Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Going over the Ridge

The most quotable guy today is ex-PA Gov./DHS Sec. Tom Ridge.

"People focus too much on colors. It could be numbers, it could be animals," Ridge told New York Newsday. "The American public wants us to focus more on the information. We understood the impact of an alert."

Animals? This isn't some indicator to help you remember where you parked your car at teh airport, this is national security. "We are at rabid dog and could go to Ebola-infected monkey"

The next money quote reveals that our periodical marches from Yellow to Orange were based on politics, not actual threats.
"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 [at the White House] were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "

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