Tom Ridge: I Was Pressured To Raise Terror Alert To Help Bush Win Re-Election

I never said that Obama can do not wrong. He isn't my guy. That wasn't even the issue. You accuse people of BDS and won't admit that now the shoe is on the other foot, ODS is just as bad. People with either derangment syndrome are asses.

I don't see having legitmate concerns over what is happening right now as being 'ODS'. It's no where near the level of where BDS was anywhere in the Bush administration's eight year tenure. The level of spending going on right now is unprecidented, and people have legitmate cause for concern. They also have legitimate concern whenever the government is trying to shove it's way into every American's personal lives via medical care. They're over stepping their bounds on a personal level that will eventually affect every American. I don't see the media berating and/or questioning Obama every day, I don't see the body counts from Iraq and Afghanistan broadcast on a daily basis. There is a long way to go until the level for ODS is reached where it will equal what took place over Bush's presidency.

Mr Obama hasn't done anything to harm our nation yet.

Hatred for Bush began as a direct result of him twisting his country's willingness to go after the terrorists, into an invasion of a sovereign nation, that had nothing to do with 9/11.

The money Obama's spending is going directly to trying to help our economy.

All the money Bush spent went to pork, the military and the Iraq War.

And deficit spending to come out of a recession is a REAGAN way of thinking. Or do you guys conveniently forget about "the gipper's" policies when a Democrat is using them?

Once Obama makes a couple of Bush-like stupid fucking mistakes that put our nation in harm's way, then you have every right to lay on the hate. But until that point, how about you all shut the fuck up?

After all, we all know that the man you picked was arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. Why in god's name should we listen to you?

Standing :clap2:
 
I don't see having legitmate concerns over what is happening right now as being 'ODS'. It's no where near the level of where BDS was anywhere in the Bush administration's eight year tenure. The level of spending going on right now is unprecidented, and people have legitmate cause for concern. They also have legitimate concern whenever the government is trying to shove it's way into every American's personal lives via medical care. They're over stepping their bounds on a personal level that will eventually affect every American. I don't see the media berating and/or questioning Obama every day, I don't see the body counts from Iraq and Afghanistan broadcast on a daily basis. There is a long way to go until the level for ODS is reached where it will equal what took place over Bush's presidency.

Mr Obama hasn't done anything to harm our nation yet.

Hatred for Bush began as a direct result of him twisting his country's willingness to go after the terrorists, into an invasion of a sovereign nation, that had nothing to do with 9/11.

The money Obama's spending is going directly to trying to help our economy.

All the money Bush spent went to pork, the military and the Iraq War.

And deficit spending to come out of a recession is a REAGAN way of thinking. Or do you guys conveniently forget about "the gipper's" policies when a Democrat is using them?

Once Obama makes a couple of Bush-like stupid fucking mistakes that put our nation in harm's way, then you have every right to lay on the hate. But until that point, how about you all shut the fuck up?

After all, we all know that the man you picked was arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. Why in god's name should we listen to you?

Standing :clap2:

Standing :clap2:

a crowd gathers.... standing.... clapping.
 
The same right wingers that screamed, "You are with us or with them!" and "Bush saved us from Iraqi attack" now say, "So what, ho hum, it's a thing of the past. Get over it." As if they were formerly wild and foaming at the mouth. I love this video where Bush says he never suggested that Saddam was behind 9/11.

YouTube - Bush protects Iraqi Christians

When I was making this short video, the material I found while researching made me physically ill. Our government hasn't been involved in such an odious affair since "Tuskegee". I will never understand why the right continues to support this fiasco.


I watched 57 seconds of that video and had to turn it off. Couldn't stand to hear his voice, the lies just spewing forth.
 
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This was the most incompetent and corrupt administration in US history. Why should anyone be surprised. Uncle Fester ran things while W told war stories about his weekends in the reserves. Eight years of bumbling...

