Dean was right about… terra alurtz

“I am concerned that every time something happens that is not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism.  His whole campaign is based on the notion that, ‘I can keep you safe (therefore in times of difficulty for America) stick with me.’ And then out comes Tom Ridge.”

– Howard Dean

Meanwhile, former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean suggested a political motivation for the terror alert — an allegation denounced as “outrageous” by Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, one of Dean’s early rivals in the race for the Democratic nomination.

“I don’t think anybody who has any fairness or is in their right mind would think the president or the secretary of homeland security would raise an alert level and scare people for political reasons,” Lieberman said. “That’s outrageous.”

Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry — who received a briefing on the intelligence behind the warning from Ridge — has not faulted the administration for its handling of the situation, and his campaign declined yesterday to make an official available to comment.

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.
Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or “high” risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation’s homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to “debunk the myth” that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

“More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it,” Ridge told reporters. “Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert). … There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, ‘For that?’