Democratic and Republican, is to blame for the nation's woes. (Notwithstanding the bipartisan responsibility, Scheuer comments, "the thought of what history will say about Donald Rumsfeld's tenure at the Department of Defense ought to make his relatives shudder down to their latest generation.") Pending threats In 2007, Scheuer said "The Iranians are no threat to the United States unless we provoke them. They may be a threat to the Israelis. They're not a threat to the United States. The threat to the United States, inside the United States, comes from al Qaeda. ... These people are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States, and we're going to have absolutely nothing to respond against." Israel and the Lobby Scheuer has stated that the Mearsheimer and Walt paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is essentially correct. Israel, according to Scheuer, has engaged in one of the most successful campaigns to influence public opinion in the United States ever conducted by a foreign government. Scheuer said to NPR that "They [Mearsheimer and Walt] should be credited for the courage they have had to actually present a paper on the subject. I hope they move on and do the Saudi lobby, which is probably more dangerous to the United States than the Israeli lobby." In Marching Toward Hell, Scheuer laments "the war in Iraq that was instigated by U.S. citizen Israel-firsters and their evangelical Christian allies". He continues, Because both U.S. political parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Israeli government, there is no large-scale U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in the cards ... If you doubt this, keep in mind the name Rahm Emanuel. Slated to be the president-elect's chief of staff, Mr. Emanuel has labored as a volunteer for AIPAC's various anti-U.S. causes, strove to ensure the defeat of anti-Iraq War Democratic congressional candidates in 2006, and in 1991, as a 32-year-old U.S. citizen, chose to serve with the Israeli Defense Forces rather than volunteer to fight for the United States in the war against Saddam's Iraq. The Doha Debates In April 2009, Scheuer participated in the Doha Debates at Georgetown University, where he debated for the motion "This house believes that it is time for the USA to get tough on Israel" with fellow speaker Avraham Burg. Speakers against the motion were Dore Gold and Alan Dershowitz. Burg