It is hardly surprising that those who were supposed to be working for Canadian interests were actually working for US interests. The fact that our two interests might conflict or diverge doesn't come into the picture nor does the fact that the Canadian public had no idea that our public servants were serving as spies for a foreign country. There is no public right to know things like that. Even when it should be obvious that our present mission in Afghanistan is actually as a junior partner in US imperialism spreading the pain through NATO this never comes up. It is off the radar of the mainstream press. This is from the Globe and Mail.
Canada's man in Tehran was a CIA spy
Former Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The diplomat praised for sheltering Americans during the Iranian Revolution tells The Globe he was made 'de facto CIA station chief' in a secret deal between a U.S. president and prime minister Joe Clark
• Michael Valpy
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
.Ken Taylor, the Canadian diplomat celebrated 30 years ago for hiding U.S. embassy personnel during the Iranian revolution, actively spied for the Americans and helped them plan an armed incursion into the country.
Mr. Taylor, ambassador in Iran from 1977 to 1980, became “the de facto CIA station chief” in Tehran after the U.S. embassy was seized by students on Nov. 4, 1979, and 63 Americans, including the four-member Central Intelligence Agency contingent, were taken hostage.
Had his espionage been discovered, Mr. Taylor told The Globe and Mail in an interview this week, “the Iranians wouldn't have tolerated it. And the consequences may have been severe.”
His intelligence-gathering activities were kept secret by agreement between the Canadian and the U.S. governments, although his role in sheltering six Americans and helping to spirit them out of Iran was later made public, winning him and the Canadian government widespread U.S. gratitude.
Trent University historian Robert Wright, author of Our Man in Tehran , a new account of the incident released today, strongly implies that then-prime-minister Joe Clark insisted Mr. Taylor's spying be kept quiet, fearing a negative political fallout if the Canadian public learned that one of its envoys was a U.S. spook.
Mr. Taylor himself said he never expected the story to come out. “It had been under wraps for 30 years, and my assumption was that it would be for another 30 years. I didn't expect to be here to talk about it.”
The phrase “de facto CIA station chief” appears in Prof. Wright's book, the manuscript of which Mr. Taylor saw and approved in advance of publication.
The request that he provide “aggressive intelligence” for the Americans was made personally by U.S. president Jimmy Carter to Mr. Clark, likely in a telephone conversation on Nov. 30, 1979, according to Prof. Wright.
Mr. Clark gave his approval, and informed his foreign minister, Flora MacDonald, who passed the request on to Mr. Taylor. He instantly agreed.
“I saw this [the hostage-taking] as something that wasn't right,” Mr. Taylor said. “Anything in a modest way that I could contribute … looking for some sort of solution to this, I was quite prepared to do. I felt strongly about it. And I felt we could get away with it. They weren't going to catch us.”
From that point on, what amounted to the U.S. intelligence operation in Iran was run by Mr. Taylor from the Canadian embassy. The daily information he sent out was seen by only two officials at what was then the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa – Louis Delvoie, director of the intelligence analysis division, and Pat Black, assistant undersecretary for security and intelligence.
They showed the cables to Mr. Clark and Ms. MacDonald before passing them on to the U.S. ambassador in Ottawa, Kenneth Curtis, who in turned forwarded them to Washington.
What precisely Mr. Taylor was doing needs careful definition. In reality, he was managing a Canadian, not a U.S., intelligence station, which the Americans – because they had no network of their own after their embassy was seized – wanted to join.
.
.
The first CIA agent sent into Iran after the hostage-taking was rejected by Mr. Taylor as unsuitable. He left the country. The second agent sent in, code-named “Bob,” won Mr. Taylor's approval and thereafter operated out of the Canadian embassy.
Mr. Delvoie had the job of insulating Mr. Taylor from interference from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Thus, Mr. Taylor on his own managed Bob, and all of Bob's reports were sent to his Langley spymasters through Mr. Taylor. He was in charge.
The ambassador's chief accomplice was Jim Edward, head of security at the Canadian embassy. He, like Mr. Taylor, was given the choice of whether to spy for the Americans and, like Mr. Taylor, readily accepted.
