I am about halfway through the book. It is very interesting, but is missing footnotes and I haven't seen any discussion of what his sources were. Some of the quotes are from fairly private situations. What are his sources? Is there a discussion of that in the book in the part I haven't read yet?

Of course, you never answered the question: why would anyone take Suskind seriously after the Price of Loyalty was debunked by its own subject?

If there's a one percent chance that terrorists will use nuclear weapons to blow up New York, would you prefer the government to ignore it? The odds of terrorist flying planes into the world trade center on the morning of september 11th was well below 1%.

Should they wait until there's a 50% chance that there's an attack? What percentage is good for you?

The next 6 months in the War on Terror will be Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

In the first four chapters of OPD Suskind really does offer up a fairly sympathetic portrait of the two men. Here's the situation right after 9/11: Al-Qaeda terrorists have just attacked the country; further attacks seem highly likely; our intelligence network is scrambling and nearly blind; we have good reason to believe that Osama bin Laden might be negotiating with Pakistani radicals to obtain a nuclear weapon; and credible reports suggest that al-Qaeda might also be on the road to manufacturing weaponized anthrax.

Fairly sympathetic if you ignore the fact that they were warned, repeatedly, about an impending attack.

After all, nearly anything has a one percent chance of happening, and if that's the threshold for action, it means we can take action anytime we want. Under the OPD, there is literally no reason to waste time with analysis or policy discussions.

It's a perfect substitute for intelligence. (In the sense of 'trying to be a smart person.)

Except for the results it produces.

The odds of terrorist flying planes into the world trade center on the morning of september 11th was well below 1%.

No, actually, it was 100%.

Hawk: Please explain to us what action you would like us to take on the other thousand things that also have a 1% chance of happening. We expect a complete list.

AMERICAN HAWK: The odds of terrorist flying planes into the world trade center on the morning of september 11th was well below 1%.

What is the probability that there is global warming and it will get catastrophically worse unless we do something and we are causing it and there are things we can do about it and they are worth doing? Certainly at least one percent. Complete certainty isn't necessary to require action. Unless we have a president in the bottom one percent.

I continue to believe that Bush suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and that that diagnosis explains a lot about his Presidency.

Please note, however, that some of the OPD activities (many of questionable constitutionality) that the administration justified as necessary post-911 were in fact started before 911:

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/48/16920

One might be tempted to take a favorable view of the administration for taking the threat of terrorism seriously prior to 911, but it really does appear that the administration's interest was focused on increasing the surveillance power on US citizens, not on actually stopping terrorism.

It's a portrait of two men who, initially, react understandably and even honorably to a horrible event, but then find themselves at sea when it comes to fighting a longer, more subtle war.

Kevin, you're being too kind to Bush once again. Various accounts have documented that the war against Iraq, not Al Quaida, is the war they wanted to wage (even before 9/11). If you see the last 4 years from this perspective, it makes sense. Even the chaos and paralysis in Iraq. If the administration's real objective is to project American power into the Middle East indefinitely, they won't be getting out of Iraq anytime soon. Certainly not while those permanent bases are under construction.

And Bin Laden? Osama bin Forgotten? The CIA has closed its shop on him. Meanwhile, our ports, borders and transportation infrastructure remain essentially unsecured almost 5 years after 9/11. This isn't 'being at sea,' it's just being unconcerned. (Ask the folks in New Orleans about that.)

Nothing Bush or Cheney have done - nothing - is 'honorable.' They stole the 2000 election and proceeded from there.

Hawk: Please explain to us what action you would like us to take on the other thousand things that also have a 1% chance of happening. We expect a complete list.

For example, global warming.

I haven't seen any discussion of what his sources were.
Posted by: Colin on July 6, 2006 at 2:39 PM | PERMALINK

Maybe Anne Coulter?

My review here.

kevin: George Tenet and other senior managers of the CIA, who have borne the brunt of an often brutal and personal bureaucratic battle to ensure that someone — anyone — other than George Bush takes the blame when things go wrong.

"All right. You've covered your ass, now."

-G.W.B. 8/6/2001 to a CIA briefer who informed him of the P.D.B. titled - “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

quote from an e-mail...

'I'd rather they beat up on him, than me or Chertoff.' " - President Bush talking about Mike Brown after Katrina

kevin: Bush and Cheney are simply unable to adjust to a "long, hard slog,"

lucky for them....rove did...

OBF - Coulter is no source. She may plagarize from one, but that's a different story.

If there's a one percent chance that terrorists will use nuclear weapons to blow up New York, would you prefer the government to ignore it?

That's the classic Bush-style use of a straw man, Hawkeye. You're trying to present this as a dichotomous choice between ignoring some threat or treating it as a certainty. The truth, of course, is that both options are absurd extremes. Any rational government would weigh the different threats facing our country and pursue proportionate responses based on the different levels of risk.

The reason Suskind's book is making such an impact is because it shows just how vulnerable we are under a leadership that refuses to craft a reality-based foreign policy.

I read the book as the CIA settling scores. They were made to be the scapegoat for 9/11 and couldn't really respond because so much of what they do is secret. But here, you get to see Bush and Cheney's tunnel-vision (both pre and post-9/11) and some pretty amazing (if sometimes sickening) counter-terrorism (including the well-blogged torture of a mentally ill Al Qaeda nobody). We learn how the CIA used Western Union as a trap for terrorists, for example. This stuff was like reading a good spy novel.

