Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The One Percent Doctrine: Part One

by tristero

One of the most remarkable things about Run Suskind’s remarkable new book, The One Percent Doctrine, is what he omits. The book focuses a good deal on Tenet’s role in the post 9/11 period and is loaded with serious new indictments of the Bush administration’s incompetence. But Suskind’s book, at least for me is just as relevant to understanding the pre-9/11 Bush administration.

Let’s start – I hope to write a series of posts on this terrific book and urge all of you to buy and read it – with the one percent doctrine itself. It’s November, 2001 in the Situation Room, during a meeting with Cheney, Rice, Tenet, and a CIA briefer. They are reviewing some of the new intelligence. Suskind writes (p.61):

Cheney sat for a moment, saying nothing. “We have to deal with this threat is a way we haven’t yet defined,” he said, almost to himself. “With a low-probability, high-impact event like this….I’m frankly not sure how we engage. We’re going to have to look at it in a completely different way…

“If there’s a one percent 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,” Cheney said. He paused to assess his declaration. “It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence,” he added. “It’s about our response.”

So now spoken, it stood: a standard of action that would frame events and responses from the administration for years to come. The Cheney Doctrine. Even if there’s just a one percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it’s a certainty. It’s not about “our analysis,” as Cheney said. It’s about “our response.” This doctrine – the one percent solution – divided what had largely been indivisible in the conduct of American foreign policy: analysis and action. Justified or not, fact-based or not, “our response” is what matters. As to “evidence,” the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn’t apply. If there was even a one 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. This was a mandate of extraordinary breadth. Everyone sat for a moment, rolling it over in their minds, sketching the implications.

The one-percent doctrine, the Cheney Doctrine. From here, Suskind will immediately begin detailing all the incredibly bad decisions that immediately followed from its acceptance. If there’s even a one-percent chance that, say, an Iraqi agent met Atta in Prague, treat it as a certainty…and respond.

Since Suskind only reports on events post 9/11, he lets readers draw their own conclusions. Most importantly he doesn’t mention, but he surely realizes, that during the summer of 2001, and the spring before that, the highest levels of the Bush administration treated a high-probability, high-impact event – an imminent al Qaeda terrorist attack in the US – as if it had a one percent chance of occurring and did nothing. In Bush’s words (page 2) to a CIA briefer that August who interrupted his vacation to impress upon Bush how serious the threat was,

“All right, you’ve covered your ass, now.”

Let’s look a little closer at how “one percent thinking” may inform Bush administration behavior from the getgo. In fact, contrary to what Cheney asserts, it’s pretty clear that a one-percent doctrine was in place from Day One of the Bush administration. And, while focusing on threats they had been told were highly improbable (such as Saddam funding WMD terrorist attacks against the US), they missed the highly probable, going so far as to marginalize, deliberately, many of those who were warning them the loudest about imminent al Qaeda attacks (John O’Neill and Richard Clarke are only two of the most prominent).

In other words, the one-percent doctrine, in force from the beginning of the Bush era, failed to prevent 9/11, as it has failed to make the world any safer since. And it will continue to fail for a very simple reason: The one percent docrtrine is not based on anything resembling consensual reality.

It is hard escaping the conclusion that the Cheney Doctrine, the one percent solution is utterly irrational. Although Suskind probably wouldn’t go this far, I see it as the muddled reasoning of panicked cowards who have no business commanding the most powerful armed forces in the world. Ever.

There’s more, much more. But let’s stop here for now.

[Edited slightly after original posting.]

Unbelievable

by digby

This is such a shocking bit of lazy, bass-ackwards journalism that it requires a deluge of letters to the NY Times. The reporter and the editor should be called on the carpet.

If anyone ever doubted that the press operates from a scripted narrative, here’s your proof.

Update: McJoan at Kos has more on this reporter’s kewl kid proclivities.

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TheirSpace

A bipartisan group of prominent political strategists this past week announced an Internet information venture designed to interact with America’s opinion leaders and serve as an antidote to the right-left clash that typifies political discourse on the Web.

