I have avoided writing about former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, aka Anonymous, author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror because he is a slow-moving target. It would be all to easy to trash his book - which is about 100,000 places ahead of mine in the Amazon rankings (buy a copy of Profiles in Terror now and cut that distance in half!)

But in this month's Commentary Gabriel Schoenfeld neatly slices Scheuer apart in his excellent article "What Became of the CIA" and gave me some irrestible ammunition.

Shoenfeld writes:

The workings of Scheuer’s mind owe much, he discloses, to an early supervisor who taught him that the key to "framing and solving intelligence problems was to first 'do the checkables.'" The "checkables," he explains,

are those parts of a problem that were knowable, the things on which there were classified archival records, pertinent and available human experience, current human assets to consult, or even the results of media and academic research. . . . The supervisor’s recipe was to exploit to exhaustion the "checkables" . . . and thereby identify the information we need to acquire before acting to resolve the problem.

This approach, whether dressed up in agency jargon or simply called basic research, would seem obvious enough. But, to the distress of Scheuer, virtually everyone in the U.S. government, except him, has shunned it. In Imperial Hubris he hammers this theme incessantly, and always in the same words. Here is a very partial selection from a single chapter:

- "it is time to look at some of the easily checkable checkables that were obviously not checked";

- "therein lies another example of the cost of not reviewing the checkables";

- "something that could have been readily forecast if the checkables had been checked";

- "to make matters worse, the checkables were available in local public and university libraries";

- "a perfect example of the unnecessary mess that always ensues when time is not taken to review and digest the 'checkables'";

- "the list of 'checkables' was immense . . . and yet tragically. . . almost no checking seems to have been done."

And so forth. It is, then, on the basis of his own, contrasting "willingness to review the checkables" that Scheuer asks us to accept his judgment of Osama bin Laden as a "gentle, generous, talented, and personally courageous" leader, his assessment of our campaign in Afghanistan as "wretchedly ill-conceived," and his conclusion that the collapse of that country's government is guaranteed to happen, perhaps not "tomorrow, the day after, or even next year . . . but come it will."

I saw Scheuer speak at Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11. For a guy obsessed with the "checkables" he showed a remarkable lack of knowledge on anything contradicting his worldview. When the conversation was on Hezbollah, which many terrorism experts consider the most serious current terrorist threat, Scheuer said that Hezbollah had not targeted Americans since the early 1980s.

What about Khobar - where 19 Americans were killed? That was June 25, 1996. In November 1995 a car bomb struck a U.S. installation in Riyadh, killing five Americans. While it is true that some questions remain about the responsibility for that bombing (not helped by the Saudis executing the accused before the U.S. could interview them), when I interviewed for an analyst position at the CIA (I was obviously not hired) one of the things we discussed was Hezbollah's role in the Khobar bombing.

But there is more about Hezbollah! Throughout the 1980s Hezbollah kidnapped Americans, killing some of them, but mostly holding them hostage (Iran-Contra - heard of it?) I know specific Americans being killed by Hezbollah (and Iran) in 1985 and 1991. I'm not just being pedantic here. I can certainly understand not remembering the details of every terrorist incident. But consider the individuals involved:

- Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver was shot and his body dumped onto the tarmac of Beirut International Airport when Hezbollah hijacked TWA flight 847, on which Stethem was a passenger. In his honor the Navy commissioned DDG 63, a guided missile destroyer in 1994.

- Col. William R. (Rich) Higgins, a U.S. Marine serving with the UN observer team in Lebanon was kidnapped by Hezbollah in 1988 and declared dead on July 6, 1990. His remains were returned to the U.S. in December 1991. In April 1999, the Navy commissioned DDG-76, the USS Higgins, which has served in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The ship's sponsor is Lt. Col. Robin Higgins (ret.), the late Col. Higgins' wife.

- and last, but not least William Buckley. Buckley was kidnapped by Hezbollah in March 1984. He was tortured and killed. His remains were returned to he United States in 1991. He was the CIA's station chief in Beirut!

For someone claiming to be an expert on terrorism and a high-level CIA officer - this information is not trivia and easily "checkable."

Treasury Secretary John Snow would not rule out activist/rocker Bono as a possible World Bank President.

While Bono has been an effective advocate on development issues - particularly Third World debt relief and AIDS - he lacks an important prerequisite for World Bank chief. Based on his recent work - he can't count.

"Uno, dos, tres, catorce" means "One, two, three, fourteen."

Two newsblurbs feed my continuing obsession with the manuevers of Fatah chief Farouk Qaddoumi -

SANA, the Syrian news agency reports that Qaddoumi Says Resolution 1559 Contradicts UN Convention. That Qaddoumi, a long-time Syria ally would stick up for Syria's right to occupy Lebanon is hardly news.

His hypocritical argument is, "Resolution 1559 is an intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign country." Oh, and - "Israel dismissed all agreements that call it to withdraw from the occupied lands, stop building the racial separation wall and improve human conditions of Palestinians."

Interesting note that this statement took place during meetings at Ain-al-Hilweh, the largest of 13 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. There are 350,000 Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon and Ain al-Hilweh has 70,000 residents packed into 2 square miles. These camps are no-go zones for Lebanese authorities. Fatah's chief in Lebanon is Munir Maqdah who is based in Ain al-Hilweh. Maqdah, who broke with Arafat over Oslo, has been accused of transfering Hezbollah funds to Fatah operatives in the West Bank and has been tried in absentia in Jordan for supplying explosives and weapons to terrorist cells believed to be linked to al-Qaeda (and probably Zarqawi.) Maqdah said he has no contact with al-Qaeda but that he salutes their achievements. Ain al-Hilweh has also been the base of a Lebanese al-Qaeda affiliate Asbat al-Ansar.

It is likely that Qaddoumi and Maqdah were strengthening their relationship - and de-facto strengthening their Syrian and Iranian patrons.

Also, Yediot Ahronot reports that an anonymous source in the Swiss branch of Deutsche Bank says a portion of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's money has been transferred to the accounts of PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) and the PLO's hard-line foreign minister Farouk Kaddoumi, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Serra. The newspaper, relying on economic sources from Lugano, Switzerland, identifies a bank official by the name of Mohammad T., who is acting to transfer the money "before the Palestinian Authority reveals it... His purpose is to strengthen Abu Ala politically and the extreme branch of Fatah under Farouk Kaddoumi, without the knowledge of Abu Mazen [PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas]."

Nothing will help Qaddoumi's machinations like a little money of his own...