Bookraft

The fundamental problem confronting the US is that the executive team in power is devoted to one task and one task only - achieving and holding power over all other considerations including good governance. Thus George Bush united with Karl Rove, DickCheney and an inner circle of likeminded players have devoted their not inconsiderable swiftboat political skills to achieving an executive dynasty over all else. Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty and now The One Percent Doctrine examines the inner workings of such a cabal and what has been its modus operandi. Suskind has what many writers and reporters seemingly would die for - almost unfettered and remarkably candid access to major players in the Bush administration.

The One Percent Doctrine refers to Dick Cheney's arguments that "if there was even a 1 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 is brinkmanship policy making that does not allow for measured response and appropriate targeting that has lead to the debacle that is Iraq and increasingly Afghanistan, plus the counter-reaction - nuclear brinkmanship from Iran and North Korea.

Suskind explores again the extraction of extreme loyalty to a core set of political beliefs linked with incomplete presidential briefings allowing for plausible deniability (Bush's "who could connect the dots on 9/11" is afforded by the fact that National Security Advisor Condeleeza Rice sat for at least 6 weeks prior to 9/11 on the presidential briefing that would have allowed the dots to come more sharply into focus and then is repeated by Bush's "who could have predicted the dikes would be breeched by Katrina"). Suskind then matches these ruses to the One Percent Policy.

The One Percent Policy allows use of the unthinkable but highly improbable events (Terrorist get their hands on some 24Hours WMD device) to trump all other policy, analysis and strategic thinking other than that proposed by the Inner Circle. The Inner Circle then deploys Extreme Loyalty to enforce the operationalizing of such blindered policies. Thus these policies allow for the invasion of Iraq without enough troops to secure the country which in turn leads to the current Civil War quagmire - but Extreme Loyalty allows for no critical analysis of the previous or current shortcomings in Iraq decisionmaking "because it contributes to the enemy's cause in the War on Terror".

Given a mounting set of books from Richard Clarke, James Risen , and Michael Gordon among others, Suskind's factual-thriller hopefully adds the convicting evidence that will allow the American public to connect the dots to see how incompetent the current administration is and vote accordingly. They should not let the Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress to persist because they have been instrumental in affording the administration unbridled leeway to excess:
Disaster relief disasters; attacks on rule of law in war and at home; spendthrift trillionizing of the National Debt; inflaming partisanship over divisive gun, flag burning, gay rights, civil libertarian and other exacerbating issues; concerted stripping away of citizens rights to privacy; no accountability for disasterous policymaking, etc, etc.
Only a relatively short time will tell if the US public can be War-on-Terror and "All Politics is Local Politics" duped again.

(c)JBSurveyer 2006