Something Doesn't Jell About the Claims Attached to Ridge's Book

Ridge's book is allegedly about shaking America out of its complacency, if that is the case why is the teaser about overrated terror threats? Anyway I saw this on HA courtesy of Monica:

(Aug 4th, 2004) Ridge said: “Coupled with general threat reporting, coupled with other pieces of information, then all of the sudden you say to yourself, ‘This is a time when we have to talk to America about the threat.’ And that’s exactly what we did.”

“When you connect all these streams of intelligence, it paints an alarming picture,” McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One during a campaign flight to Iowa.

Ridge and other senior administration officials spent a second day Wednesday defending the warnings, which came on the heels of the Democratic National Convention and drew attention from the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

“I categorically state that the none of the terror threats are politically motivated,” Ridge said.

For the record anything that distracted people from John Edwards and John Kerry helped them.

Anyway more about the situation near the election:

Frances Townsend, a former Homeland Security advisor to President Bush and now a CNN contributor, denied politics played any role in the request to raise the threat level.

"There was a debate," Townsend said on CNN's The Situation Room Thursday. "Tom Ridge wasn't the only person in that meeting who suggested that the terror alert shouldn't be raised. At no time was there any discussion of politics at that meeting. And the president was made a recommendation, a consensus recommendation from the council that he accepted, not to raise the terror alert."

The former Pennsylvania governor also writes that he saw no reason for the move – which he now calls a bad idea — because additional security precautions had already been taken in the run-up to the election. "We certainly didn't believe the tape alone warranted action, and we weren't seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact, we were incredulous," he said of the push. "…I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?'" (That's it?)

(From the Times)

Mr. Ridge provides no evidence that politics motivated the discussion. Until now, he has denied politics played a role in threat levels. Asked by Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times if politics ever influenced decisions on threat warnings, he volunteered to take a lie-detector test. “Wire me up,” Mr. Ridge said, according to Mr. Lichtblau’s book, “Bush’s Law.” “Not a chance. Politics played no part.”