One Per Cent
Ron Susskind has a new book out, The One Per Cent Doctrine. I haven't read it, and probably won't, but according to Bryan Burrough's review in the New York Times,
Burrough, who manages the anatomically improbable feat of keeping his lips firmly pressed to Bush, Cheney, and Susskind's butts all at the same time, doesn't mention it, but while Cheney and friends had their minds focussed on one per cent threats, a whole Armada of 70, 80, 90, and 95 per cent threats sailed up behind them. The most obvious and widely predicted threat was that the Iraq adventure would go bad, leaving Iran largely in control of a Middle East in chaos - something that is already happening. Other threats like our potentially catastropic balance of payments mess, the loss of American moral authority and even respectability in the World, and pending environmental calamities were ignored while they have swelled to gigantic proportions.
Meanwhile they have presided over one of the most corrupt and incompetent governments in American history.
I expect that there is less than a one per cent chance that these criminals will be brought before a court to answer for their crimes, but I can still dream, can't I?
The "one percent doctrine” is [Cheney's], a mandate that any threat that bears even a 1 percent chance of being real must be treated as real. This is a profound shift in thinking, Suskind tells us, and leads to American action, as in Iraq, in which force is deployed where there is only the slightest chance of a true threat.
Burrough, who manages the anatomically improbable feat of keeping his lips firmly pressed to Bush, Cheney, and Susskind's butts all at the same time, doesn't mention it, but while Cheney and friends had their minds focussed on one per cent threats, a whole Armada of 70, 80, 90, and 95 per cent threats sailed up behind them. The most obvious and widely predicted threat was that the Iraq adventure would go bad, leaving Iran largely in control of a Middle East in chaos - something that is already happening. Other threats like our potentially catastropic balance of payments mess, the loss of American moral authority and even respectability in the World, and pending environmental calamities were ignored while they have swelled to gigantic proportions.
Meanwhile they have presided over one of the most corrupt and incompetent governments in American history.
I expect that there is less than a one per cent chance that these criminals will be brought before a court to answer for their crimes, but I can still dream, can't I?
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