He became a clandestine operative assigned by the ambassador to snoop for military intelligence while mingling inconspicuously with crowds of Iranians outside the U.S. embassy – an unlikely mission for the fair-haired, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered, six-foot-tall Canadian Forces sergeant.
The two men – at times in collaboration with Bob – assessed potential helicopter landing sites, arranged for trucks to be garaged at a secret location in Tehran and analyzed other logistics in preparation for a commando raid, dubbed Operation Eagle Claw, to free the hostages held at the embassy.
Sgt. Edward's specific job was to report on the number of guards at the embassy, how they were armed and when they changed shifts, ascertain where specifically the hostages were being held and track the daily movement of people and goods in and out of the compound – particularly the inward passage of foodstuffs and outward movement of waste, which allowed Mr. Taylor to calculate the hostages' daily caloric intake and assess their general health.
In conversation with The Globe this week, Mr. Taylor said he felt confident taking on the U.S. intelligence enterprise because Iran at the time was in chaos and the risk was minimal (although Sgt. Edward and his Iranian girlfriend Layla at one point were detained and questioned for five hours by Revolutionary Guards).
Mr. Taylor also said he was sure he could have got the “houseguests” – the six Americans sheltered in his and embassy immigration counsellor John Sheardown's residences – out of Iran without U.S. help, but the Americans didn't want the Canadians to move alone.
What frustrated Mr. Taylor and Ottawa was that the Americans wouldn't stay focused on the houseguests, although there was evidence that The New York Times and Jean Pelletier, Washington correspondent for Montreal's La Presse, had got wind of their presence in Canadian hideouts.
Ms. MacDonald decided to press her U.S. counterpart, secretary of state Cyrus Vance, to do something, providing a fascinating footnote to Canadian political history: the details of why she wasn't in Parliament on Dec. 13, 1979, for the vote that felled Mr. Clark's minority government.
She was in Brussels for a NATO ministers meeting. The meeting ended but Ms. MacDonald took advantage of being in the same city as Mr. Vance to seek a meeting with him. Face to face, she told him the Canadians would put the houseguests “on donkeys and send them across the border” if the Americans didn't move.
She then missed her flight across the Atlantic, and missed the vote.
The CIA working with Mr. Taylor arranged for the houseguests, using Canadian passports, to “exfiltrate” Tehran on a flight to Zurich on Jan. 27, 1980. Mr. Taylor then closed the embassy and left with his staff.
The last of the U.S. embassy hostages were not released until Mr. Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1981 – 444 days after the embassy had been overrun.
Prof. Wright started working on a book about the hostage incident at the suggestion of his editor at HarperCollins Canada who noted that the 30th anniversary was approaching.
To his surprise, Mr. Taylor said he was telephoned by a senior spokesman at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Rodney Moore, and asked whether he wanted to participate in the project
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Friday, January 4, 2008
Intelligence, Ideology and Empire
This is from James Laxer's blog. His postings are not that frequent but are usually quite interesting. Other adventures in Central America include the defeating of the Sandanistas with the help of the Contras and also defeating rebels in El Salvador.
The CIA has helped along the "revolutions" in some former Soviet Republics such as Georgia and the Ukraine. Not mentioned are CIA campaigns against the Soviets in Afghanistan which were successful at the time but the jihadists have now turned against the US in the worst case of blowback in all time.
I suppose there has always been some pressure upon the CIA to deliver what the US administration wants but that pressure was upped tremendously during the younger Bush administration. Indeed, so dissatisfied was Cheney with the CIA that he formed his own special group to cherry pick intelligence.
I doubt that the US will be driven out of Iraq as they were out of Vietnam. The Iraq govt. will likely remain under strong US influence if not control. Even if most troops are withdrawn the US embassy and some bases will remain indefinitely.
Intelligence, Ideology and Empire
Those who wield power in the inner realms of the American state and in the elite circles of the American political class have greater access to information and raw intelligence than any comparable cohort of rulers in human history. What they lack, though, is judgment and perspective, and that renders all the mountains of information at their disposal next to useless.
