The One Percent Doctrine

I recently perused the shelves of the local Borders for a paperback shedding light on the GWOT and offering insights as to its prosecution by the Bush administration. Frankly, the pickings in the Political Science section were pretty slim and included titles such as Norman Podhoretz‘ infamous WW IV. Fortunately, I came away with Ron Suskind‘s excellent The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11.

From the NYT:

The title of Ron Suskind’s riveting new book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” refers to an operating principle that he says Vice President Dick Cheney articulated shortly after 9/11: in Mr. Suskind’s words, “if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction — and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time — the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.” He quotes Mr. Cheney saying that it’s not about “our analysis,” it’s about “our response,” and argues that this conviction effectively sidelines the traditional policymaking process of analysis and debate, making suspicion, not evidence, the new threshold for action.

From the WaPo:

This “Cheney Doctrine” let Bush evade analytic debate, Suskind writes, and “rely on impulse and improvisation to a degree that was without precedent for a modern president.” But that approach constricted the mission of the intelligence and counterterrorism professionals whose point of view dominates this book. Many of them came to believe, Suskind reports, that “their jobs were not to help shape policy, but to affirm it.” (Some of them nicknamed Cheney “Edgar,” as in Edgar Bergen — casting the president as the ventriloquist’s dummy.) Suskind calls those career terror-fighters “the invisibles,” and he likes them. His book is full of amazing, persuasively detailed vignettes about their world. At least a dozen former intelligence officials speak frankly in public here, as did former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill in Suskind’s previous book, “The Price of Loyalty.”

From Salon:

If there are any observers who still deny that the Bush administration is the most secretive, vengeful, reality-averse, manipulative and arrogant government in U.S. history, they will have a lot of fast talking to do after reading Ron Suskind’s new book, “The One Percent Doctrine.” A meticulous work of reporting, based on interviews with nearly 100 well-placed sources, many of them members of the U.S. intelligence community, Suskind’s book paints perhaps the most intimate and damning portrait yet of the Bush team.

At this point, I’m about 80 pages in. Already, I’ve read of W‘s lack of intellectual curiosity and how he is not particularly close with his father: forsaking Brent Scrowcroft‘s years of experience as GHWB‘s NSA in deference to Pentagon champions Rumsfeld and Cheney. George Tenet‘s excellent abilities are also chronicled and his coersion by W’s loyalty after the CIA failing of 9/11.

I’ve just finished reading how in the total vacuum of HUMINT after 9/11, meetings were held in Bandar Bush‘s London residence with the American educated Libyan terrorist Musa Kousa, who exposed the Pakistan based A.Q. Khan and his efforts to provide nuclear weapons to Muslim nations.

Were this a novel of fiction, it would be an entertaining read. That it relates actual events is an absolute outrage and required reading for all but the most disinterested.

Cross-posted at Daily Kos.