Worth Reading

I found this Froomkin blog post titled, The Cheney Supremacy, absolutely fascinating. It's on Suskind's new book and the way that it frames the Bush-Cheney relationship. There's a really good section explaining the book title, The One Percent Doctrine.

"Absorbing the possibility that al-Qaeda was trying to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney remarked that America had to deal with a new type of threat -- what he called a 'low-probability, high-impact event' -- and the U.S. had to do it 'in a way we haven't yet defined,' writes author Ron Suskind in his new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11.

"And then Cheney defined it: 'If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis . . . It's about our response.' Suskind writes, 'So, now spoken, it stood: a standard of action that would frame events and responses from the Administration for years to come.' "

That's why we're in Iraq. Because somehow Cheney thought there was a one percent chance of nukes and Al Qaeda. (Eerily similar to some of the failures related to low troop numbers in Iraq being credited to Rumsfeld's "transitional doctrine.")

There's also this little gem about George Bush which truly gives a portrait of the man.

And here's another telling scene: When Tenet and some of his briefers initially headed over to the White House to tell Bush about the new threat, Tenet has to go first, to "prebrief Bush for four or five minutes," which Suskind writes is "common practice" so that "Bush could be authoritative and updated when others arrived."

This is your President.

(Also, if you haven't seen it mentioned, PBS's documentary series Frontline is doing an hour and a half episode this week titled The Dark Side, which focuses on the behind the scenes conflict in the White House between those who wanted to go after Al Qaeda and those who wanted to "do" Iraq. Officially tomorrow night, but check local listings.)