The One Percent Doctrine (book 2006)
The One Percent Doctrine. Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 by Ron Suskind was released by publisher Simon & Schuster on June 20, 2006 (ISBN 0743271092).
TIME Magazine published an excerpt of Suskind's One Percent Doctrine on June 19, 2006.
Publisher's Description
Publisher Simon & Shuster writes: "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists -- a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.
"You may think you know what the 'war on terror' is. But to know it truly, you must read this book.
"Suskind has written a riveting work of narrative nonfiction, filled with exclusive, historically significant disclosures that will echo across America and the world.
"What is the guiding principle of the world's most powerful nation as it searches for enemies at home and abroad? The One Percent Doctrine is the deeply secretive core of America's real playbook: a default strategy, designed by Dick Cheney, that separates America from its moorings, and has driven everything -- from war in Afghanistan to war in Iraq to the global search for jihadists.
"The story begins on September 12, 2001, the day America began to gather itself for a response to the unimaginable. Ultimately, that reply would shape the nation's very character.
"Suskind tells us what actually occurred over the next three years, from the inside out, by tracing the steps of the key actors -- the notables, from the President and Vice President to George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice, who oversee the 'war on terror' and report progress to an anxious nation; and the invisibles, the men and women just below the line of sight, left to improvise plans to defeat a new kind of enemy in an hour-by-hour race against disaster. The internal battles between these two teams -- one, under the hot lights; the other, actually fighting the fight -- reveal everything about what America faces, and what it has done, in this age of terror.
"Who is actually running U.S. foreign policy? Is there an operational cell, armed with WMDs, inside the United States? Have some of the world's most dangerous terrorists -- including leaders of al Qaeda -- been caught and accidentally released? Can America prevail in this struggle against enemies who are patient, ingenious, certain, and have clear tactical advantage?
"With his unparalleled access to senior officials, past and present, Ron Suskind -- author of The Price of Loyalty[: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill (ISBN 0743255461) September 2004], the most revealing book yet written on the Bush administration -- finally answers the questions that keep Americans awake at night.
"And in this startling book, he reframes the debates that roil the globe."
Review
From Publishers Weekly: "Starred Review. In this troubling portrait of the war on terror, America's intelligence agencies confront not just al-Qaeda but the Bush administration's politicized incompetence. Journalist Suskind (The Price of Loyalty) follows the triumphs and failures of the 'invisibles'â??the counterterrorism experts at the NSA, the FBI and especially the CIAâ??as they painstakingly track terrorists' communications and financial transactions, interrogate prisoners and cultivate elusive al-Qaeda informants. Unfortunately, he contends, their meticulous intelligence-sifting went unappreciated by administration policymakers, especially Dick Cheney, who formulated an overriding 'one percent' doctrine: threats with even a 1% likelihood must be treated as certainties. The result was 'the severing of fact-based analysis from forceful response,' most glaringly in the trumped-up alarm over Iraqi WMDs. In dramatizing the tensions between CIA professionals and White House ideologues, Suskind makes his sympathies clear: CIA chief George Tenet, pressured to align intelligence with administration policy, emerges as a tragic fall guy, while President Bush comes off as a dunce and a bully, likened by some observers to a ventriloquist's dummy on Cheney's knee. Suskind's novelistic scene-settingâ??'Condi looked up, impatiently'â??sometimes meanders. But he assembles perhaps the most detailed, revealing account yet of American counterterrorism efforts and a hard-hitting critique of their direction. (June 20 [2006])" Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. As posted on Amazon.com. [1]
Related SourceWatch Resources
External links
- "The One Percent Doctrine" at RonSuskind.com.
- Dan Froomkin, "The Cheney Supremacy," Washington Post, June 19, 2006.
- Michiko Kakutani, "Personality, Ideology and Bush's Terror Wars," New York Times, June 20, 2006.
- "Inside the War on Terror: 'The One Percent Doctrine'," NPR, June 20, 2006.
- Barton Gellman, "The Shadow War, In a Surprising New Light," Washington Post, June 20, 2006.
