Ack! Dunno if I believe it - but 
Osama Bin Laden has been granted religious approval to use a nuclear bomb against Americans, according to the CIA's former top Al Qaeda expert.
The former official, Michael Scheuer, tells CBS' "60 Minutes" on tomorrow's broadcast that Bin Laden was given written authority by a Saudi sheik.
The sheik "found that [Bin Laden] was perfectly within his rights" to use nukes.
"Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans," Scheuer says.
Scheuer, who resigned yesterday, was the head of the CIA unit charged with tracking Bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, and the previously anonymous author of two books critical of the West's response to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He's been tracking Bin Laden since the mid-1980s.
Scheuer tells "60 Minutes" that American leaders have made a mistake by characterizing Bin Laden as "a thug, a gangster" rather than a disciplined plotter of destruction.
"Until we respect him, sir, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary," he says. The Al Qaeda mastermind was involved in the original planning for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He also charged that former CIA Director George Tenet failed to provide the agency's Bin Laden unit with sufficient manpower.
In the interview, Scheuer says that even if Bin Laden had a nuclear weapon, he probably would not have used it before without the authority of the sheik.
Don Singleton
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/252390p-215993c.html
Osama Bin Laden has been granted religious approval to use a nuclear bomb against Americans, according to the CIA's former top Al Qaeda expert.
The former official, Michael Scheuer, tells CBS' "60 Minutes" on tomorrow's broadcast that Bin Laden was given written authority by a Saudi sheik.
The sheik "found that [Bin Laden] was perfectly within his rights" to use nukes.
"Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans," Scheuer says.
Scheuer, who resigned yesterday, was the head of the CIA unit charged with tracking Bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, and the previously anonymous author of two books critical of the West's response to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He's been tracking Bin Laden since the mid-1980s.
Scheuer tells "60 Minutes" that American leaders have made a mistake by characterizing Bin Laden as "a thug, a gangster" rather than a disciplined plotter of destruction.
"Until we respect him, sir, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary," he says. The Al Qaeda mastermind was involved in the original planning for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He also charged that former CIA Director George Tenet failed to provide the agency's Bin Laden unit with sufficient manpower.
In the interview, Scheuer says that even if Bin Laden had a nuclear weapon, he probably would not have used it before without the authority of the sheik.
Don Singleton
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/252390p-215993c.html