Gathering intelligence, the job of the Central Intelligence Agency, along with the clandestine missions of the CIA, have been mainstays of American global power since the Second World War, when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) preceded the CIA in the brave new world of extending American power through a host of dirty tricks.
New York Times writer Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA was one of the most important books of 2007. Weiner relates the story of the establishment of the CIA and the six decades of its history.
As the title implies, it has mostly been a history of failure, and regularly of catastrophic failure, from the viewpoint of the managers of the American state. As it turned out, the CIA’s clandestine operations often undermined the agency’s ability to gather reliable intelligence.
Some of the spectacular pratfalls of American intelligence are well known, for instance, the myriad attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro with explosives and poisons and if these didn’t work, American spooks considered deploying a powder that would cause the Cuban leader’s beard to fall out, the theory being that this would undermine his standing with the Cuban people.
Over the course of the Cold War, the CIA dispatched hundreds of its agents to the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and other Communist countries, often to their deaths, and almost always with nothing to show for these efforts in terms of intelligence or successful subversion.
The agency did have its major triumphs, among them the sponsoring of the 1953 coup in Iran that removed the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadeq that had been dedicated to wresting control of Iranian oil from British and American petroleum companies. What followed was the repressive regime of the Shah with its torture chambers, imprisonment of political opponents, and policies tailor made to suit Washington and London. The long run consequence of the coup was the permanent distrust of America by Iranians, a factor in the current relationship between the U.S. and Iran.
In 1954, the CIA helped turn out the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz, playing a pivotal role in generating violent struggles that consumed the lives of two hundred thousand people. As in Iran, the U.S. role in the overthrow of the Arbenz government has heightened anti-Americanism across Latin America over the past half century. The CIA’s close working relationship with the Pinochet regime following its seizure of power in Chile on September 11, 1973 (in Latin America, September 11 has its own meaning) and the death of democratically elected Salvador Allende, have contributed to antagonistic feelings toward the U.S. in South America.
Western Europeans have long known and resented the fact that the CIA pumped millions of dollars into buying politicians and election outcomes in Italy and other Western European countries during the post war decades.
In addition to clandestine ops that failed or those that succeeded with long-term negative consequences for the U.S., there have been spectacular intelligence failures. The CIA told the White House, on the eve of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, that the Soviets would not invade and they told the administration of George Bush the Elder in July1990 that Saddam Hussein would not send his armed forces into Kuwait.
When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made his notorious appearance at the United Nations on February 5, 2005---just weeks before the invasion of Iraq---to insist that the U.S. had hard evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, CIA director George Tenet stood at his shoulder, silently bestowing the agency’s imprimatur on the Bush administration’s claim that action was needed. In this instance, the White House exerted immense pressure on the CIA to unearth evidence that would support the case for invasion.
In early December 2007, all sixteen U.S. intelligence services, including the CIA, issued an assessment that concluded that Iran had ceased its program to develop nuclear weapons in 2003. This time the intelligence services were releasing a finding that clashed directly with the case the Bush administration had been developing that if Iran built nukes, war could be the result. The response from the White House was barely controlled fury. Administration spokespersons insisted that the finding could be wrong and that America must not let down its guard. Apparently the spooks, having been badly burned in Iraq, were not prepared to do the Bush administration’s bidding in Iran. With only a year to go before a presidential election, infighting involving the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies had reached a new pitch.
What’s wrong with American intelligence? With all its toys, money and training, why has the track record of the CIA been so poor from the standpoint of U.S. policymakers?
Part of the answer has to do with the clash between the needs of those collecting intelligence and those engaged in clandestine ops.
There is a larger answer, though. From the very beginning, the rules of engagement of the CIA have made it clear that the United States government has no respect for the sovereign authority and the rights of other countries, and this includes democratic countries and close American allies. Buying politicians, helping fix elections, seizing captives to torture in secret CIA prisons, and assassinating foreign leaders have been normal operating practice from Day One. It’s not that the U.S. is the only nation in the world to engage in such practices, but the glaring contradiction between these methods and the insistence of American leaders that their country stands for freedom, human rights and self-determination for all peoples, has soured much of humanity on America.