Another thing you learn is that 9/11 was a failure. The intent was to scare America OUT of the Middle East (specifically Saudi Arabia). Then Saudi Arabia would be vulnerable to a hard-right-Islamist coup. But of course, the result was to embolden America to strike back hard, which we did.

But then we made an almost mirror-image strategic mistake by invading Iraq. Instead of cowing or frightening terrorists, it helped them in their recruiting efforts.

There is not a 1% chance the global warming will have any effect at all!

If there's a one percent chance that terrorists will use nuclear weapons to blow up New York, would you prefer the government to ignore it? The odds of terrorist flying planes into the world trade center on the morning of september 11th was well below 1%.

Before you answer Drum and others, Hawk, you'd better get a primer on the difference between odss and probablity.

Can't say that I agree with this assessment: "What's needed at that point is firm action, and Suskind suggests that Bush and Cheney did a pretty good job of cracking heads during those scary first months — especially so considering that those months were actually even scarier than most of us knew at the time."

Although it looked good on TV, these actions immediately after 9-11 sent the US on the wrong path. It was precisely this cracking heads and acting on instinct immediately after 9-11 that started scaring althe US on the wrong path.

It really played into the American mythology that we just needed to be "tough" and take strong action after Sept 11th. We needed to "strike back" and prove we weren't victims. etc. But as in most cases, what felt so good immediately afterward led the country astray.

Yes, the US needed to start acting - but the first goal was to get smart - and build allies so that we could coordinate an effective global effort. But right from the start it was the lone cowboy pose - that was the critical mistake. For example, the whole frame "war on terror" sounded great - but is completely impractical - as useful as the "war on drugs".

And that's the bitter truth, the whole US response to 9-11 seemed to be dicated more by PR - particularly warding off blame for letting the attacks happen, and more by what felt good to the US populace - than by any effective strategy.

The favorable portrait at the beginning of the book is about the invisibles, NOT W & Shooter. If they could have taken credit for the successes, they would have publicized them. Instead we must wait for the book to come out to find out that there were some pretty astonishing successes at the beginning. But since W & Shooter were planning on purging the entire reality-based infrastructure that created those successes, they had to keep them out of the headlines.

I'm convinced that one of the reasons for outing Plame is that she was one of those pesky persons who might have actually known something about Iran's nuclear program. Two birds with one stone.

As for low probability-high consequence events, the thoughtful approach is in Richard Posner's book, Catastrophe. I haven't read it (too dense for my current state of mind), but the approach seems to be some sort of modified cost-benefit analysis. Even though the probability is low, catastrophes can create huge costs, as we found out in 9/11 and Katrina--so multiplying probability time cost makes rational case for spending large sums on prevention. As for what kind of preventions, . . . Invading Iraq NOT on the list. Things like hardening targets, better spooks, hearts & minds.

"The single most defining characteristic of George Bush's personality is his belief in his own instinct and his corresponding disdain for serious policy analysis. For Bush, the One Percent Doctrine is tailor made. He is contemptuous of policy discussions, and the OPD is the perfect excuse to ignore them."

How do you explain this? In a word, George Bush is lazy.

> f there's a one percent chance that
> terrorists will use nuclear weapons to
> blow up New York, would you prefer the
> government to ignore it?

Well, 48 hours before Katrina made landfall there was a 30% chance it would hit New Orleans directly as a Category 5 storm, and the Bush Administration chose to ignore it, so I guess that tells us something.

Cranky

Very interesting, Kevin. I guess I'll have to read the book.

You mentioned the lack of leadership coming from the White House. This goes along with what I read "The Assassin's Gate". In that book, one thing that really stood out was how Bush was hardly a factor at all. Cheney and Rumsfeld were all over it, making decisions left and right, but Bush was almost never mentioned.

Katrina probably had at least a 1 percent chance of hitting New Orleans. Moreover, we had all the advance knowledge of the pending disaster high technology could buy. But Bush did not prepare for the potential devastation. Why?

Because Katrina didn't have a military solution. Republicans only take swift action when there is the potential to mobilize the Department of Defense. Then, once they do, anyone who doesn't agree with their approach automatically becomes a treasonous appeaser.

> so multiplying probability time
> cost makes rational case for
> spending large sums on prevention.

I believe it was the Medici family that developed that concept around 1500. In any case, it was the primary tool of the Office of Technology Assessment, a Congressional agency killed by the Radial Republicans in 1995 because it kept telling them things they didn't want to hear. So let's not give Posner any credit he doesn't deserve.

Cranky

Here's the situation right after 9/11: Al-Qaeda terrorists have just attacked the country; further attacks seem highly likely; our intelligence network is scrambling and nearly blind; we have good reason to believe....

I've gotten tired of the usual rubbish.

Around 5 pm on 9-11-01, WTC 7 collapsed to the ground, against all known laws of physics.

Subsequently, Congressional Democratic leaders were attacked by American-made anthrax. Stampeded to pass the Patriot Act, the enabling act for all subsequent other crimes.

