Mike Scheuer, a senior CIA intelligence officer who led the Bin Laden station for four years describes the Iraq invasion as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage". He even goes so far as to call on America's generals to resign rather than execute orders that "they know [...] will produce more, not less, danger to their nation". Bin Laden, he believes, is not a lonely maverick, but draws support from much of the Islamic world, which resents the US not for what it is, but for what it does - supporting Israel almost uncritically, propping up corrupt regimes in the Arab world, garrisoning troops on the Saudi peninsula near Islam's most holy sites to safeguard access to cheap oil. "America ought to do what's in America's interests, and those interests are not served by being dependent on oil in the Middle East and by giving an open hand to the Israelis," Scheuer argues.[more
]