The Epistemology of Cheneyism
Some months ago, in exchange for cash money I agreed to read Doug Feith’s book. It was a curious experience. At first, it leaves you wondering how ideas so dumb could possibly have survived the slightest contact with rational human beings. But then you realize that Feith’s ideas about how intelligence analysis should be done are so stupid that it’s difficult to even describe what he’s saying. You really need to read Feith going on and on and on to fully grasp that, yes, he really means this. But Spencer Ackerman is right, this passage he found in Bart Gellman’s book does a better job than anything else I’ve seen, though in this case he’s specifically talking about Feith’s underlying Doug Wurmer:
The spider chart was meant “to create a strategic picture, and that strategic picture is the foundation of policy change,” Wurmser said. “It helped you visualize, because if you saw, say, twenty relationships between X and Y, and twenty between Y and Z, then there’s at least a suspicion that Z and X are interacting through Y.” A map like that could bring insight, but there were perils in surmising too much. Suppose X and Y were Dick Cheney and Colin Powell. Twice they served in senior posts under presidents named Bush. In the early 1990s, they worked at the same address and were spotted together on international flights. They communicated frequently, encrypting their secrets. Back then, Cheney hired Powell for a very big job, elevating him over people far more senior. Ten years later, with Cheney in charge of recruiting, Powell got an even bigger job. From all this a person might figure that Powell was an agent of influence for Cheney. Lawrence Wilkerson, a colonel in Cheney’s Pentagon who became Powell’s State Department chief of staff, might be agent Z on Wurmser’s chart, taking Cheney’s instructions through a cutout. As it happened, though, Powell was Cheney’s bitter antagonist in the second Bush administration, and Wilkerson called Cheney every angry name from “ruthless,” “dangerous,” and “arrogant” to the “leader of a cabal. This business of links and relationships could get tricky.
I would only further add that underlying a lot of Feith/Wurmser/Cheney stuff about these webs and “one percent doctrines” is a totally inability to get risk analysis right. Or, rather, a failure to appreciate that constantly identifying false positives is dangerous. That if you invade and occupy 25 or 30 countries that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda on the theory that your combination of nutty charts and confessions extracted through terrorism indicated that each of them had a one percent chance of posing a serious threat, you’re going to wind up in a world of pain.
33 Responses to “The Epistemology of Cheneyism”
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September 29th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Down With The Evil Neo-cons!
Oh, how original of you, dear Matthew. Is that why they kept you around at the Atlantic? But it didn’t end up selling too many magazines for them, did it? Come to think of it, how is YOUR book doing on the best-seller lists?
September 29th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
You mean “confessions extracted through torture”.
(Though it’s not a terrible equivalency to draw.)
September 29th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
it leaves you wondering how ideas so dumb could possibly have survived the slightest contact with rational human beings.
I’ll assume that your use of the word “dumb” here was a nod to Tommy Franks, who called Feith “the dumbest fucking guy on the planet.”
September 29th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Matt, You misname Wurmser. It is David Wurmser–not Doug Wurmer.
September 29th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
A world of pain? What pain exactly is Cheney in? Pain is for the suckers who vote.
September 29th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I have to know. How much money and how can I get paid to read terrible ideas set to print. I would think that if I could find these people who pay money to read books with terrible ideas in them that I could retire after one Ayn Rand book.
September 29th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Ringo,
People who think like you do deserve a bullet in the back of the head and a shallow grave. If you’re lucky.
You’re lucky I’m not in charge. If I was, every neocon in the world would be summarily executed. Every damn one of them.
September 29th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Having been at least peripherally involved with a lot of data mining (of which spider charts and link analysis etc. are just one part) projects, I must say that sometime it looks a lot like astrology: you do a lot of complicated visualizations and computations, but your basic premise is founded on a ground made of molasses.
September 29th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Re “you’re going to wind up in a world of pain.”
————-
NOT if you are careful to never get within 1000 miles of an active battlefield.
AND to never work for someone who does.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
The method looks remarkably like that of anti-semitic and Trilateral Commission paranoia.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
“Having been at least peripherally involved with a lot of data mining (of which spider charts and link analysis etc. are just one part) projects, I must say that sometime it looks a lot like astrology: you do a lot of complicated visualizations and computations, but your basic premise is founded on a ground made of molasses.”
I’d agree and go one step further. The best analogy is to the sequence in “A Beautiful Mind” where Nash hunts for coded Soviet spy messages in the newspapers. If you collect enough data, you have strong math skills, and you’re batshit insane, you can prove just about any connection you want to prove.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I tremble to think what will be discovered when someone analyzes _my_ underlying Doug Wurmer.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
VoR: that’s why Obama will never win. Regular Americans know, at a gut level, that you hyper-leftists want to turn America into a police state.
“Obama’s Thought Police is on the prowl!”
“The Obamist Gestapo will be out to get you!”
But the McCain Resistance survives! McCain is the counter-culture candidate. The Obama Regime is the Orthodoxy, McCain is the heretic!
Love live the McCain Revolution, duuuuuude!
September 29th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
If you collect enough data, you have strong math skills, and you’re batshit insane, you can prove just about any connection you want to prove.
Exactly. Any source of sufficient length can produce “sensible” statements that look exactly like they were meant to be there. Shakespeare. The Bible. Moby Dick. War and Peace. Sources like those all have spurious connections within them. Switching the source to mountainous volumes of intelligence data guarantees that someone somewhere will be able to coax amazingly lifelike connections from within it.
There’s no substitute for a bit of wisdom.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Ringo,
No, you misunderstand. Obama, sadly doesn’t think like I do.
But if McCain wins, millions of good American’s will hunt down animals like you and put them down like rabid dogs.
I’m not in favor of a police state; I’m in favor of anarchy, in which case there would be no laws stopping me from exterminating vermin like yourself.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Feith looks like Weird Al Yankovic with short hair.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Bart Gellman is a fucking brilliant reporter.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
VoR: The neo-con cabal has just held an emergency summit to discuss your threats of annihilation. After long and strained deliberations, we have reached the following conclusion:
We love you, ya lil’ cuddly rascal. Come here and give mommy a great big hug. Smoochie, smoochie, lovikins!
September 29th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
He could have just said that Cheney is a spider, and it would be true enough.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Oh my God! Kevin Bacon is Al Qaeda!
September 29th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I blame this on Cheney’s lack of executive experience. Luckily, we have a vp candidate with executive experience. I’m eager to hear how she is advising McCain on the present crisis. I will be extremely disappointed if no journalist asks, since it is probably quite a juicy angle. I’m sure Palin has been patiently going over her own experience as an executive to get McCain up to the mark, and he’d probably appreciate being able to say, my views on the bailout have been shaped by my running mate, Governor Palin. I’m lucky as heck to have an informed executive on my ticket!
September 29th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Powell _was_ a Cheney agent of influence back before Cheney went around the bend.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Doug Feith is important because he is proof that dumb Jews exist.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Since Feith isn’t Jewish that’s going to take some unpacking. The argument would probably involve a charge of dumb-by-association.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Dig the Big Lebowski ref.
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