They trashed our home...eight years of trashing our home...and people are blaming the renovator because he's not done fixing things in 6 months.

And that's what the Dems are going to campaign on next year, the Pubs will counter with the likes of Sarah/Sean/Rush/Ann/Glenn, then complain of a vast left wing conspiracy for the serious mid-term electoral defeat of the GOP, when it fact the barfbags can look right in the mirror to see who is at fault.

Get out of my party, you far right radical wingtoids. Go start your own so you can listen to each other bay at the moon.
 
Do you know what I find so interesting? ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, AP, NPR, USAToday, almost every single newspaper in the country, almost every single radio station in the country has reported this story and has offered some kind of comment with regards to it.

Do you know what cable news network has NOT discussed this story at all and has instead attacked Obama over his socialistic healthcare ideas?

I'll give you one guess.

I would think they would AT LEAST discuss the possibility that this happened.
 
Do you know what I find so interesting? ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, AP, NPR, USAToday, almost every single newspaper in the country, almost every single radio station in the country has reported this story and has offered some kind of comment with regards to it.

Do you know what cable news network has NOT discussed this story at all and has instead attacked Obama over his socialistic healthcare ideas?

I'll give you one guess.

I would think they would AT LEAST discuss the possibility that this happened.

Let me take wild guess and say FOX. Am I right?

:confused: I am still waiting for the Hannity waterboarding. If I wait much longer I will have to give the ticket buyers back their money...
 
Do you know what I find so interesting? ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, AP, NPR, USAToday, almost every single newspaper in the country, almost every single radio station in the country has reported this story and has offered some kind of comment with regards to it.

Do you know what cable news network has NOT discussed this story at all and has instead attacked Obama over his socialistic healthcare ideas?

I'll give you one guess.

I would think they would AT LEAST discuss the possibility that this happened.

Let me take wild guess and say FOX. Am I right?

:confused: I am still waiting for the Hannity waterboarding. If I wait much longer I will have to give the ticket buyers back their money...

I have to donate to the DNC and to The Centre, our local Gay center in Hannity's name since he seems to have failed to keep his promise.
 
What's the excitement? Dems and Johnson used the Tonkin Gulf, George and Dick used Tom Ridge like a cabana boy.
 
What's the excitement? Dems and Johnson used the Tonkin Gulf, George and Dick used Tom Ridge like a cabana boy.

A: Johnson was a conservative Democrat.
B: WHAT'S THE EXCITEMENT? ARE YOU NUTS? Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of this, millions more out of work. WHAT'S THE EXCITEMENT??
 
Walking the main point of op back

Ridge backpedals on pressure to raise terror alert level - USATODAY.com

Ridge backpedals on pressure to raise terror alert level
By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics with the nation's security before the 2004 presidential election.
"I'm not second-guessing my colleagues," Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation's homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the book, Ridge portrays his fledgling department as playing second fiddle to other Cabinet-level heavyweights. As secretary, he says he was never invited to participate in National Security Council meetings, he was left out of the information loop by the FBI and his proposal to establish Homeland Security offices in major cities such as New Orleans were rejected.

His most explosive accusation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the national threat level after Osama bin Laden released a videotape criticizing President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004. Ridge writes he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

Noting that Bush's approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, Ridge writes that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a "vigorous" discussion.

"Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld," he writes. "There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "

Although he prevailed and the threat level was not elevated, Ridge writes that the episode reinforced his decision to resign. He did so weeks after the election.

Last week, when word got out about Ridge's accusations, Rumsfeld's spokesman Keith Urbahn issued a statement calling them "nonsense."

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. "I was never pressured," Ridge said....
 
Any who imagine that Bush II's admin was gaming the alert system are blind partisans fools.

The fact that so many of of you continued to to believe these liars isn't our faults.

And nothing that Obama does, however egregious, will every change the fact that those who believed Bush II et al were patriots were simply being duped by their propaganda, either.
 
