Hmmmm...

[Rigs11]

..remember when all of us crazy liberals were questioning Dumbya for raising the terror alerts?



Bush White House politics linked to terror alerts


WASHINGTON—Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says pressure from fellow Cabinet members to raise the nation's terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election helped convince him it was time to quit working for President George W. Bush.
In a new book, Ridge says that despite the urgings of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft he objected to raising the security level, according to a publicity release from the book's publisher.

In the end the alert level was not changed.

Bush's former homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, said Thursday that politics never played a role in determining alert levels.

Two tapes were released by al-Qaida in the weeks leading up to the election—one by terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and the other by a man calling himself "Azzam the American." Terrorism experts suspected that "Azzam the American" was Adam Gadahn, a 26-year-old Californian whom the FBI had been urgently seeking.

Townsend said the videotapes contained "very graphic" and "threatening" messages.

Ridge's publicist, Joe Rinaldi, said Ridge was out of town and was not doing interviews until his book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... and How We Can Be Safe Again," is released on Sept. 1.

In 2004, Ridge explained why he didn't feel the alert should be raised. "We don't have to go to (code level) orange to take action in response either to these tapes or just general action to improve security around the country," he said then.

In 2005, months after he resigned, Ridge said his agency has been the most reluctant to raise the alert level. "There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'" he said during a panel discussion in May 2005. But his book appears to be the first time he publicly attributes some of the pressure to politics.

The Homeland Security Department, which Ridge was the first person to lead, faced criticism in 2004 from Democrats who alleged that raising the alert level was designed to boost support for the Bush administration during an election year.

Ridge, who resigned on Nov. 30, 2004, said the episode convinced him to follow through with his plans to leave the Bush administration.

Townsend said that anytime there was a discussion of changing the alert level, she first spoke with Ridge and then, if necessary, called a meeting of the homeland security council comprising the secretaries of defense and homeland security, the attorney general and CIA and FBI directors. The group then made a recommendation to the president about whether the color-coded threat level should be raised.

"Never were politics ever discussed in this context in my presence," she said.

Asked if there was any reason for Ridge to have felt pressured, Townsend said: "He was certainly not pressured. And, by the way, he didn't object when it was raised and he certainly didn't object when it wasn't raised."

A former Republican congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, Ridge was widely named as a potential running mate to John McCain in 2008 before the GOP candidate chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.


http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13175739

[cutthemdown]

So some guy writing a book and you want to wag a tail with it? Naw sorry we have bigger problems. Bush may have been bad, but that doesn't give Obama a free pass. He is a crappy President so far and all you lefties can say is well Bush was crap also.

That won't keep you in power long.

The dems already blowing it, mixed messages from white house on healthcare, bluedog dems fighting with the yellow dogs. Hell it won't be long before they start to eat themselves.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

So some guy writing a book and you want to wag a tail with it? Naw sorry we have bigger problems. Bush may have been bad, but that doesn't give Obama a free pass. He is a crappy President so far and all you lefties can say is well Bush was crap also.

That won't keep you in power long.

The dems already blowing it, mixed messages from white house on healthcare, bluedog dems fighting with the yellow dogs. Hell it won't be long before they start to eat themselves.

You righties really have to work on that discretion thing. Saying that Obama is just as bad as Bush is like saying a prairie dog village is the same as the Rockies. Well, yeah, they're both mounds of dirt, but...

[footstepsfrom#27]

This doesn't surprise me. I think over the next couple years we'll have several tell all books emerge.

[Rigs11]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

So some guy writing a book and you want to wag a tail with it? Naw sorry we have bigger problems. Bush may have been bad, but that doesn't give Obama a free pass. He is a crappy President so far and all you lefties can say is well Bush was crap also.

That won't keep you in power long.

The dems already blowing it, mixed messages from white house on healthcare, bluedog dems fighting with the yellow dogs. Hell it won't be long before they start to eat themselves.

He was the homeland security secretary genius, not just some guy. Your posts get sillier each time. And nowhere was Obama mentioned till you brought up.

