The Cheney
"One Percent" Doctrine (we must respond to threats that have a one percent chance of being true the same as ones that are certain) reminds me of an old joke...
A physicist, a chemist, and a mathematician are stranded on a desert island. After a day, they find a can of beans.
"Let's drop a rock from this tree, and gravity will smash it open," suggests the physicist.
"Let's put it in the salt water, and corrosion will weaken the can," suggests the chemist.
The mathematician begins, "Assume a can opener..."
All of Cheney's national security ideas, from counter-terrorism to starting wars to show them how tough we are, seem to begin with "we are the most powerful country in the world, so assume we have infinite military power..."
Responding to every "one percent chance" threat as if it were real only works if you never run out of personnel and resources, they never get exhausted so they're always fresh for the next bogus "threat," and there are never any negative consequences to responding full-bore to those nonexistent threats. Here in the real world, we call that kind of strategy extremely stupid.