Can we please stop looking at 2 hours on a Tuesday morning & see the picture in context?

The intent was to scare America OUT of the Middle East (specifically Saudi Arabia).

there were many reasons. another one was to draw the US into a multi-national war that would motivate the ME against us. and also note that Bush did pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia.

...

I've gotten tired of the usual rubbish

so you're wallowing in some more pungent rubbish ?

Honestly, is there any real difference between Cheney saying we'll respond to anything with a 1% chance of happening and Gonzales saying if the president did it then it can't be illegal? It's all just a way of saying we will do anything we damn well please.

The intent was to scare America OUT of the Middle East (specifically Saudi Arabia).

No. The intent was to scare commodities traders into jacking the price of oil from $20/bbl to $75/bbl, while costs for extraction are subsidized (tax$ -> halliburton).

Because Katrina didn't have a military solution.

"The War on Weather" does have a nice ring to it though, doesn't it?

These theories about the intent of the 9/11 attacks seem overblown. Wasn't bin Laden seeking to hit us just for the sake of hitting us?

Naturally, if something horrible has a 100% chance of happening, we're going to tolerate solutions with large unfavorable side effects: for example they might have a 5% chance of causing something else just as horrible. And that might be the _best_ response to a certain disaster.

Of course if you apply such solutions to a disaster whose actual probaility is 1%, you're making disaster five times more likely.

The Bush administration is like a woman worried about breast cancer who has a CAT-scan every hour on the hour.

gcochran: "The Bush administration is like a woman worried about breast cancer who has a CAT-scan every hour on the hour."

V. funny. But perhaps a more apt analogy is that the Bush administration is like a woman worried about breast cancer who then attacks a neighbor and attempts to remove her breast.

It is not true that just about everything has a one percent chance of happening. We are notoriously bad at estimating small probabilities. I unfortunately have a great deal of training in this area.

I think the real issue is the assessment of the probabilities and then the "addressing" part of the equation. No sense worrying about it if your action is ineffective. If you get the probabilities wrong (think Iraq), then you end up addressing the wrong problem. If your action is to, well, do nothing (multiple threats), no sense even worrying about it.

AWOL and 5D were asleep before 9/11, and then lied this country into war and screwed up reconstruction...no excuses! cleve

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WTF?

Is this a relevant comment or just an ad for Chinese Viagra?

I had put this comment into the chunky email thread my mistake:

The One Percent Doctrine, huh? Funny how they don't apply similar logic to Global Warming and other non-terrorist threat. Their attitude there is, if it doesn't have a *100 %% chance of happening, it isn't worth worrying about (or rather, if dealing with it interferes with making money, it can't be worth doing in any case.)

I think it's very easy to determine what the priorities of the Republican party and the Bush administrations are by following the money.
You don't need volumes of secret notes, and you don't need witnesses to tell you where the bodies are buried to determine if their guilty of a gross negligence.
All you need to do is look at the Governments checkbook, who got what money, and what they spent on it. And that will tell you what their concerns are.
And right now, the major concern of the Republican Party and the Bush Whitehouse is to ensure that their financial patrons in Big Business get the lions share of the American cake, mom's apple pie, and the whipped cream off the top of our citizens lives.
The only thing big business cares about is that the Republicans stay in office and keep the fat flowing so the likes of Exxon's former CEO can engorge their goiters at our expense.
Yes, we're screwed, and Kevin points out that the orginal intent of Bush and Cheney was to fatten their patrons purses at our expense. That they screwed over us, and the Iraqi's in the process is of no concern to them...it's not personal, it's just business.

Can I offer a theological perspective about Bush on his "decisionmaking"?

Some evangelical Christians believe that:
1) when one acts in faith they can do anything they want
2) in faith, they can know the will of God and do it
3) they believe that if they have "accepted Jesus into their heart" that they are in tune with what God wants them to do

The historic Christian church, denies all three things, but they are a staple of what is uniquely American Christianity. A personal religion that validates truth through the lens of one's own human experience, their heart and not through institutions, experts and so forth. They denigrate the church and even scripture to be verified through the testimony in one's heart.

Why are their WMD in Iraq? Cause I said so and I know Jesus. Got it?

Harold Bloom discusses some of this belief in his book from 1992, "The American Religion".

Stay tuned.

The only thing big business cares about is that the Republicans stay in office and keep the fat flowing so the likes of Exxon's former CEO can engorge their goiters at our expense.
Posted by: sheerahkahn on July 6, 2006 at 4:43 PM | PERMALINK

FYI: Enron's former CEO is not dead, he is in a federal witness protection program.

The Al-bot: [W]hy would anyone take Suskind seriously after the Price of Loyalty was debunked by its own subject?"

It never ceases to amaze me to see how truly stupid you can be. The subject in question -- Paul O'Neill -- was co-author of the book The Price of Loyalty with Ron Suskind. He has most certainly not debunked his own work, for which he continues to receive royalties.

Therefore, why would anyone who's truly serious about these things bother to take you seriously, when you obviously haven't read the book? That's why you're considered nothing but comic relief on this site.

There is also a one percent chance that we will be struck by a Asteroid and wipe out mankind,with that in mind why bother with a few thousand dead americans from terroists,There is a 99% chance that Bush will kill more Americans then terrorists.