The site, called Hotsoup.com, will debut in October and will be edited by Ron Fournier, former chief political writer for The Associated Press.

Hotsoup is the brainchild of some of the best-known practitioners of partisan politics in Washington, including Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, and Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton and a senior adviser to Democratic Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Despite their political backgrounds and distinct party affiliations, Hotsoup founders said the site will provide a nonpartisan forum not just for politics, but for topics ranging from science to popular culture, from business to current affairs.

The effort is ambitious and risky, using the Internet to create an online social network similar to the popular teenage Web retreat MySpace.com.

Web site aims to be MySpace for politicians

“I Would Leave The Tube In”

by digby

Reason #5677

“You would have kept the tube in?” asked NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert.

Lieberman, a Demcoratic U.S. senator from Connecticut who ran as his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2000, replied, “I would have kept the tube in.”

The exchange began when Russert mentioned Lieberman’s Republican House colleague, Rep. Christopher Shays.

Shays said he believed the GOP would suffer “repercussions” from voting last week to try to get the brain-damaged Florida woman’s feeding tube replaced.

“This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy. … There are going to be repercussions from this vote [on Schiavo’s constitutional rights],” Shays said. “There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them.”

Russert asked Lieberman if he “agreed” with that statement.

“I don’t,” Lieberman said. And though he said Shays’ statement was “a very credible and respectable opinion, the fact is that, though I know a lot of people’s attitude toward the Schiavo case and other matters is affected by their faith and their sense of what religion tells them about morality, ultimately as members of Congress, as judges, as members of the Florida state Legislature, this is a matter of law. And the law exists to express our values.

“I have been saying this in speeches to students about why getting involved in government is so important. I always say the law is where we define the beginning of life and the end of life, and that’s exactly what was going on here,” Lieberman continued.

“And I think as a matter of law, if you go – particularly to the 14th Amendment, [you] can’t be denied due process, have your life or liberty taken without due process of law, that though the Congress’ involvement here was awkward, unconventional, it was justified to give this woman, more than her parents or husband, the opportunity for one more chance before her life was terminated by an act which was sanctioned by a court, by the state.”

Lieberman added, “These are very difficult decisions, but – of course, if you ask me what I would do if I was the Florida Legislature or any state legislature, I’d say that if somebody doesn’t have a living will and the next of kin disagree on whether the person should be kept alive or that is whether food and water should be taken away and her life ended – that really the benefit of the doubt ought to be given to life.”

In conclusion, Lieberman said, “The family member who wants to sustain her life ought to have that right because the judge really doesn’t know, though he heard the facts, one judge, what Terri Schiavo wanted. He made a best guess based on the evidence before him. That’s not enough when you’re talking about aggressively removing food and water to end someone’s life.”

“You would have kept the tube in?” asked NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert.

Lieberman replied, “I would have kept the tube in.”

Lieberman grossly misrepresented the legal issues and endorsed the novel conservative theory that a married adult’s parents should have equal say in these situations as his or her spouse — but that doesn’t make him a bad guy, right? And while the vast majority of Americans may have disagreed with this outrageous government intrusion (that he mildly calls “unconventional”) you can’t really hold it against him. He’s a man of integrity with deep religious beliefs. Just like these people:

Randall Terry must have been so pleased.

With all that talk about the law choosing when life begins and ends, how long before Joe switches on abortion? He’s hedging on birth control already. It’s only a matter of time…

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An All-Too-Brief 992 Pages

by tristero

Christmas is coming early this year:

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

More Rightwing Rapture

by digby

Jesus’ General posted some excerpts from a freeper thread celebrating the deaths of Lebanese children. The posts are as disturbing as you might imagine. I clicked over to see if there were any protests of this callousness. Surprisingly enough, there are sometimes a few freepers with a slight conscience who step into these psycho-threads and try to pull people back from the brink.

