Purple Alert!

Turns out former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's new book will reveal how he was pressured to raise terror threat levels to scare America into re-electing Bush.

This revelation from former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge’s new book, nabbed by Paul Bedard, might shed some light on why Ridge passed on a 2010 U.S. Senate bid.

[He] was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

That’s a charge Ridge avoided every time it came up. On Aug. 3, 2004, he denied any such political pressure or politicization with a quote DHS recycled for every question on this.

We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security.

If Ridge really quit DHS because it became so politically rotten, good for him; his successor Michael Chertoff, however, somehow managed to hold the job for four years without issuing a conveniently timed alert.

And yes, this was denied vehemently by Ridge and the Bush White House on a number of occasions, despite the fact that after Bush was re-elected, terror alerts dropped to almost nil.

Is there anything that the Bushies did that wasn't corrupt, incompetent, or both?