[barryr]

Oh, so now Tom Ridge is someone who tells the truth. It wasn't long ago, he was full of ****, like all Bush cabinet members. So it comes down to anything they say they don't like or agree with, it's a lie, and anything they like and agree with, is the truth. Such an enlightening view of the world there.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by barryr

Oh, so now Tom Ridge is someone who tells the truth. It wasn't long ago, he was full of ****, like all Bush cabinet members. So it comes down to anything they say they don't like or agree with, it's a lie, and anything they like and agree with, is the truth. Such an enlightening view of the world there.

Nice attempt to dodge the real question, i.e., is Ridge telling the truth in this particular instance, or not?

Make it about his character - that way you don't have to worry about the answer.

Typical rightard tactic.

[That One Guy]

If everyone here just concedes that Bush was a crappy president and had run his course, could we move on?

I don't see anyone really defending him anymore yet he continues to be used in defense of new bad policies. It's time to move on and stop living in the past because the issues from the past need addressing and fixing not more bad policies that the previous bad president got away with.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by cah412

If everyone here just concedes that Bush was a crappy president and had run his course, could we move on?

I don't see anyone really defending him anymore yet he continues to be used in defense of new bad policies. It's time to move on and stop living in the past because the issues from the past need addressing and fixing not more bad policies that the previous bad president got away with.

You really expect people to stop mentioning a "president" who was as monumentally horrible as Bush? A "president" whose brazenly criminal eight years in office brought America to the edge of the abyss? A "president" who many historians believe to be the worst ever?

I understand how such forgetting would be convenient (if not absolutely indispensable) for you and others on the right, but it's not a realistic expectation.

[Rohirrim]

Not to mention we might be stuck in Bush's recession for another ten years.

[cutthemdown]

Hey our party can't get along. Health care falling apart. Cash for Clunkers a cluster****. Unemployment not helped by stimulus.........Hey I know let's talk about how Bush may have used terror alerts politically. Damn that Bush it's probably his fault Dems won't even support there own President. But hey lets blame that on repubs also.

It's official Dems can only blame people not govern. They won't be in power long.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

Hey our party can't get along. Health care falling apart. Cash for Clunkers a cluster****. Unemployment not helped by stimulus.........Hey I know let's talk about how Bush may have used terror alerts politically. Damn that Bush it's probably his fault Dems won't even support there own President. But hey lets blame that on repubs also.

It's official Dems can only blame people not govern. They won't be in power long.

Translation:

"Our only hope to acquire 'political capital' these days is to pile on Obama and the Democrats for not fixing in eight months what it took Bush and the repukes eight years to totally demolish. That's how irrelevant my party has become."

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

Hey our party can't get along. Health care falling apart. Cash for Clunkers a cluster****. Unemployment not helped by stimulus.........Hey I know let's talk about how Bush may have used terror alerts politically. Damn that Bush it's probably his fault Dems won't even support there own President. But hey lets blame that on repubs also.

It's official Dems can only blame people not govern. They won't be in power long.

Or you could look at it as the Right refusing to accept the outcome of the democratic process and instead of allowing the party that won elections across the board to govern, they spread fear and discord all over the country while their minority in government obstructs and blocks every single effort of the legally elected party to govern. Basically the message of the Right is similar to one of those wife beaters who believes that if he can't own her, then nobody can.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Or you could look at it as the Right refusing to accept the outcome of the democratic process and instead of allowing the party that won elections across the board to govern, they spread fear and discord all over the country while their minority in government obstructs and blocks every single effort of the legally elected party to govern. Basically the message of the Right is similar to one of those wife beaters who believes that if he can't own her, then nobody can.

Exactamundo.

[cutthemdown]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Translation:

"Our only hope to acquire 'political capital' these days is to pile on Obama and the Democrats for not fixing in eight months what it took Bush and the repukes eight years to totally demolish. That's how irrelevant my party has become."

It was the Democrats choice to try and fix everything in 8 mos not the repubs.

The Democrats used scare tactics to push there agenda and now that it hasn't worked you want to blame repubs?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

It was the Democrats choice to try and fix everything in 8 mos not the repubs.

Where did anyone say "this has to get done in eight months?"

Answer: Nowhere - you're just making stuff up again.

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

The Democrats used scare tactics to push there(sic) agenda and now that it hasn't worked you want to blame repubs?

The repubs spent eight years driving the country to the edge of the abyss, and that's what the Dems and Obama inherited.

Maybe some "scare tactics" are needed to wake the sleeping sheeple.