By now we all know about Dick Cheney's 1% Doctrine: If there's a 1 % chance that a terrorist threat can occur, we need to treat it as if it will occur. Although I personally think Dubya was trigger happy to shotgun for Iraq because Saddam had attempted an assassination on his daddy, Cheney apparently was trigger happy to shotgun for Iraq based on his self-acclaimed 1 % Doctrine. The Iraq War was essentially started as a Budweiser induced hunting trip.
In Cheney's mind, there was a 1% chance that Saddam would nuke us, therefore the logical and only conclusion was to treat Saddam as if he was definately going to nuke us. This is why of course they were OK with lying about the WMD (the rest of us wouldn't understand the inherent wisdom of the 1% doctrine, so instead of telling it like it was and saying that there was a 1% chance that saddam had WMD, us dummies had to be hoodwinked into this wisdom by lying to us that saddam had WMDs without any percentage of doubt (even if in reality there could have been 99 percentage points of doubt.)
One of the problems with such Budweiser induced logic is, of course, no one took into account the percetage points of the probability of terrorism blowback. How many terrorists have been created because of our unilateral hunting expedition? And how many of these terrorists created "over there" will come "here" and present a 1% terrorist threat?
Well, a poll of worldwide opinion from half a year ago shows that "in 33 of 35 countries surveyed, the most common view is that the war in Iraq has increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks around the world. On average, 60 percent of the respondents have this perception, while just 12 percent think the Iraq war has decreased the likelihood of terrorist attacks; another 15 percent think it has had no effect either way.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Additionally, what are the chances that the opportunity costs associated with the Iraq War (the projected 2 trillion the Iraq War will end up costing, spent other ways) http://www.csmonitor.com/... missed will present many other 1% terrorist threats, since we've been fighting them over there rather than here?
http://www.americanprogress.org/...
Well that article at American Progress is really lowballing the costs way under the CS Monitor's 2 trillion figure. But the points made are the important thing. American Progress uses a 144.4 billion spent figure (they didn't include all costs as CS Monitor does, and the American Progress article is from two years ago,) so we need to multiply the opportunity costs tallied by American Progress by 13.
Here are the results of doing that multiplication:
Opportunity Costs of the Iraq War - What we Could be Spending Dick and George's Iraq War Expenditures on Instead
--------------------------------------------------------
* Safeguarding our Ports - 97 billion
* Upgrading the Coast Guard - 52 billion
* Improve cargo security - 26 billion
* Protect US Airliners From Shoulder Fired Missiles -
130 billion
* Purchase state of the art airport baggage screening machines - 65 billion
* Purchase airport walk-through explosives detectors - 3 billion
* Put 1 million, 300 thousand police officers on the streets for five years (@ 91 billion)
* Increase funding to fire departments - 32 billion
* Integrate emergency services radio systems - 4 1/2 billion
* Secure major metro area roads and rails - 39 billion
* Secure the worlds nuclear fissile material - 396 billion
* Accelerate Nunn-Lugar Russian/American nuke warhead deactivation- 29 billion
* Fund an increase in military special forces soldiers from 25,000 to 350,000 for five years time to kill real terrorists - 520 billion
* Rebuild Afghanistan - 110 billion
* Buy and destroy opium and other drug crops to reduce supply - 143 billion
* Aid neediest countries - 130 billion
* Increase diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world - 10 billion
Feel safe knowing we are "fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them here?"
More importantly, how many 1 percent terrorist threats do you think could be eliminated if the money for the Iraq War was instead spent on the above budget items?
Yes, Cheney's 1% Doctrine boggles the mind. And since he's still for staying the course in Iraq, that means he still for staying the course with his 1% doctrine. Trouble is, he apparently needs some major refreshers in mathematics, economics, and budgeting.