The media can't handle the truth
by Gene Lyons

Excerpt:
So yet another Bush administration Cabinet-level official has petitioned to get his conscience and reputation back. This time, it's Tom Ridge. He admits in a new book that he felt political pressure from the White House to issue bogus terror alerts before the 2004 presidential election. Big surprise, right? By 2004, anybody who didn't grasp that crying wolf was the Bush/Cheney administration's basic game plan was probably also astonished last January when the "Texas cowboy" who's never been seen on a horse chose a Dallas mansion over his beloved ranch. Golly, who's doing all that brush-cutting? Indeed, the most fascinating aspect of the Ridge revelations has been a flame war that's broken out between establishment Washington pundits and less-reverent bloggers. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder started it by observing that he and like-minded colleagues were actually right to be wrong about fake terror warnings. People who smelled a rat, see, "based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." Whereas, sober-sided thinkers like him credited Bush's good intentions.

Link
 
Any who imagine that Bush II's admin was gaming the alert system are blind partisans fools.

The fact that so many of of you continued to to believe these liars isn't our faults.

And nothing that Obama does, however egregious, will every change the fact that those who believed Bush II et al were patriots were simply being duped by their propaganda, either.

True patriots follow the laws of this country and DO NOT TORTURE.

Cheney and Bush Jr. did.

Next?
 
The media can't handle the truth
by Gene Lyons

Excerpt:
So yet another Bush administration Cabinet-level official has petitioned to get his conscience and reputation back. This time, it's Tom Ridge. He admits in a new book that he felt political pressure from the White House to issue bogus terror alerts before the 2004 presidential election. Big surprise, right? By 2004, anybody who didn't grasp that crying wolf was the Bush/Cheney administration's basic game plan was probably also astonished last January when the "Texas cowboy" who's never been seen on a horse chose a Dallas mansion over his beloved ranch. Golly, who's doing all that brush-cutting? Indeed, the most fascinating aspect of the Ridge revelations has been a flame war that's broken out between establishment Washington pundits and less-reverent bloggers. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder started it by observing that he and like-minded colleagues were actually right to be wrong about fake terror warnings. People who smelled a rat, see, "based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." Whereas, sober-sided thinkers like him credited Bush's good intentions.

Link

Ridge obviously reads walls well. Following at a safe distance from Colin Powell he is still carefull to step in those big footprints. Colin provided the kindergarden stick figure drawings of WMDs to the UN punctuating his childish presentation with his best imitation of a schoolgirl the world has every seen shrieking about mushroom clouds.

Ridge ...well he was just a bit player in all of this. It seems that everybody in the room had a crack at his crack. Now its all about the phoney contrition and writing books on how awfull it was to be Cheneys butt boy.
 
Walking the main point of op back

Ridge backpedals on pressure to raise terror alert level - USATODAY.com

Ridge backpedals on pressure to raise terror alert level
By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics with the nation's security before the 2004 presidential election.
"I'm not second-guessing my colleagues," Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation's homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the book, Ridge portrays his fledgling department as playing second fiddle to other Cabinet-level heavyweights. As secretary, he says he was never invited to participate in National Security Council meetings, he was left out of the information loop by the FBI and his proposal to establish Homeland Security offices in major cities such as New Orleans were rejected.

His most explosive accusation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the national threat level after Osama bin Laden released a videotape criticizing President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004. Ridge writes he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

Noting that Bush's approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, Ridge writes that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a "vigorous" discussion.

"Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld," he writes. "There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "

Although he prevailed and the threat level was not elevated, Ridge writes that the episode reinforced his decision to resign. He did so weeks after the election.

Last week, when word got out about Ridge's accusations, Rumsfeld's spokesman Keith Urbahn issued a statement calling them "nonsense."

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. "I was never pressured," Ridge said....
I guess Cheney got to Ridge. What a coward he is ... will he edit his book that says something else?
 

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