The One Percent Doctrine

The One Percent Doctrine

Deep Inside America's Pursuit Of Its Enemies Since 9/11

by Ron Suskind

This book's title comes from the Cheney Doctrine which states, "Even if there's just a one percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty." That's the kind of thinking that got us into Iraq.

This was a really interesting read. It reminded me that Bush was briefed on the possibility of 9/11 the summer before it happened and he told the CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass now," and dismissed him.

It reminded me of how in September of 2001, Richard Clarke told President Bush that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda -- a fact that the Pentagon just confirmed after going through about 600,000 captured official Iraqi documents.

It reminded me that President Bush was briefed that the Afghan warlords who were supposed to block bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora weren't "up to the job," and Bush went with them anyhow.

One of the real shockers in the book for me was that Abu Zubaydah, the guy the CIA captured and President Bush was touting as the "chief of operations" for al-Qaeda was actually certifiably insane. "That's why they let him fly all over the world doing meet and greet. That's why people used his name on all sorts of calls and emails...He knew very little about real operation or strategy. He was expendable," is how the FBI characterized him.

Which brings up torture. Suskind goes into detail about how the CIA tortured several captives, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM),

The traditional models of debriefing, used by both the FBI and CIA, involved the building of a relationship, no matter how long and arduous a process. It's the need for some human contact, some basic comfort, rather than simply the bottomless human fear, which ultimately triumphs. The captive's previous life starts to fade and is slowly replaced by one constructed, often ingeniously, by his captors. This method, which the FBI still recommends, was canceled out by what they did to KSM. That's the gamble. once you do something as horrible as threaten someone's children, and it doesn't work -- there's nowhere else to go.

Suskind also brings up bin Laden's pre-Presidential election message and says the CIA thought the same thing I did, that it "was clearly designed to assist the President's reelection." It's a fact that al-Qaeda wanted four more years of Bush. He was the best thing that ever happened to them, turning a small loose collection of sociological misfits into a global movement.

This was a great dive into the world of anti-al Qaeda covert operations. Ron Suskind is to be commended for bringing it out in book form.