Michael Scheuer - Laden Quotes

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Before the [1990 Iraqi] attack [on Kuwait], bin Laden angered Saudi authorities by making a public "prophesy... [that] Saddam was going to invade Saudi Arabia." Sa'd al-Faqih claims bin Laden also sent "secret confidential letters to the King" about the Iraqi threat; according to al-Faqih, "he [bin Laden] was giving talks about it in the mosques. He was giving speeches in the mosques and talking about the dangers of the Ba'ath... having ambitions to invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And then his prophesy was correct. And he was never respected or rewarded for that. Instead he was advised to stay in Jeddah; he was put in sort of house arrest.

Michael Scheuer
Bin Laden's long-standing support for the Palestinians against Israel also appears to have been learned at his father's knee.

Michael Scheuer
We know for certain that bin Laden was seeking CBRN [chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear] weapons... and that Iraq and Sudan have been cooperating with bin Laden on CBRN weapon acquisition and development.

Michael Scheuer
I don't consider Osama Bin Laden to be a terrorist. I consider him to be a resistance fighter.

Michael Scheuer
Bin Laden, of course, learned his military skills in Afghanistan, not on the Iran-Iraq border, and, as a result, his methodological approach to waging jihad is marked by a measured manner stressing patience, preparation, and professionalism.

Michael Scheuer
The data in the public domain suggest the truth about bin Laden's activities in Afghanistan is much closer to the picture of him as 'the great freedom fighter of the Islamic world than to the Western experts' description of him as an Islamic do-gooder or an immature, irrational youth.

Michael Scheuer
It's always been hard for me to understand how we say people who supports Osama Bin Laden or someone else like him – who are willing to give their lives to destroy the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia – how we can describe those people as people who hated freedom. It seems to me that their definition of freedom might be different than ours, but to oppose a dictatorship, one must want freedom in some kind of way.

Michael Scheuer
I wasn't in the room with the president and Mr. Tenet. But I can tell that you that the people who were working against Osama bin Laden were assured from the first day that much of the work we had done in the last decade would be undone by that war.

Michael Scheuer
I think the 9/11 Commission, report, for example is wrong. The 9/11 Commission report identifies bin Laden and his followers as takfiris, who kill Muslims if they don't agree with them. They're not takfiris. They're just very devout, severe Salafists and Wahhabis.

Michael Scheuer
He (Osama bin Laden) doesn't want to fight this war forever. A lot of people mistake him as someone who can't get along without fighting. But that's not clearly the case.

Michael Scheuer
There is information showing that in the 1993-1994 period bin Laden began to work with Sudan and Iraq to acquire a CBRN capability for al Qaeda.
Scheuer later retracted this statement

Michael Scheuer
Regarding Iraq, bin Laden, as noted, was in contact with Baghdad's intelligence service since at least 1994. He reportedly cooperated with it in the area of chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear [CBRN] weapons and may have trained some fighters in Iraq at camps run by Saddam's anti-Iran force, the Mujahedin al-Khalq.

Michael Scheuer
[Bin Laden has] already said publicly that you can have all the oil you want. I can't drink it. We're going to sell it to you at a marketplace.

Michael Scheuer
In 1993 Osama bin Laden began speaking in detail to Muslim and Western journalists about his beliefs, goals, and intentions, and began publishing commentaries on these matters in the media.... While bin Laden's words have not been a torrent, they are plentiful, carefully chosen, plainly spoken, and precise. He has set out the Muslim world's problems as he sees them; determined that they are caused by the Unites States; explained why they must be remedied; and outlined how he will try to do so. Seldom in America's history has an enemy laid out so clearly the basis for the war he is waging against it.

Michael Scheuer