Ethics

What the Hell Happened to Michael Scheuer?

By Ed Brayton

I really do wonder whether Michael Scheuer has been taken over by some sort of pod person version of himself. As Michael Heath noted in a comment the first time I posted a loony thing that Scheuer said on Fox News, Scheuer is probably the world's foremost expert on Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, and he has always been perfectly reasonable in his assessments and opinions.

This is a guy who argued against the Iraq war, saying that it would only strengthen the hand of Al Qaeda and help them recruit more terrorists. This is a guy who hammered Bush for his overly simplistic "they hate us for our freedom" nonsense and argued that the terrorists do, in fact, have many legitimate complaints about American actions abroad. He was never an ideologue at all, as far as I can tell. So what the hell explains this?

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on September 01, 2009 (boomark / email).