In a new tell-all book, ex-governor of Pennsylvania and former Secretary Of Homeland Security Tom Ridge discloses that on the eve of the 2004 presidential election he was placed under intense political pressure to raise the national security threat level .
In The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again, Ridge writes that he resisted changing the terror alert level and conjectured at the time whether the Rumsfeld- and Ashcroft-backed request involved “security or politics,” as there was “nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm…Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president’s approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level.”
This revelation confirms what many suspected, but were ridiculed for–or outright accused of anti-patriotism over–at the time: that the Bush administration was willing to exploit the politics of fear to virtually no end during the post 9/11 years, in order to serve its interests of unadulterated power.
I know that both major political parties in the United States frame circumstances for their own political gain, but in this instance the Bushies were actually willing to psychologically terrorize the American populance in order to secure election victory.
Praise be to Ridge, who at one important juncture was courageous enough to ward off the pressure of his unscrupled superiors.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In