Finally, there is the imperial mindset which has doomed the rulers of empires throughout history, from the pharaohs of Egypt, the emperors of Rome, the viceroys of the British Raj to the best and the brightest in Washington. Those who imagine themselves to have a right to rule others, because they believe they have a superior culture or because they have a bigger economy or a stronger military, have never learned how to understand those they dominate. Even if the next U.S. president is considerably brighter than the present occupant of the White House---how could he or she not be---efforts of the new administration to fix the problems of U.S. intelligence agencies are likely to falter for that oldest of reasons. The Americans, like the rulers of the great powers that preceded theirs, cannot understand that peoples everywhere want to run their own affairs. That’s why the American invaders were not showered with garlands when they invaded Iraq, and it’s for that reason that they are being driven out of that country just as an earlier generation of Americans was driven out of Vietnam.
The CIA has helped along the "revolutions" in some former Soviet Republics such as Georgia and the Ukraine. Not mentioned are CIA campaigns against the Soviets in Afghanistan which were successful at the time but the jihadists have now turned against the US in the worst case of blowback in all time.
I suppose there has always been some pressure upon the CIA to deliver what the US administration wants but that pressure was upped tremendously during the younger Bush administration. Indeed, so dissatisfied was Cheney with the CIA that he formed his own special group to cherry pick intelligence.
I doubt that the US will be driven out of Iraq as they were out of Vietnam. The Iraq govt. will likely remain under strong US influence if not control. Even if most troops are withdrawn the US embassy and some bases will remain indefinitely.
Intelligence, Ideology and Empire
Those who wield power in the inner realms of the American state and in the elite circles of the American political class have greater access to information and raw intelligence than any comparable cohort of rulers in human history. What they lack, though, is judgment and perspective, and that renders all the mountains of information at their disposal next to useless.
Gathering intelligence, the job of the Central Intelligence Agency, along with the clandestine missions of the CIA, have been mainstays of American global power since the Second World War, when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) preceded the CIA in the brave new world of extending American power through a host of dirty tricks.
New York Times writer Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA was one of the most important books of 2007. Weiner relates the story of the establishment of the CIA and the six decades of its history.
As the title implies, it has mostly been a history of failure, and regularly of catastrophic failure, from the viewpoint of the managers of the American state. As it turned out, the CIA’s clandestine operations often undermined the agency’s ability to gather reliable intelligence.
Some of the spectacular pratfalls of American intelligence are well known, for instance, the myriad attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro with explosives and poisons and if these didn’t work, American spooks considered deploying a powder that would cause the Cuban leader’s beard to fall out, the theory being that this would undermine his standing with the Cuban people.
Over the course of the Cold War, the CIA dispatched hundreds of its agents to the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and other Communist countries, often to their deaths, and almost always with nothing to show for these efforts in terms of intelligence or successful subversion.
The agency did have its major triumphs, among them the sponsoring of the 1953 coup in Iran that removed the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadeq that had been dedicated to wresting control of Iranian oil from British and American petroleum companies. What followed was the repressive regime of the Shah with its torture chambers, imprisonment of political opponents, and policies tailor made to suit Washington and London. The long run consequence of the coup was the permanent distrust of America by Iranians, a factor in the current relationship between the U.S. and Iran.
In 1954, the CIA helped turn out the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz, playing a pivotal role in generating violent struggles that consumed the lives of two hundred thousand people. As in Iran, the U.S. role in the overthrow of the Arbenz government has heightened anti-Americanism across Latin America over the past half century. The CIA’s close working relationship with the Pinochet regime following its seizure of power in Chile on September 11, 1973 (in Latin America, September 11 has its own meaning) and the death of democratically elected Salvador Allende, have contributed to antagonistic feelings toward the U.S. in South America.
Western Europeans have long known and resented the fact that the CIA pumped millions of dollars into buying politicians and election outcomes in Italy and other Western European countries during the post war decades.
In addition to clandestine ops that failed or those that succeeded with long-term negative consequences for the U.S., there have been spectacular intelligence failures. The CIA told the White House, on the eve of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, that the Soviets would not invade and they told the administration of George Bush the Elder in July1990 that Saddam Hussein would not send his armed forces into Kuwait.