Not this time. It’s one sick comment after the other. Like this:

To quote Tom Quick, Avenger of the Delaware, following dashing the head of an Indian baby on a rock, “From nits come lice”.

and this:

boo friggin hoo.

just eliminating future terrorists IMO.

Between the rapturous arab children death cult and the cult of the rapture, it appears that a significant portion of the American rightwing are decending into some sort of crazed, bloodlust fantasy about events in the middle east. What’s up with this?

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Look Ma …

Think back to when you were young, say five or six, maybe seven; whenever it was that you first learned to ride a bike. Remember how you finally got the hang of it, but things were still a little shaky; and then, SHIT, as you took one hand off the handlebars to wave at someone you lost control of the bike? OK — hold that image in your mind and click here.

Paper Heroes

by digby

James Wolcott makes an observation that in a sane world would not be necessary. In this world it cannot be made enough. He quotes wingnut historian Victor Davis Hanson:

“But we shouldn’t forget that the global village gets back to normal only after a Shane or Marshall Will Cane [sic: Kane] is willing to take on the outlaws alone and save those who can’t or won’t save themselves. So, remember, when, to everyone’s relief, such mavericks put down their six-shooters and ride off into the sunset, the killers often creep back into town.”

Wolcott says:

First of all, it’s embarrassing for a historian of any stature to seal his arguments with Hollywood citations. Alan Ladd’s Shane and Gary Cooper’s marshall in High Noon were fictional heroes whose success in the final showdowns were preordained in the script; their relevance to the policy decisions of a prime minister or president is nil.

I’m reminded of a story I heard about Kirk Gibson after he made his famous home run in the 1988 world series. Some sportswriter asked him if he thought he really was better than Roy Hobbs in “The Natural.” Gibson replied, “Of course I am, Hobbs is a fictional character.”

It seems to me that a lot of people on the right really don’t understand that distinction. I don’t know whether it’s a pathetic attempt to appear “hip” or whether they really think it makes sense.

I understand that people need myths and stories and narrative to understand their world and blah, blah, blah. But this is something else and it’s so pervasive among wingnuts that I have to think they really do forget that movies, books, comics and the like are controlled not by real world events, but the imaginations of those who write them. This Hollywood notion of heroic Uncle Sam fighting for truth and justice permeates the right’s mythology to such an extent that even Condoleeza Rice ends up blurting out things like “how could any German say such a thing after all the United States had done to liberate Germany from Hitler?”

It’s like the country is being run by trekkies.

Update: No offense meant to Trekkies’, merely noting that some of them seem to believe that Star Trek is real rather than fictional. (Not all! Just some.)

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Setting Back The Cause

by digby

Fox News, May 7, 2004

Some Democrats are calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign amid controversy surrounding pictures depicting U.S. military personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners outside of Baghdad.

But others say the demand for pink slips is merely politics in an election year when Democrats are hoping to oust President Bush.

“The Congress will politicize this, will spend too much time investigating it,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., told Fox News. “The other danger is, the administration will be defensive about this instead of being aggressive … This has been a setback for our cause.”

[…]

Lieberman told Fox News that the calls for Rumsfeld’s ouster are a distraction from the larger picture.

“We’re in the middle of a war — you wouldn’t want to have the secretary of defense change unless there’s really good reason for it and I don’t see any good reason at this time,” Lieberman said.

But the senator said it’s imperative to get to the bottom of what happened as soon as possible.”Let’s flush it all out, clean it up and get back to the war on terrorism,” Lieberman continued.

For a guy who considers himself one of the moral guardians of the nation he sure has a high tolerance for torture, abuse and humiliation. They certainly “flushed it all out,” “cleaned up” Abu Ghraib and moved on, didn’t they? And keeping Rumsfeld has really been just great for “the cause.” (Characterizing oversight as “politicizing” has worked out really well too.)

