Orange You Glad He Was DHS Head?

Nick Gillespie | May 11, 2005

USA Today--a paper that has had its own share of credibility problems--is reporting that Tom Ridge, the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wasn't always on board when it came time to go from Lemon Yellow to Orange Orange on the much-derided color-coded terrorism-threat chart (which has always been just too Peter Max for words):

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"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 were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'"

Whole thing here.

Picture yourself on a boat in a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies here.

Comments

|5.11.05 @ 4:23PM|#

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters.

I believe Ridge on this. He knows damn well that everytime that color coded chart gets on the news, people riducle him and DHS for its creation.

Warren|5.11.05 @ 4:35PM|#

So in effect, he's accusing the administration of repeatedly raising the threat level as a political tool for the purpose of media manipulation at the expense of "homeland security".

|5.11.05 @ 5:12PM|#

Ha! That's nothing. I still have a pretty sizable cache of duct tape and sheet plastic that I don't know what to do with.

Color me plaid.

|5.11.05 @ 5:24PM|#

I still have a pretty sizable cache of duct tape and sheet plastic that I don't know what to do with.

Throw in a 5 gallon bucket of baby oil and a 25 pound bail of hay and I would say you got the makings for a Neal Horsley barnyard sex party.

|5.11.05 @ 5:52PM|#

Would this explain why they never raised the alert to the level of Rush's 1981 seminal rock album Moving Pictures?

|5.11.05 @ 6:05PM|#

Colmes, Alan,

Even I laughed at that, you jerk. :-D

|5.11.05 @ 8:03PM|#

In the town where laws are born
Lived a man of travesty
And he showed his color chart
In the land of yellow security

So we sealed our rooms from sun
Till we found some visqueen
And we lived beneath the fear
In our yellow security

We all live in a yellow security
Yellow security, yellow security
We all live in a yellow security
Yellow security, yellow security

And our friends have taped their doors
Many more of them begin to hoard
And the taxpayer begins to pay

Chorus

As we live a life of misery
Every one of us has to pee
Tape of gray and visqueen
In our yellow security

|5.11.05 @ 9:14PM|#

Obligatory Rush lyrics:

Cruising under your radar
Watching from satellites
Take a page from the red book
Keep them in your sights
Red alert
Red alert

Left and rights of passage
Black and whites of youth
Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?
Obsolete
Absolute

The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy
But I worry about you

R C Dean|5.11.05 @ 10:08PM|#

Does that ass Ridge think that publicizing his irrelevance to the most visible actions of the agency he was supposed to be running somehow makes him look good?

Christ, what a tool.