Scheuer: Obama 'Doesn't Have a Clue' about Terror Threat to America

Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:11 PM

By: Jim Meyers

Eight years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. is still in "terrible shape" in the fight against terrorism, former CIA counterterrorism expert Michael Scheuer tells Newsmax.

Scheuer also said President Barack Obama "doesn't have a clue" about the realities of world terrorism.

Scheuer, whose latest book is "Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq," spent several years as head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit.

See Video: Former CIA Terror Expert Michael Scheuer talks about the dangerous policies the Obama administration are pursuing - Click Here Now

Newsmax.TV's Kathleen Walter asked Scheuer why the U.S. still has not captured bin Laden.

"I think we are doing all we can with the number of troops and intelligence officers we have committed in Afghanistan," he said.

"Very few of them have time anymore to go after Osama bin Laden because they're trying to keep [President Hamid] Karzai in power and trying to build a democracy and trying to fight an insurgency.

"Mister Bush never sent enough people to Afghanistan, and very clearly as the situation has gotten worse Mister Obama does not intend to send enough people either.

"The reason we don't have him I think is simply we don’t have enough troops on the ground to find him and he's living in a place that has the highest mountains on earth."

Walter asked if the U.S. is safer or more vulnerable eight years after the 9/11 attacks.

"I think we would be hard put to say we're much safer than we were in 2001," Scheuer responded.

"We still don’t have an idea of where our enemy is. We're clearly on the defensive in Afghanistan. And if you step back and take a bigger look at the world, there are terrorists now being produced in places where there were no insurgencies back in 2001 — Somalia, Yemen, Mindanao in the Philippines.

"We're still faced with a situation that I think neither party has come to grips with...

"I think we're in terrible shape right now. We have to remember that al-Qaida's war goals are to help lead us to bankruptcy, to spread out our military forces and our intelligence services, and to create dissension in politics here at home. They're succeeding on all three of those.

"The key thing any administration has to do is control our borders, to close them and then regulate the entry of people, to give U.S. law enforcement at all levels a chance to figure out who is in our country and who is entering it."

Asked what the U.S. should do to slow down the spread of terrorism, Scheuer said: "At some point we need to begin to consider applying more military force when the option is presented to us. Certainly in Afghanistan we have a wide scope for killing many more of the enemy than we are.

"We also have to look at our problems with policy. Our foreign policy is really an inducement, a motivation for the enemy."

At the top of the list in that regard "is not healthcare, it's energy," he added. "We need to do something about energy to be able to disassociate ourselves from the tyrannies that govern the Middle East."

Walter asked what credit the Bush administration deserves for the fact the U.S. has not suffered another devastating terrorist attack since 9/11.

"I think we owe the Bush administration a vote of thanks for doing they thought was best to do in America's interests," Scheuer said.

"I was a severe critic of what they did because they didn’t do enough, but I never had any doubt in my mind that they were really intent on defending America. I thought they did it inadequately but I thought they intended to do it.

"The current administration has undercut virtually everything Mister Bush established and used to fight terrorism, as insufficient as that was. Mister Obama has dismantled virtually all of it without replacing it with anything.

"Both Afghanistan and Iraq are producing well-trained people who are going to fight America or attack America's interests around the world. So it's a spreading phenomenon, not a constricting one.

"Mister Obama doesn't appear to have a clue about what the world is and how it works. He's surrounded himself with surrenderists left over from the Clinton administration.

"And I think he really is a man who doesn't have much interest in America. He appears to be more concerned with what the world thinks of him.

"My dad used to say, beware of men who like to show off in front of children. And I think the president's discussion with schoolchildren [on Tuesday] is a good example of a man to beware of."

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