Hair On Fire

Here's the latest example of CIA logic:

Michael Scheuer, a 22 year CIA veteran and Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Unit in the Clinton years, issues a warning. He has considered a series of statements issued by Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri over the past few years and concluded that they constitute "a cycle of statements warning Americans, and preparing the Muslim world, for an al-Qaeda attack more severe than 9/11."

That cycle, he argues, is now completed and so a massive al Qaeda attack on the US might be imminent. He then links this warning to testimony by Porter Goss before Congress to the effect that it is possible that Soviet nuclear material might have found its way into al Qaeda's hands. The implication is obvious: Mr. Scheuer is warning us that a nuclear attack on the US is imminent. Read the whole thing here.

This is what happens when you stare into the abyss too long.

The points in his logic train are all highly questionable.

1) it may be possible that Usama bin Laden was concerned by criticism from some Islamic clerics that he may have erred on 9/11 by not giving the US adequate warning to change its ways.

2) it may be that some of the statements issued by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri over the past three years constituted a response to that criticism so as to avoid future clerical criticism.

3) subsequent statement that cannot be linked to this conjectural atonement cycle might simply signal that the final warning has been issued and no further ones are required.

4) this absence of specific warnings may possibly be significant because none of the earlier al Qaeda attacks were preceded by specific warnings.

5) the fact that not all Soviet nuclear material can be accounted for means that it is possible that some of it might be in the possession of al Qaeda. Certainly we cannot totally exclude that possibility.

Put them all together and what do you have? A hypothesized series of unsubstantiated conjectures, that's what you have. Certainly not anything upon which to base positive action. Is this the kind of product the terrorism experts were feeding the White House for the past decade and more? Is this the kind of thing that set peoples' "hair on fire"? I hope not, but Mr. Scheuer's former high position and the current quality of his analysis lead me to fear that this was the case.