"If somehow the contents of the NIE were revealed, the White House could say that the report was too cumbersome and that Bush had only read the one-page NIE summary."
But the brief NIE summary provided to Bush did not contain the host of caveats and demurrers and doubts about whether Iraq had WMD or whether Saddam had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium in Africa or whether Mohammed Atta had really met with Iraqis in Prague. In short, Cheney, who had been gung-ho for years about attacking Iraq, kept Bush in the dark about the various intelligence agencies' doubts about the reasons for going to war.
However, Suskind makes clear that Bush -- perhaps the most incurious and intellectually vacuous president in recent American history -- chose to not know too much; he was content to follow Cheney's lead. If Bush were to be fully informed -- in other words, if realistic facts were to be presented to him -- such "information might undercut the confidence he has in certain sweeping convictions." How delicately put.
THE DISASTROUS "ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE"
Cheney is equally devious and tenacious when it comes to domestic policy, with his fingers in all the power pies, usually through his then-chief of staff (and now convicted felon) Scooter Libby, another dedicated neo-conservative who loves pulling strings behind the scenes.
Cheney long has been a true believer in unrestricted executive power. Even moreso during the current reign of Bush the Younger, since Cheney is the one who effectively exercises the decision-making and action-prerogatives of the Chief Executive, especially in foreign and military matters. (And yet he has the gall to tell the American people he's not part of the Executive Branch!)
It was Cheney's "one percent doctrine" that underlay virtually every option taken in the U.S., and outside as well, in the "war on terror." Cheney's philosophy in that doctrine rested on his belief, that "a one percent chance of catastrophe must be treated 'as a certainty' where firm evidence, of either intent or capability, is too high a threshold; where the doctrine is, in essence, prevention based on suspicion."
Since there always is some slight chance of catastrophe in any undertaking, Cheney's doctrine -- which has become the ruling prism through which all Administration action is viewed -- effectively translates to permanent autocratic rule. That doctrine guarantees that the all-powerful Executive Branch can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, under the one-percent "war on terror" umbrella, turning the Constitution into a "quaint," useless document. Those who oppose Cheney and his doctrine are, ipso facto, supporters of the catastrophe trying to be averted -- traitors at worst, dupes at best.
THE "REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY"
No wonder Democrats and others have such trouble finding an opening to effectively attack Cheney and Bush. Those guys have created a tautological, self-justifying circular philosophy that operates off their own sense of justified action.
Thus, we get the notorious assertion by a White House official to Suskind: "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' ... 'That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality'." ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/22/1415/5817 )
When Cheney says that there's a one percent chance of catastrophe that needs to be treated "as a certainty, not in our analysis or the preponderance of evidence but in our response," Suskind writes, he "officially separates analysis from action, allows for an evidence-free model to move forward, and says suspicion may be all we have to use the awesome powers of the United States."
"This defines events, episodes, incidents all the way to now, moving forward from that point -- Iraq, Afghanistan, the global war on terror. What's fascinating about it is that people have different names for it inside of the upper reaches of the government -- the 1% rule, the Cheney doctrine -- but it allowed the United States to essentially operate in an evidence-free realm, using the extraordinary forces at our disposal. And we all know the countless outcomes of that, which the U.S. now is embarrassed by."
ABSENCE OF POLICY APPARATUS
There has been no effective Congressional oversight of the highly secretive Executive Branch, nor has there been any effective counterbalancing going on inside the White House when it comes to the creation and evaluation of policy.
Normally an administration has two active arms: operations and policy. One group debates and comes up with the policy, the operational guys execute the policy. But, from day one of the Bush Administration, there was virtually no White House policy apparatus to speak of. Operations were most often ad hoc, flowing from the tightest circles around Cheney and Rove and Rumsfeld, but especially from Cheney. (The State Department did have a bone fide policy apparatus, but Rumsfeld and Cheney ignored Secretary Powell and State whenever possible.)
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
