Bush, the not quite ready "war" president and the One Percent Doctrine

George W. Bush, the worst president in American history, has been whining in various interviews that he wasn't ready to be a war president and that he would not have invaded Iraq if he had had better intelligence.

That, of course, is unmitigated bullshit!

George W. Bush loved playing the role of a war president. It wasn't that he wasn't ready, hell, he auditioned for the role and staged the whole thing. Just put him in a flight suit and he'd strut like a bantam rooster for all the world to see, a warrior in pretense, if not in fact.


And the problem he had was not bad intelligence. The intelligence was good. He just didn't want to hear it and didn't listen to it.

The problem was not even bad evidence. The problem was there was NO evidence that Saddam had done the things that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the neocons wished he had done in order to justify an invasion of Iraq.


None of this mattered ultimately, however, because of the Cheney doctrine which by the spring of 2003 had become the default of the Bush administration. The Cheney doctrine and what it meant for American foreign policy has been dealt with in clear and concise detail in Ron Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine [Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006].

To put it succinctly: The One Percent Doctrine as developed by Dick Cheney meant that if there was a one percent chance that a country might attack or harm the United States, the United States would be justified in taking preemptive action against that country.

In other words, evidence no long mattered. That's why the whole debate relative to Saddam's WMDs was a smoke screen. Nobody in the Bush administration cared whether Saddam had WMDs. They could make their case without that on the basis of the One Percent Doctrine. There was at least a one percent chance that Saddam was a threat to the United States. Therefore, blow the son-of-a-bitch up!


Here's a section of Suskind's book:

"Part of the default of this presidency is that Cheney is the global thinker of the pair. Usually, presidents fill this role .... Bush has sweeping ideas, some born of strong personal or religious beliefs, like bringing freedom to the world, or spreading democracy, or ending terror. Those are hopes--grand ones, common to the urges of many people--but not policies, or hard assessments of a nation and its place in the world.

"That part is Cheney's job. ...

"The Iraq war was launched, in large measure, from the left brain of the Vice President. The prospect of Saddam having destructive weapons and giving them to a terrorist is, in fact, 'a low-probability, high-impact event' that, despite the paucity of hard evidence of weaponry or al Qaeda links, would certainly meet a one percent probability threshold. So, the doctrine states, it must be treated 'as a certainty' in 'our reaction.' The minions fussing over evidence, or the lack thereof, in the lead-up to the war were missing the point. ...

"'Making a case for war' fell under public relations, under marketing, not R&D ..." [p. 213]


George wanted desperately, needed even, to be a war president, and to be a "better" war president than his daddy had been. Iraq offered the perfect outlet to satisfy this want, this need. With the right PR and the Cheney doctrine, there would be no stopping him. He'd take Iraq, bring Saddam down, and turn that Middle Eastern pile of sand into a democracy just like the good ol' US of A.

More importantly, perhaps, is that he would secure the Iraqi oil fields for his buddies in the bidness. He could also ease the fears of the Saudis that Iraqi oil would end up in the "wrong" hands.

He would be a hero!


Everything went wrong, of course, almost from the beginning and it's gone downhill from there. That's the trouble with a pretend war president who is essentially involved in playing a role, the script of which he forgot to read, in a war that he has staged which proceeds to tumble out into the real world to become a nightmare of death and destruction with global repercussions.

But he can't avoid the judgment of history or perhaps a world court by pretending he wasn't ready or that he had been given bad intelligence.

For the first time in his life, George W. Bush may actually have to answer for his actions. Neither his daddy nor his rich Saudi friends will be able to bail him out this time. He will stand before the bar of judgment alone.

Maybe he can appear costumed in a flight suit.