It occurs to me as I read that article (with ever increasing anger) that this was a defining moment for Lieberman and perhaps it gets to the heart of why the visceral resentment among Democrats is so strong. Here’s a man whose reputation rests upon his moral rectitude and he could not see that the horror of Abu Ghraib was a sign of abject immorality (and failed leadership) that required condemnation of the chain of command that endorsed it. How could this be?

This was, after all a man who said this in 1998 about the moral dangers presented by the president having had an extramarital affair:

I have come to this floor many times in the past to speak with my colleagues about my concerns, which are widely-held in this chamber and throughout the nation, that our society’s standards are sinking, that our common moral code is deteriorating, and that our public life is coarsening. In doing so, I have specifically criticized leaders of the entertainment industry for the way they have used the enormous influence they wield to weaken our common values. And now because the President commands at least as much attention and exerts at least as much influence on our collective consciousness as any Hollywood celebrity or television show, it is hard to ignore the impact of the misconduct the President has admitted to on our children, our culture and our national character.

[…]

Such behavior is not just inappropriate. It is immoral. And it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family, particularly to our children, which is as influential as the negative messages communicated by the entertainment culture.

[…]

I am afraid that the misconduct the President has admitted may be reinforcing one of the most destructive messages being delivered by our popular culture –namely that values are essentially fungible. And I am afraid that his misconduct may help to blur some of the most important bright lines of right and wrong left in our society.

That was such a stirring appeal to our national values and our morals. The president lied about a sexual affair and the details were splashed all over the media by Republicans withchunters, using the legal system as a partisan tool. Yet Joe felt he had to speak out against the president on this because the nation’s moral authority was at stake and the president’s misbehavior was sending a bad message to the nation’s youth.

Abu Ghraib, on the other hand, didn’t even deserve a GOP kangaroo congressional investigation or a call for the firing of the man who was in charge when it happened because it might make the administration “less aggressive” in the future.

Joe’s very first statement about the Abu Ghraib revelations on the floor of the Senate was this weaselly peroration:

Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military.

I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized.

And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody.

So it’s part of — wrongs occurred here, by the people in those pictures and perhaps by people up the chain of command.

But Americans are different. That’s why we’re outraged by this. That’s why the apologies were due.

Yes, by all means let’s pat ourselves on the back for being better than terrorists. That is, after all, the guage by which we now judge our morality in the Great GWOT.

He was also only one of six Dem senators, and the only one from a Blue State, who voted for the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales. He made another of his memorable speeches on his behalf:

As I look back post-September 11, what seems to be in Judge Gonzales’s memo and memos submitted by the State Department, by the Defense Department and others, there is a very serious and classically American debate going on about how to handle al Qaeda and the Taliban – prisoners taken from their membership. And what is the relevance of the Geneva Convention to those people? It is the argument of a nation that cares about the rule of law.

You can agree with Judge Gonzales’s position in this matter or not. I happen to agree with the ultimate decision made. And the decision was, in my opinion, a reasonable one, and ultimately a progressive one.

This was February 5, 2005 long after it was well known that torture, sexual humiliation and abuse had taken place in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. And it was well known that many of these prisoners were not terrorists. That was where George Bush’s policies, under the guidance of Alberto Gonzales, had led — and everybody knew it.

On marital infidelity, Joe Lieberman, moral conscience of the Democratic party, is uncompromising. On torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners he sees shades of gray. From where I sit, Joe Lieberman’s failure to publicly and resolutely condemn this torture regime, (much less vote to reward those who instigated it) puts the lie to his claim to moral superiority and personal integrity. A man who cannot see unequivocally that torture is wrong cannot be a moral leader. I resent the fact that he seems to believe that he’s entitled to the benefits of that reputation when he has proven he is actually little more than a puritanical sexual scold — on the big moral question of the day he has fallen very, very short.

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There He Goes Again

by digby

During a joint news conference Saturday in St. Petersburg, Bush said he raised concerns about democracy in Russia during a frank discussion with the Russian leader.

“I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there’s a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same,” Bush said.

To that, Putin replied, “We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly.”

No shit.

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