Oh, Hey, Here's a Surprise

Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.

  Yahoo

Refused?

He also says that Bush's homeland security adviser at the White House, Fran Townsend, called his department ahead of an August 1, 2004 speech to ask Ridge to include a reference to "defensive measures ... away from home" -- language that he read as being a reference to the Iraq war.

In those remarks, Ridge said he was raising the threat alert level for the financial services sector in New York City, northern New Jersey, and Washington DC, and went on to praise Bush's leadership against extremism.

I'm a little confused. Did he or didn't he raise the alert level? You know he did.

He later publicly acknowledged that much of the information underpinning the new alert was three years old, stoking Bush critics' charges of political manipulation.

Yes, I remember.

Ridge also charges that he was often "blindsided" during daily morning briefings with Bush because the FBI withheld information from him, and says he was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings.

Awwwwww. Poor baby. In other words, he behaved exactly as he was hired on to behave - just a mouthpiece - just say what the boss tells you to say. Tool extraordinaire.

Are we supposed to be sympathetic toward him now? Just like the lot of them who are telling tales now, he was too self-serving to report it when it mattered. He was too busy sucking up and collecting his blood money.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.