OBF,
I'm talking about Lee Raymond, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Raymond,
not Ken Lay, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Lay

I'd do links, but I'm not sure how they are labelled here, so copy and paste.

Reverend Bayes is weeping in his grave.

just about everything in the American approach to the war on Islamic terrorism had been ill-conceived."

I wouldn't call it 'ill-conceived' -- it keeps winning elections.

The one percent doctrine is a simple ripoff of the St. Petersburg paradox. Because the consequences of the 1% event are supposed to be infinitely bad even a small probability of the event occuring implies an infintiely negative expected payoff. Which implies that we should act decisively to preempt the 1% chance.

Of course this runs headlong into the concept of opportunity cost...... But hey that's just pre-911 thinking.

OT Could someone please explain what the hell Ann Coulter was talking about (Anal sex and Fisting)What is Fisting???

Could someone please NOT EXPLAIN what the hell Ann Coulter was talking about (see above comment).

;o)

Kevin, I am really surprised. You have totally misconstrued the one-percent doctrine. Didn't I read that you were in product marketing or something? If so, you should know it in your sleep. Here's how it works.

You've got a terrific product idea but you've got to make a business case for it. You don't have time or inclination to do a serious market study. So you say something like this:

"The total market for this product comprises anybody who [has a pulse, ever took a pee, or something like that], say, 300,000,000."

"If we were to get only one percent of that market...yadda yadda..."

Do you remember now?

Must have somthing to do with Ultra-Conservatism.

mommy, What is Fisting???

OT (but it's better than fisting), Joementum debates Neddie, 7 p.m. EDT, CSPAN. Pass the popcorn.

If you missed Suskind talking about the book on C-SPAN over the weekend, I'd recommend looking for a repeat or checking the site to see if it's archived. Amazing presentation: Suskind has a real ability to talk from the book without reading aloud.

Oh, and Suskind is also a very good mimic. His Bush/Cheney bits were pitch-perfect.

The staggering thing about the One-Percent Doctrine is that, after saying, entirely coreectly, that nuclear proliferation and the nuclear terrorism which it makes possible are unspeakably horrible threat, Cheney then jumped to the conclusion that every country presents an EQUALLY great threat -- a country which has a 1% chance of being dangerous is every bit as important as one that has a 100% chance of doing so -- and that we therefore have no need to try to prioritize our military efforts against it! Wonder how well he did in grade-school arithmetic?

As I said above, the 1% doctrine says that ANY product could be fabulously successful if it could obtain "only 1%" share (of a very large market).

I was only half kidding. Companies have wasted untold millions on untold numbers of stupid product flops, based on business plans as lame as the 1% doctrine. That doctrine is basically a way of pushing through the paperwork on something you are convinced in your gut is the "next great thing." Product managers blithely use the doctrine, CEOs blithely accept the doctrine, all because they really want to believe it. It's the business version of truthiness.

Now. Remember where all these Bush dudes came from? The business world. The CEO president. The CEO VP. The CEO Defense Secretary.

That is the crux of the problem with this administration.

You could look at the Bush administration as the government counterpart to the tech bubble.

Trying to figure out the Bush administration though the opinion's of George Tenet sounds utterly stupid to me.

All you really need to know is that Bush didn't shake the trees as the 9/11 commissions showed us, or take terrorism seriously pre-9/11 in any manner what-so-ever, no intelligent briefing got in the way of Bush taking a vacation, and remember how Rice couldn't answer that question about exactly WHAT flies it was that Bush actually was "tried of swatting."

George Tenet doesn't tell us why Bill Clinton wanted regime change, or talked about Saddam's WMD, nor why Clinton wanted a preemptive war in Iraq too.

Bush and Cheney are simply unable to adjust to a "long, hard slog," and the war on terror is treading water - Actually the two, in their so called "honorable" approach has made nothing abut a crisis of national policy - as the Washington Post pointed out today.

Analysis: Bush's World of Crises

I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times where there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously," said Richard N. Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

Jeebus - you think so?

Yeah, maybe the next president will get NATO to help with next "threat" but somehow doubt Bush left much to work with. Bush ruin the US's image with harsh realism of how ugly the US has become, how coldly indifferent Americans are to other countries suffering. Bush doesn't care about the "aspiration of democracy-building around the world," when the oil is only thing Bush really wanted to get his hands. This war in Iraq shares the same ugly realities of Vietnam with same exact type of killing fields.

There isn't anything honorable about Bush and Dick Cheney - they let Bin Laden get away, lied their collected butts off to all the members of UN, and now, the US is also losing Afghanistan. Bush spend the nation into a hugh deficit and acomplished nothing except mayhem with ever single thing the Bush/Cheney pestilence has touched. There is nothing honorable about the last 6 years with all the torturing, law breaking, and lying this administration has done since coming into power via 5 Justices placing there personnal pick in power completely devoid of any evidence that Bush/Cheney have any right at all to in Washington.

Kevin wimpers: "we have good reason to believe that Osama bin Laden might be negotiating with Pakistani radicals to obtain a nuclear weapon; and credible reports suggest that al-Qaeda might also be on the road to manufacturing weaponized anthrax."

