Thread: Should national security depend on Michael Chertoff's gut?

Should national security depend on Michael Chertoff's gut?
"Gut Feelings" author Gerd Gigerenzer talks about the Bush administration's hunches, how to make good decisions and why you should listen to your doctor.

By Farhad Manjoo
July 30, 2007

Early in July, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told the Chicago Tribune that though he had no specific information pointing to a new threat, his "gut feeling" suggested that the U.S. faced a heightened risk of a terrorist attack during the next couple of months. Summertime is an "appealing" time of year to the enemy, Chertoff said; it was natural to assume, then, that the season would once again bring "increased vulnerability."

Chertoff's intestinal sixth sense was met, to put it mildly, with some skepticism. The Bush administration has not proved to be above pulling the trick of conveniently timed terror warnings; now, facing congressional rebuke on matters from Iraq to everything else, the White House obviously was once again aiming to distract us.

But what rankled folks wasn't that administration officials were once again milking the terror-threat cow -- it was how lamely they were doing it. Chertoff's gut! The comment smacked of self-parody, a takeoff on Stephen Colbert's line that we are a nation divided "between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart." MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann called Chertoff "a hunch-driven clown," and advised that he turn his duties over to someone who "represents the brain and not the gut, certainly to somebody who does not, as you do now, represent that other part of the anatomy -- the one through which the body disposes of what the stomach doesn't want."

The controversy hit at a propitious moment for Gerd Gigerenzer, a German behavioral scientist who has made human intuition his life's work. Gigerenzer's new book, "Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious" -- a more deeply scientific (if less tickling) look at a subject first popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in "Blink" -- seeks to undo the cultural dismissal of the gut.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/07/ ... ex_np.html

I think it is a ploy to keep us in Iraq. Way to kiss Bush's butt lettuce head.
Chertoff plays the skirt both ways.

Immigration (we need to have illegals or I lettuce will die in the fields.)
Iraq War (I have a gut feeling!


Chertoff you may keep you job for a few more weeks. I bet you end up in the nutt farm with the rest of the Bush skirts. We will wait for your tell all novel in 2009.