Tuesday, September 05, 2006

One Percent Doctrine

It rained on Labor Day here in northern Illinois. No, scratch that, it poured. No, scratch THAT, it was a deluge!

Up to 10 and 12 inches of rain in just a few hours. Cars washed down the street with the people inside unable to get out because the water was so high up the doors and electric windows didn't work, of course. Fortunately, people came and pulled them out and nobody drowned in what in some cases was a dicey situation.


In the evening we saw, by chance, on PBS, Ron Susskind talking about his book, "The One-percent Doctrine". It took place in late June in a book store on the 5000 block of Connecticut Ave. in DC I knew about him of course, but have never been really acquainted with his views in detail.

He's an awesome speaker and he had pretty terrifying things to say, if you could catch the implication of his words.

In brief, my understanding of Susskind's thesis is that the top of the Bush administration has misused from day one the threat of terror to further political agendas. These agendas have everything to do with power and nothing to do with actually securing us from the danger of a terrorist attack. The public is being kept in the dark and misinformed about things which, as citizens of a democratic republic we have every right to know.

All of these things both you and I have known for a long time. True, it's not something one hears or reads about in the mainstream news, but I suppose that is because of the right-wing media's liberal bias.

Susskind gave some anecdotes which I had not heard before, at least not in such detail. He claims, with some reasons given, that the scale of the threat is even worse than I had imagined even in my nightmares.

The implication, combined with the way the administration has handled the "War on Terror" for personal gain, is that the scale of the coming attack will destroy our democracy, not because of the damage, although great, but because of the ignorance, the avarice and the instruments of power already in place.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

(It's JamesRaven. BloggerBeta still isn't active with all blogs yet.)

I read Susskind's book. It kicks ass. Best quote was was this one:

"We've known for years now that George W. Bush received a presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, in which he was warned: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." We've known for almost as long that Bush went fishing afterward.

What we didn't know is what happened in between the briefing and the fishing, and now Suskind is here to tell us. Bush listened to the briefing, Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Chuck Cliff said...

LOL, in Suskind's talk on PBS, he told this anecdote in some detail, giving a rather good Bush imitation which would have been funny had it not been for the tragic consequences.

Similarly,imho, the talk was really about the tragic consequences to follow upon the evisceration of the intelligence services, especialy the CIA.