Man, sorry, no other way to put it - you're still a colossal sucker. "The Assassins Gate" or "The Gathering Storm", whatever, you'll buy any of it. You really don't seem very bright on this.

Either that or it's a calculated and "instrumental" use of this War on Terror bullshit (except now with added COMPETENCE) for the Democrats to shake their flaccid foreign policy image.

But go right ahead, legitimize the Repubs narratives. The death of 100,000 innocent Iraqis is just an unfortunate side effect. Schmuck.

You're all wrong about what the terrorists wanted. What they wanted was to redicalize Muslim populations, and they succeeded brilliantly, thanks to the Bush admin playing right into their hands.

Read "Terrorist Strategy 101" (Google it).

Luci,
The rules of posting are simple.
1:Read.
2:Comprehend.
3:Post.
Do not skip to 3.

Don't be our version of their Al. Please.

David mentioned that:
Some evangelical Christians believe that:
1) when one acts in faith they can do anything they want
2) in faith, they can know the will of God and do it
3) they believe that if they have "accepted Jesus into their heart" that they are in tune with what God wants them to do.

This seems to be rather true, and Bush may have bought into it. But I also wonder about something Suskind points out--Bush doesn't read, at least not very willingly (perhaps isn't able to read very well? Some very bright people are like that. Might Bush have deployed some interesting strategies to get through Yale and Harvard, especially essay tests?) And as we all know, Bush's ability to talk is limited. It seems to wax and wane--at a low ebb before the last Republican convention, when I wondered if he might resign, and relatively good lately. This makes him a most unusual leader. I can't think of a good presidential precedent, at least in this country.

Oh, well, it'll sure be fun to sit back and watch the Chinese dictate every step of this NK thing while Bush hems and haws at the podium, repeating the words "diplomacy" and "six-party talks" like a mantra from his note cards.

Hopefully the Chinese will just make it all official soon and this whole America experiment will finally be over.

Subsequently, Congressional Democratic leaders were attacked by American-made anthrax. Stampeded to pass the Patriot Act, the enabling act for all subsequent other crimes.

How soon people forget the anthrax. Deadly domestic political terrorism that had the whole nation scared to open their mail. And whatever happened to the investigation?

Let there be a test to determine whether a population has a disease. Apply the test to a given person. There are two possible errors: 1) the test misses an instance of the disease; 2) the test reports the disease when it is not present. This illustrates a fundamental tenet of statistics and probability, that whatever procedures can be adopted to minimize one error will maximize the other.

Suskind knows this: the first chapter of his book is "False Positives." What I want to emphasize is that it is a MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY that Cheney's one percent doctrine will generate a broken-dam flood of false positives, of countless rumors to be chased; it is a guarantee that we will waste both ninety-nine percent of our time and resources.

In Susskind's book, after Cheney's doctrine takes full effect on the intelligence communtiy, he notes the resultant upswell of information from low level analysts, who pass up the chain essentially every tid and bit they find, an undigestible gorge of data utterly predictable from the doctrine. To cite the source of one particular torrent, the torture of Zubaydah produced a spate of non-existent plans of attack, and had agents chasing rumors up and down the eastern seaboard.

Others have pointed out the moral horrors to which Cheney's criterion for action of suspicion rather than evidence--torture and rendition, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, the shredding of the Bill of Rights--has led us.

I want to point out, no matter how non-rosy a scenario anyone can imagine, whatever what if's any or everyone comes up with, this one percent doctrine doesn't work, will not work, cannot be made to work.

Cheney aspires to lead a league of Dirty Harrys, but he heads instead a newly recreated variant of the Keystone Kops.

Anyone have reliable information on the potential bias of Suskind? He has written two anti Bush books in a short time, which raises suspicions, but is there any other information that suggests he may be a straight shooter.

From an earlier post by Kevin, it sounded like Suskind either misread information about the CIA's conclusions or naively fell for bad informmation about Osama's allegedly intending to help Bush with the relese of his tape prior to the 04 election.

If CIA officials actually concluded that Osama wanted to help Bush win, they are even more "blind" about Osama than Suskind described them in 2001. While it is easy to imagine a CIA official or anyone else stating "Osama did Bush a favor," it is almost inconceivable that Osama wanted Bush to win in 2004, after his wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush losing would have been relished by Osama as a defeat of his policies and, from a purely tactical standpoint, a change in administrations necessarily would have slowed down eforts against Al Quaeda if for no other reason than the changing of the guard.

but is there any other information that suggests he may be a straight shooter.

brian,

Here's a radical idea: Read the book.

Go ahead. I know you can do it if you put your mind to it.

The way to deal with a long hard slog is to work hard and work smart. And it also helps a bunch to have experience with problem solving and to be knowledgeable in the subject matter at hand.

There's four requirements right there where Bush comes up short. His strengths? Can't think of any. Being born privileged has not helped him much as President.

OT, but in response to an earlier commenter: Why the hell do people think that the fall of WTC 7 is proof of some vast 9/11 conspiracy? I mean, nobody flew a plane into it. Nobody expected it to collapse. What possible strategic reason is there for the 9/11 conspirators to do a controlled demolition of WTC 7? They don't gain anything from it. The official explanation makes much more sense than this.