When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made his notorious appearance at the United Nations on February 5, 2005---just weeks before the invasion of Iraq---to insist that the U.S. had hard evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, CIA director George Tenet stood at his shoulder, silently bestowing the agency’s imprimatur on the Bush administration’s claim that action was needed. In this instance, the White House exerted immense pressure on the CIA to unearth evidence that would support the case for invasion.
In early December 2007, all sixteen U.S. intelligence services, including the CIA, issued an assessment that concluded that Iran had ceased its program to develop nuclear weapons in 2003. This time the intelligence services were releasing a finding that clashed directly with the case the Bush administration had been developing that if Iran built nukes, war could be the result. The response from the White House was barely controlled fury. Administration spokespersons insisted that the finding could be wrong and that America must not let down its guard. Apparently the spooks, having been badly burned in Iraq, were not prepared to do the Bush administration’s bidding in Iran. With only a year to go before a presidential election, infighting involving the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies had reached a new pitch.
What’s wrong with American intelligence? With all its toys, money and training, why has the track record of the CIA been so poor from the standpoint of U.S. policymakers?
Part of the answer has to do with the clash between the needs of those collecting intelligence and those engaged in clandestine ops.
There is a larger answer, though. From the very beginning, the rules of engagement of the CIA have made it clear that the United States government has no respect for the sovereign authority and the rights of other countries, and this includes democratic countries and close American allies. Buying politicians, helping fix elections, seizing captives to torture in secret CIA prisons, and assassinating foreign leaders have been normal operating practice from Day One. It’s not that the U.S. is the only nation in the world to engage in such practices, but the glaring contradiction between these methods and the insistence of American leaders that their country stands for freedom, human rights and self-determination for all peoples, has soured much of humanity on America.
Finally, there is the imperial mindset which has doomed the rulers of empires throughout history, from the pharaohs of Egypt, the emperors of Rome, the viceroys of the British Raj to the best and the brightest in Washington. Those who imagine themselves to have a right to rule others, because they believe they have a superior culture or because they have a bigger economy or a stronger military, have never learned how to understand those they dominate. Even if the next U.S. president is considerably brighter than the present occupant of the White House---how could he or she not be---efforts of the new administration to fix the problems of U.S. intelligence agencies are likely to falter for that oldest of reasons. The Americans, like the rulers of the great powers that preceded theirs, cannot understand that peoples everywhere want to run their own affairs. That’s why the American invaders were not showered with garlands when they invaded Iraq, and it’s for that reason that they are being driven out of that country just as an earlier generation of Americans was driven out of Vietnam.
Monday, September 17, 2007
CIA analyst: Afghan loss equals terrorist win.
Isn't this the same CIA that funded Bin Laden and other jihadists when the Evil Empire had a friendly government in Afghanistan. This chap disagrees with the invasion of Iraq, no doubt in part because it simply provided more evidence for the position that the jihadists hold and also has become a training ground for Al Qaeda operatives. However the invasion of Afghanistan also gives evidence of western imperialist motives. If one understands terrorist motives then one would get out of the middle East and Afghanistan or negotiate with the Taliban and leave Iraq to its own devices in order to defuse their appeal. However Scheuer apparently thinks he can defeat them. How understanding their motives can achieve this is not explained in fact this article doesn't even say what their motives are.
Afghan loss equals terrorist win: CIA analyst
Updated Sun. Sep. 16 2007 10:11 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
A former CIA analyst whose book was mentioned by Osama bin Laden in a video released last week says Canada and NATO countries will hand terrorists a victory if they give up combat operations in Afghanistan.
Michael Scheuer, a retired 22-year CIA veteran and author of "Through Our Enemies' Eyes" says that Canada, the U.S., and their allies have not devoted enough resources to winning the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. He argues that too few soldiers and too many agendas have already led to a near-defeat in that country.
"I think it's a dastardly way to treat our people in uniform," Scheuer told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.
"They (the soldiers) have to keep Karzai's government in power, they have to defeat the Taliban insurgency, they have to reconstruct the economy, they're supposed to build a democracy, they're assigned to eradicate the heroin industry, and in their spare time they can go after bin Laden."
