The One Percent Doctrine

[John of Phoenix]

Ron Suskind's new book "The One Percent Doctrine" sounds very interesting. And quite disturbing.

Remember that al Qaeda big shot Abu Zubaydah the White House was bragging about nabbing a few years ago? Turns out he was nothing but a two bit bag man and schizophrenic to boot. Three terrorists in there it turns out. They hauled him to one of those prisons that don't exist and when they tortured him into telling about the next targets... well, read this article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901211.html

Way to go Mr. Suskind. I'm off to get a copy of your book.

[Meerkat]

So many books have come down the pike about the Bush administration. But most haven't lived up to the hype, even if they were nonetheless well-written and informative. But this new book by Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine, sounds like it may be a sleeper, as it were.
First, full disclosure: I haven't gotten my hands on a copy yet. But from what I've read over the last day or so, I'll probably try to pick up a copy as soon as I can. Check out what's revealed in Bart Gellman's review of Suskind's book in today's Post.
Remember Abu Zubaydah, supposedly al Qaida's 'Chief of Operations' who was nabbed in Pakistan in March 2002?
From Gellman's review ...

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality." Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.
...
"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

"I said he was important. You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?"
That's the president.

-- Josh Marshall

[LeeG]

Actually Kat many books have lived up to the hype.

People don't care.

9/11=Al Qaeda=Iraq

We managed standing against 10,000 Russian nukes,,but we're mortally threatened by Iraq,,a few hundred jihadists will take over the US

"AAAAHHHHHHH protect me prezdent"

[Meerkat]

Lee; Those were Josh Marshall's words, not mine.

[John of Phoenix]

This is the document that earned the comment, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."