Anyone have reliable information on the potential bias of Suskind? He has written two anti Bush books in a short time, which raises suspicions, but is there any other information that suggests he may be a straight shooter.

If he had written two pro-Bush books, would there be any doubt that he is a "straight shooter"?

. . . What percetage is enough: If there's a chance of indicting someone for war crimes, would you still gather the evidence, and conduct an investigation? Hamdan reminds us: Pressure is needed to force fact finding and accountability at home.

The only way to put Iraq into context with the OPD is to rewind back to before 9/11 and remember that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz were staring at Saddam and his oil like schoolboys staring in a candy store window.

Cheney said, "You know, if there's even a one-percent chance that Saddam gives a nuclear device to AQ we've got to treat it as a certainty."

Bush said, "What are we waiting for?"

Do they give a flying fwamper about fiscal responsibility, global warming, hurricanes bearing down on negroes?

So, it's really the One-Percent Candy Store Doctrine.

Insert "After 9/11," at top of 2nd paragraph above.

Kevin, there is an alternative explanation of the 'arc'.

The reality is that Bush/Cheney are purely political beings not real leaders of the people and immediately intended to turn 9-11 into an invasion of IRAQ.

When B/C initially reacted seemingly appropriately to 9-11 and months later did not it is because B/C never changed and were not moved by outside events, they focused on invding IRAQ removing Saddam Hussein and gaining access to IRAQ's oil fields and "fixed" the INTELL around their goal.

is there any other information that suggests he may be a straight shooter?

He's probably not. At least as perceived in the weird world of American conservatism (almost as bizarre a frame as that of the North Koreans) where anything "straight" (Dick Clarke) is seen as bent and the bent (Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity) is seen as "straight."Nope here a bullet's got to follow all the twists and turns, the weird conturbations of this parallel universe in order to be perceived as travelling in a "straight" line. Miss one turn and it's "bent."

My suggestion? Get thee to another dimension.

Oh this is rich. First of all, despite no successful attempts and two thwarted efforts of domestic terrorism, three successful elections, and freely elected representative gov't, a constitution, a 250,000+ military, Saddam on trial and even notes found on Zarqawi stating that the US tactics were effective many agenda-driven people still label this effort "ill-conceived".

Also, GW accepted the responsibilities for the mistakes, exonerating those below him.

And just what I would expect from someone who truly doesn't understand the military. The OPD does indeed mean that if there is one percent chance.......... What it doesn't mean is that the military is the very next option. Why that is effective is because the enemy knows that GW will use the military and the left won't.

"There is not a 1% chance the global warming will have any effect at all!"

It already has.

The odds of terrorist flying planes into the world trade center on the morning of september 11th was well below 1%.

"bin Laden determined to strike in US"

And Bush ignored that...twice,/a>, in fact.

Sweet Jesus...smarter trolls, please!

Sweet Jesus greggy, Clinton ignored actual violence from Al Qaeda, The Khobar Towers and The U.S.S. Cole for two examples. You chastize GW for NOT acting on intelligence re: UBL (within 8 months) but then chastize him again FOR acting on intelligence (compiled over 12 years) re: Saddam.

Let's see now, Clinton had eight years to figure out Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 and GW had less than eight months. Sweet Jesus is about right.

Are you really this stupid?

Are you really this stupid?

These kinds of ad hominem put downs only have any real effect when they preceded by the debater just having dealt out some kind of devastating rebuttal, which clearly has not happened here.

When one uses them time and time again after dishing out the same tiresome, weak-ass boilerplate bullshit, it just makes one look pathetic by highlighting how out of touch they are with their skill level.

Oy.

Bob Church and a couple of others in this thread have touched on this point, which I believe Suskind doesn't give enough weight to - Bush and Cheney were warned in no uncertain terms about an al-Qaeda attack and did nothing. I have to believe Bush was feeling guilt pangs (at least as much guilt as a sociopath can feel), when Andy Card whispered in his ear in that Florida schoolroom "America is under attack". Bush knew, he had to know, almost immediately that all the warnings he had received had been accurate and he had been foolish, no negligent, in not doing something, anything to prevent it. You can see it in his eyes in Farenheit 9-11.

I was supportive of Bush after 9-11 and supported the invasion of Afghanistan - what else could we do? However, when we let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora to invade Iraq and it came out that Bush had been warned in the August 6th, 2001 PDB about bin Laden, my support turned to disgust. When the Downing Street memo was made public, my disgust turned to anger. Now, I have nothing but contempt for these two self-absorbed, greedy and yes, incompetent men who really care a great deal more about their own narrow self-interests than about this great, great country.

Nice try, Kevin, but neither you nor Mr. Suskind's book will inspire one molecule of empathy for George Walker Bush or Richard Bruce Cheney.

Impeach these bastards!!

And never once was there a PDF re: the dire actions Al Qaeda may be planning in the EIGHT YEARS that Cinton occupied the WH EIGHT MONTHS prior to 9/11. Mr. Kriz you expectations are absurd.

You cite incompetence for NOT acting on 40 day old information from the same agency you blame for the getting the information all wrong on Iraq.

