Synopses & Reviews
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.
You may think you know what the "war on terror" is. But to know it truly, you must read this book.
Suskind has written a riveting work of narrative nonfiction, filled with exclusive, historically significant disclosures that will echo across America and the world.
What is the guiding principle of the world's most powerful nation as it searches for enemies at home and abroad? The One Percent Doctrine is the deeply secretive core of America's real playbook: a default strategy, designed by Dick Cheney, that separates America from its moorings, and has driven everything from war in Afghanistan to war in Iraq to the global search for jihadists.
The story begins on September 12, 2001, the day America began to gather itself for a response to the unimaginable. Ultimately, that reply would shape the nation's very character.
Suskind tells us what actually occurred over the next three years, from the inside out, by tracing the steps of the key actors the notables, from the President and Vice President to George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice, who oversee the "war on terror" and report progress to an anxious nation; and the invisibles, the men and women just below the line of sight, left to improvise plans to defeat a new kind of enemy in an hour-by-hour race against disaster. The internal battles between these two teams one, under the hot lights; the other, actually fighting the fight reveal everything about what America faces, and what it has done, in this age of terror.
Who is actually running U.S. foreign policy? Is there an operational cell, armed with WMDs, inside the United States? Have some of the world's most dangerous terrorists including leaders of al Qaeda been caught and accidentally released? Can America prevail in this struggle against enemies who are patient, ingenious, certain, and have clear tactical advantage?
With his unparalleled access to senior officials, past and present, Ron Suskind author of The Price of Loyalty, the most revealing book yet written on the Bush administration finally answers the questions that keep Americans awake at night.
And in this startling book, he reframes the debates that roil the globe.
Review
"[R]iveting....Just as disturbing as Al Qaeda's plans and capabilities are the descriptions of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror and its willful determination to go to war against Iraq." Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times
Review
"It makes for deeply unsettling reading and is a major contribution to our national conversation concerning these issues." Los Angeles Times
Review
"If journalism is the first draft of history, books like The One Percent Doctrine are the second draft. Historians will be grateful for it as they write the many final drafts in the decades to come." Baltimore Sun
Review
"A doomsday tale masked as a John le Carré thriller....Suskind lays out evidence of success, failure, humility and hubris." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Synopsis
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists -- a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.
About the Author
Ron Suskind is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League. From 1993 to 2000, he was the senior national affairs reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two sons.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Preface
ONE False Positives
TWO Beyond Suspicion
THREE Necessity's Offspring
FOUR Zawahiri's Head
FIVE Going Operational
SIX Cause for Alarm
SEVEN Conversations with Dictators
EIGHT Wages of Fear
NINE Hearts and Minds
Afterword
Afterword to the Paperback Edition
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright © 2006 by Ron Suskind