rave over how he was treated while trying to get someone’s attention at the CIA and WhiteHouse to no avail while working in the ranks. Regardless, the analyst is obviously anti-US policies. And anyone who wanted to agree with that would shrug and add it into their soundbite quiver of Fact - in both camps. Scheuer was not a political tool or sway in the beginning nor will he be in the end, because his efforts were squarely against ALL US Foreign Policy and his cantankerous gyrations.
The interesting thing to me, reading the book today, is that his understanding of the Pashtun tribal realities allowed him to pretty much predict perfectly the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, if for the wrong reasons…simply because he correctly analyzed the situation that has led to the Pakistan state of emergency, Bhutto return and jihadi suicide bomber as well as the release of 2,500 Al Qaeda and Taleban prisoners to go free back into the FATA region of tribal frontierism that is a No-Go Zone for American troops and a refitting zone for the enemy in our ally’s back yard. His understanding of Pakistan as allowing the Taleban Pashtun and Islamist regrouping in the frontierzone as a matter of anti-India policies will be an eye opener for most readers.
What came as a surprise to me was the fact that we have 40 or 50 FBI bureau offices overseas to focus on maintaining US law standards while bringing terrorists to justice one at a time. He is correct, we should have an Anti-Insurgent policy rather than a catch em before they strike attitude…and that forward activity will be bloody.
His attitudes on Democracy building are not well-formed but I agree that this is the weak link in the Neoconservative platform of war and peace. His anti-Israeli bias leaks through in this arena, while his Catholicism lends a sympathetic eye to bin Laden’s religion and jihad. And these two biases, his anti-Israel slanting and his Catholic refusal to admit that bin Laden is threatening US Annihilation “for our value and beliefs and for who we are” rather than “for Us Policy” because he is conducting a just War, by the rules of just war theory in the zealot religious dog club handbook.
If you would like to pull apart my words feel free, but if you look too hard, I am afraid you will find that I misspelled the word “Weak” and if you look closer, I misspelled the word “There”…both in an important moment of clarification.
As to the quote you ripped from the context of my comments without really remarking on my opinion, using them instead as a soundboard for your own…perhaps I should have written, “And then, everyone THAT bought the book, PROBABLY JUST read twenty or thirty pages, SHRUGGED, and PLACED it on their bookshelves saying, ‘Ya know, this guy is right’ without ever considering the entirety of the book’s ANTI-US POLICY AND PRO-PALESTINIAN JUSTIFICATIONS FOR ITS CONCLUSIONS.”
Perhaps that would have made my argument clearer. I hope you realized after reading my post that I was not pro-Scheuer by any stretch of the imagination…however, what I am for is a literate population that has a sense of when it is being misled on a soundbite freeforall on Television, and that those who lead the way on TV are there for a specific agenda, whether it is their own or the networks’
November 12th, 2007 at 10:48 PM
Except for the fact that the long suppressed IG report basically shreds Scheur’s claims of an aggressive and effective effort against AQ. Cofer Black did his part as did Jeff O’Connell, the
one excoriated by the Jersey girls for not releasing Al Midhar and Al Hamzi’s name to the FBI
(would have probably been a violation of the precious Gorelick memo). The TRODPINT and
JAWBREAKER teams led by Shroen and Berntsen did what they could; but one recalls that
Schroen was responsible for recruiting the likes of Atta Mohammed and Hazrat Ali; who were
the ones whose troops let Bin Laden get away. The mountain passes near Tora Bora are not
as clearcut as Scheur lets on. They were the same pathway that Charles Allen, latest historian of Deobandi and Wahhabi influence on the British Raj points out; they were the site
of a major British defeat in the Afghan Wars. Scheur’s study of the Bin Laden/Wahhabi milieu
seems to altered his perceptions to a negative degree as much as Angleton’s studies of the
failures of the Trust and his experiences with Philby; seems to have deranged his perspective. His research into the life of Loring Christie didn’t help him in this regard. An ironic sidenote; “Hubris” makes much of inadvertent leaks of classified information to Woodward, Pincus, Gertz et al; in order to promote certain political agendas.