That must be some big ass crystal ball you have Mr. hypocrite. Your disengenous partisanship blather is just old tired rhetoric and is the reason the left will lose the next two elections after losing the last three.

PDB, it's late, goodnight.

Based on the simultaneous 20 minute lull in postings from Jay here, and from rdw on the End of Democracy thread, I suspect they have just grunted their way to mutual orgasm.

What's crazy about pursuing the "one percent doctrine" as has the Bush WH is that it typically leads to exactly wrong decisions and actions.

It may seem, for example, as if it makes sense to invade Iraq if there's a 1% probability that it will soon have nuclear arms. Yet what about the downside if it doesn't? What if that war promotes a vastly larger pool of terrorists, who are only MORE likely in the long run to do us greivous harm?

It may seem, as another example, that we should treat every terrorist "threat" as if it's a certainty, even when it's based on totally crappy intelligence. But the downside is that people stop paying attention to warnings of threats, and are little disposed to act effectively when a warning of an authentic threat is issued. In that case, we may again be only more likely to be unprepared when terrorism strikes.

In short, the problem with not treating rational analysis seriously, and subverting it all to some hysterical, unbalanced notion that we're going to treat 1% threats as certainties, is that we do things that are COUNTERproductive -- things that make us more, not less, likely to suffer terrorist acts.

And that has been the tragedy and the farce of Bush WH policy on the war on terrorism.

Cheney aspires to lead a league of Dirty Harrys, but he heads instead a newly recreated variant of the Keystone Kops.

Posted by: Martin Richard on July 6, 2006 at 7:20 PM | PERMALINK

Came to this late so have been reading backwards. This was the first good analysis I came to. Hope there are others earlier.

Only difference is the Keystone Kops were fictional and did no harm. These guys have been doing real damage, home and abroad.

Political leaders have to deal with lots of potentially harmful domestic and international threats daily, many with a greater than 1% chance of occurring. For the vast majority of these threats a military invasion is an inappropriate response.

When you look at all the public and private diplomacy we and several other countries have engaged in with N. Korea in the last three years prior to their test launches this week, it gives us a good idea how eager Bush was to invade Iraq.

In Iraq we had successive teams of inspectors on the ground telling the world there were no WMDs there. We also had a strictly enforced no fly zone and even an economic boycott. Imagine if we had all this in N. Korea, which is currently testing a nuclear missile that theoretically can hit California.

Was there a 1% chance Hussein posed a threat to the US (or Israel) with WMDs? Merely thinking about threatening the US (or Israel) -- even speaking publicly about threatening the US (or Israel) -- may present a 1% chance harm could be done. But what were the chances a threat from Hussein could be carried out? Where was the uranium? Where were the satellite photos of reactor complexes and missile silos? Where were the missile tests?

You don't invade countries, kill tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians and destabilize entire geographic regions on the basis of a 1% threat. The invasion of Iraq was way, way out of proportion to the extent of the threat. Clearly the extent of the threat was fixed to Bush's pre-determined policy.

The issue is leadership, or more precisely the lack thereof. Bush and Cheney don't do statesmanship.

jay is an ignorant bastard, bless his heart.

Does anyone really believe that Bush is a Christian? I sure as hell don't. He just pretends so the rubes will vote for him.

jay:

Your response to my post at 11:20 last evening was what was tired - the predictable, kneejerk, poorly thought-out reactionism that characterizes modern conservatism. In three words - Blame Bill Clinton. The August 6, 2001 PDB was quite explicit about bin Laden's determination to strike within the United States and was on top of warnings Bush had been receiving all summer about al-Qaeda attacks within the U.S., not to mention the Genoa G-8 summit Bush attended where they positioned anti-aircraft guns atop the Italian ministry, fearing terrorist suicide attacks using aircraft as weapons. If you have evidence that Bill Clinton received equally explicit warnings and did nothing, like Bush, please produce them or provide a link.

Clinton did deal with al-Qaeda harshly, including launching cruise missiles after the East Africa embassy attacks, and was villified by the right-wing for doing so. You can't have it both ways.

Your comment about me blaming the CIA for bad intelligence on Iraq is pure whimsy - I have never said anything of the sort. I think the CIA analysts did a good job on their pre-war intelligence analysis of the existence of WMDs in Iraq. The problem is Bush and Cheney either ignored it or manipulated it to suit their agenda. Big difference.

Your comments on this blog make it very clear to everyone that you are the blind partisan. You also have a dismal understanding of history and continue to be an apologist for the worst president in American history. Apparently, party loyalty is more important to you than the future of the United States of America and that is pathetic and base.

Expect to be soundly ignored by me from this point forward, as it is now crystal clear you have nothing meaningful to add and are a foolish and ill-informed man.

Stephen Kriz

The IPCC report pegs a temperature rise of between 1.4-5.5C before the year 2100 at the 95% reliability level. The Bush Admin, employing its famous flexibility, has simply swapped the One Percent Doctrine regarding global warming. Since there's (roughly) a 2.5% chance that the rise in temps will be below 1.4C, there's no need to do anything at all about it.

Recent studies have suggested that earlier models underemphasized some feedback mechanisms and that a rise of 8C is, in fact, well within the 1% reliability level. 8C would merely bring about the collapse of civilization, not our destruction as a a species, so why get upset? A 100-1 shot at the collapse of civilization? Roll them bones and have a nice day.

