My wife and I would always joke when going through airports that if it was orange there must be an election.
How is legacy polishing and using orange alerts to win an election mutually exclusive?
Well, why even write a sentence like that? I mean, what if I told you, “It’s a POSSIBILITY that some UNKNOWN person MIGHT have THOUGHT ABOUT rigging your car with a bomb.” How fucking useful would that be to you, other than to make you all paranoid and stuff?
That is not the blue eye of a little girl standing on the banks of the Seine on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a dot of blue paint placed proximally to a larger set of dots of peachish-colored paint.
Each dot must be considered independently of all others.
Let’s recap:
- The increase in threat levels frequently coincided with political events.
- The public was not informed of specific reasons why threat levels were raised, not advised on what to do about higher levels.
- The above facts led many at the time to speculate that the increases were politically motivated.
- Ridge now confirms that there was political pressure to raise the threat level, but when faced with pressure, he refused to raise the level, and subsequently resigned over the issue.
The conclusion to be drawn from this is that Ridge is inferring that none of the previous increases in threat levels were politically motivated, regardless of how it may have looked to the public.
Personally, I continue to believe at least some of the increases WERE poltically motivated. It’s possible that Ridge is just trying to make himself look like the good guy while selling more books. It’s also possible that he was fed information by others to convince him to raise the threat level, and when the evidence that this was happening sunk in, he refused and resigned.
Either way, his admission doesn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, and is unlikely to sway many people’s opinions on this one way or the other.
It will have a lot more impact if Ridge’s book were to say, yeah, I was duped into increasing the threat level after the Democratic Convention and maybe a couple of other times, but when they tried to pull this again, I figured it out and resigned. But even if that is the truth, I wouldn’t hold my breath that Ridge will admit to being a tool.
Absolutely. The idea that Rumsfeld and Ashcroft would play with the alert level is contemptible for two reasons: first, of course, the obvious one that it breaches their duty to work on behalf on the country when performing their jobs… and second, that it weakened the power and value of having an alert system, a la the-boy-who-cried-wolf. Scum is probably too kind a word.
Even Georges Seurat would agree that there’s a difference between certainty and conjecture. When a puzzle (or a painting) has a million points, you cna say you’re pretty close to certainty; when it has four, you’re not there yet.
Rumsfeld and Ashcroft were motivated actors in their own right. Why do you assume they were mere paens, and that Bush or Cheney was behind it? What evidence, apart from wishful speculation, takes you there?
It would depend on whether or not they had the power to raise the alerts without consulting the President wouldn’t it?
There is no proof tying Bush and Cheney at this time. It is Cheneyeque though. I suppose as more Bush people write books it will be fleshed out.
But Bush was responsible. he was the decider after all.
No. It also depends on what they told the President.
Perfectly plausible! How would Bush even find out about the level being raised? After all, the cover of his briefing paper (USA Today) would not reflect any change, seeing as how the level wasn’t actually raised, just sorta kinda raised.
(Cheny leans over the President, daubs a bit of oatmeal and milk from young Master Bush’s chin…)
“Oh, by the way, Tommy Ridge raised the terror alert level to yellow-and-a-half, but only for financial institutions.”
“Golly, Uncle Dick, when was that?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“Gee whiz, Uncle Dick, was there some scary news?”
“Now, George, you know you’re not supposed to ask about the Secret Stuff.”
“Oh, right, sorry, I forgot…”
“But I’ve got a nice surprise for you!”
“Ooooh, goody, goody, I love surprises! Is it a pony?”
“Better! Your approval rating has gone up again!”
(George claps hands gleefully…)
“I’m the bestest President ever, and then some more! That’ll sure show that phony-baloney Kerry, huh? With his fake medals and stuff. You know, Uncle Dick, I wanted to go an shoot down the Viet Cong Air Force, but Pop wouldn’t let me. Said something about why lose the war even faster. Sometimes Pop isn’t very nice, Uncle Dick. Does this mean I’m gonna win the election, Uncle Dick?”
“Well, as Joe Stalin said, its not about how people vote, its about who counts the votes”
“That’s a pretty good one, Uncle Dick! Who’s Joe Stalin?”
“Never mind, its time for your nap.”
Nitpick: I think you mean peons.
ETA: Or pawns, possibly.
I thought he was after “pawns”. Nit-pick-pick.
Ridge here is talking about the possibility of political pressure, not the actual raising of the threat level itself.
Let’s recap:
- Ridge himself admits he has no proof there was any political pressure to raise the threat level
- The threat level was not raised during the only incident Ridge thinks there was a possibility that maybe it seemed there was political pressure
- Others in the room are refuting Ridge’s claim
- Ridge is trying to sell a book
Yeah, that’s quite an allegation you moonbats are making.
Pee-ons?
As in “Don’t pee on my head and tell me it’s raining, Bricker.”
Frances Townsend said she doesn’t believe politics ever played a part in determining the threat level. In meeting she attended, politics never came up. I’m just sharing this in the interest of fairness. I never would have thought Rumsfeld or Ashcroft or Cheney would have been clumsy enough to say in a group meeting, “Hey, you know the terror level is yellow. For political reasons, I recommend it go to orange.” So I don’t think her statements are too valuable, although I bet they’re literally true.
So just to clarify your point #4, if someone is willing to write down his specific complaint in a book (where you can no longer say he was misquoted or spoke extemporaneously and inaccurately or some such nonsense) then his motives are selfishly ecenomically, so that settles that, BUT
If someone is unwilling to make a compaint in book form, then you say you don’t accept the statement as rendered by a mere poster?
Have I got that right?
As long as I’m asking, is this the same Tom Ridge you’ve known for all these years? Let’s get that one out of the way, too.
Bricker’s high standard requires that the phrase be specified as “for purely political reasons.”
Well, still, that’s a point, why would anyone expect us crazy moonbats to have any credibility after all the nutty stuff we been sayin’? Like claiming there weren’t any WMD, when everyone knows they were all trucked into Syria. I mean, who wouldn’t be thrilled to see 100 truckloads of nerve gas trucking over thier border! And calling everybody a liar, when they were just fibbing a little, a white lie here or there, no biggie!
And sayin’ ObL wasn’t really Saddam’s bestest friend forever, just because ObL said he hated Saddam. They’re both Muslims, you know!
People just don’t believe you when you’re wrong all the time, like we were.
Wow. Summer reruns of the Liberal Greatest Hits! Obama must really be tanking in the polls for you guys to revert to complaints from 2004, huh?