Stephen Colbert tells author Ron Suskind that Vice President Cheney’s so-called “One Percent Doctrine”–whereby a one percent chance of terrorists obtaining WMDs must be treated as a certainty–is “soft on terror.”

  • Colbert: “One percent? Shouldn’t it be a zero percent doctrine? I mean even if there’s no chance that someone’s a threat to the United States, and they just look at us funny, shouldn’t we just–[beats a fist into his palm]–tag ’em?”

    • Watch it:

    Partial transcript:

    Suskind:

    If there’s a one percent chance that WMDs have been given to terrorists, [Cheney] says to folks inside the white house, we need to treat it as a certainty. Not in our analysis, but in our response. It’s not about evidence. It frees us from the evidentiary burdens that have been, well, guiding us for a long time.

    Colbert:

    No offense to the V.P., but isn’t that soft on terror? One percent? Shouldn’t it be a zero percent doctrine? I mean even if there’s NO chance that someone’s a threat to the United States, and they just look at us funny, shouldn’t we just–[beats a fist into his palm]–tag ’em?

    The problem with evidence is that it doesn’t always support your opinion…That’s what the Vice President was protecting us from…If we waited we wouldn’t have invaded…we would have tripped over our preparedness.

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