Oh Mr. Kriz full of your usual tripe this morning.

"the CIA did a good job on the pre-war intelligence analysis of the existence of WMD's in Iraq"

Really? So when Tenet guaranteed that we would find WMD's and Sen. Rockefeller (among others) took that information public, you're now saying they did a good job. I will remember that.

"Clinton did deal with Al Qaeda harshly"
Really? So when the Khobar Towers were bombed, what exactly happened? When the U.S.S. Cole was attacked, what happened again? Had Clinton dealt with Al Qaeda "harshly" he should have had insight into the Cole bombing.

I don't blame Clinton for anything other than maybe being asleep at the wheel. Al Qaeda had been threatening us for decades but according to you, GW was to mobilize an entire nations defense because of ONE of those threats withing a month of receiving that threat, yet in your mind Clinton gets a complete pass for ignoring most warnings for EIGHT years. Good to know, I will remember this.

And I loved your tantrum about not debating with me anymore (how will I survive). Tell you what, why don't you just stay on the sidelines (like the rest of your party) and we'll take it from here. Run along now.

Oh yes, and you're the one that stated that Iraq was a better society under the rule of Saddam. I won't ever forget that.

You know Jeffrey there is a bit of a head-scratcher when it come to "an inconvenient truth". In many of his publicity engagements for the movie, Gore states that he has been giving this presentation for eight years. Yet in the movie, he states that within ten years there will be dramatic consequences of global warming.

So, we're withing two years now of possibly the end of the world?

If that's the case then why even worry what GW's up to?

Jay and Stephen:

I thought Ronald Reagan was the worst President in American history?

I will give Jimmy Carter that honor.

Trying to figure out the Bush administration though the opinion's of George Tenet sounds utterly stupid to me.

All you really need to know is that Bush didn't shake the trees as the 9/11 commissions showed us, or take terrorism seriously pre-9/11 in any manner what-so-ever, no intelligent briefing got in the way of Bush taking a vacation, and remember how Rice couldn't answer that question about exactly WHAT flies it was that Bush actually was "tried of swatting."

George Tenet doesn't tell us why Bill Clinton wanted regime change, or talked about Saddam's WMD, nor why Clinton wanted a preemptive war in Iraq too.

Bush and Cheney are simply unable to adjust to a "long, hard slog," and the war on terror is treading water - Actually the two, in their so called "honorable" approach has made nothing abut a crisis of national policy - as the Washington Post pointed out today.

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"Clinton did deal with Al Qaeda harshly"
Really? So when the Khobar Towers were bombed, what exactly happened?

Hate to burst your bubble, but Iranian-backed terrorists associated with Hizbollah pulled off Khobar towers, not Al-Qaeda.

You remember the Iranians, the guys Reagan sold weapons to so he could fund his Contra buddies?

Yeah that's right Hank, completely unrelated to jihadism. What the Khobar Towers were just a prank?

Next time we'll ask all the jihadists to leave popcorn trails a little closer together so the left might have a chance to see the connectivity of it all.

And if the USS Cole happened eight years into the Clinton presidency and Clinton dealt with Al Qaeda "harshly", how was he not able to prevent that attack?

I find it very amusing how the left accuses all Christians and Republicans of being from the same mold yet can find the minute subtle differences in the jihadists.

I find it very amusing how the left accuses all Christians and Republicans of being from the same mold yet can find the minute subtle differences in the jihadists.

Yes, those "subtle" differences between the ethnic Persian, Farsi speaking, Shiite, state-sponsored Iranians and the ethnic Arab, Arabic speaking, Sunni, stateless Al Qaeda. How do we ever tell them apart?

Jay: I find it very amusing how the left accuses all Christians and Republicans of being from the same mold yet can find the minute subtle differences in the jihadists.

I find it amusing how the Right accuses the "Left" of things they haven't done and even more amusing that Jay continually lies after being caught so many times.

Just goes to show, once a conservative liar, always a conservative liar.

Please don't let this guy jay have the last word here.

Yeah that's right Hank, completely unrelated to jihadism. What the Khobar Towers were just a prank?

Next time we'll ask all the jihadists to leave popcorn trails a little closer together so the left might have a chance to see the connectivity of it all.

And if the USS Cole happened eight years into the Clinton presidency and Clinton dealt with Al Qaeda "harshly", how was he not able to prevent that attack?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to differentiate between Iranian-backed Shiite terrorists and Sunni Al-Qaeda-backed terrorists.

It obviously shows you still don't get the point with your last paragraph. Khobar Towers didn't involve Al-Qaeda, so what does it have to do with the USS Cole?

Is Clinton's "inaction" with the USS Cole any different than Bush's "inaction" with China over the downing of our surveillance plane? Or Bush's "inaction" over North Korea's missiles? Or Iran's nuclear ambitions?

In other words, hindsight works real well in the hands of trolls like yourself, especially when you want to attack Clinton. Just remember that when, a few years down the line, when people ask why Bush didn't deal with a beligerent China, North Korea, or Iran.

Thank you for proving my point Stefan.

Advocate, please cite specific examples of my lies.