Scheuer says that Canadian and NATO leaders have "betrayed" their soldiers in Afghanistan by not providing a clear focus and enough support. He added that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists were inspired by their victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Scheuer fears that a loss in Afghanistan will hand bin Laden another inspirational victory.
"When we're defeated there, and when we're defeated in Iraq, bin Laden suddenly becomes a figure of world importance because he predicted long ago that the Americans and their allies are soft ... and will eventually be easier to defeat than the Soviets."
Bin Laden mentioned Scheuer's books specifically in his latest video when he tried to explain why the West was losing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scheuer told Question Period co-host Craig Oliver that Canada and its allies have not acknowledged the true reasons Islamic fundamentalists are engaged in terrorism. He says bin Laden and his followers are not fighting the West because of its freedom, democracy, or commitment to gender equality.
"We're fighting an enemy that doesn't exist ... if you don't fight the enemy in the way that he's motivated, you're going to lose" said Scheuer.
He said American and the West's unqualified support for Israel, support for tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, and dependence on oil in the region are all contributing to the real reasons for terrorist acts.
Scheuer says that the U.S. should never have entered Iraq and is on the verge of losing the war in that country. He also noted that neither the U.S. nor Canada have taken effective control of their borders, something which may lead to future terrorism.
"We're basically led by people who are unwilling to control their own borders," he says. "They say they don't worry about it, or it's gotten better, but the reality is North America is basically a wide open place for terrorism, whether in Canada or Mexico or the United States."
Scheuer says that victory against Islamic fundamentalists can only come if Canadian, U.S., and other Western governments change strategies and understand what motivates terrorists.
Afghan loss equals terrorist win: CIA analyst
Updated Sun. Sep. 16 2007 10:11 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
A former CIA analyst whose book was mentioned by Osama bin Laden in a video released last week says Canada and NATO countries will hand terrorists a victory if they give up combat operations in Afghanistan.
Michael Scheuer, a retired 22-year CIA veteran and author of "Through Our Enemies' Eyes" says that Canada, the U.S., and their allies have not devoted enough resources to winning the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. He argues that too few soldiers and too many agendas have already led to a near-defeat in that country.
"I think it's a dastardly way to treat our people in uniform," Scheuer told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.
"They (the soldiers) have to keep Karzai's government in power, they have to defeat the Taliban insurgency, they have to reconstruct the economy, they're supposed to build a democracy, they're assigned to eradicate the heroin industry, and in their spare time they can go after bin Laden."
Scheuer says that Canadian and NATO leaders have "betrayed" their soldiers in Afghanistan by not providing a clear focus and enough support. He added that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists were inspired by their victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Scheuer fears that a loss in Afghanistan will hand bin Laden another inspirational victory.
"When we're defeated there, and when we're defeated in Iraq, bin Laden suddenly becomes a figure of world importance because he predicted long ago that the Americans and their allies are soft ... and will eventually be easier to defeat than the Soviets."
Bin Laden mentioned Scheuer's books specifically in his latest video when he tried to explain why the West was losing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scheuer told Question Period co-host Craig Oliver that Canada and its allies have not acknowledged the true reasons Islamic fundamentalists are engaged in terrorism. He says bin Laden and his followers are not fighting the West because of its freedom, democracy, or commitment to gender equality.
"We're fighting an enemy that doesn't exist ... if you don't fight the enemy in the way that he's motivated, you're going to lose" said Scheuer.
He said American and the West's unqualified support for Israel, support for tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, and dependence on oil in the region are all contributing to the real reasons for terrorist acts.
Scheuer says that the U.S. should never have entered Iraq and is on the verge of losing the war in that country. He also noted that neither the U.S. nor Canada have taken effective control of their borders, something which may lead to future terrorism.
"We're basically led by people who are unwilling to control their own borders," he says. "They say they don't worry about it, or it's gotten better, but the reality is North America is basically a wide open place for terrorism, whether in Canada or Mexico or the United States."
Scheuer says that victory against Islamic fundamentalists can only come if Canadian, U.S., and other Western governments change strategies and understand what motivates terrorists.
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