Ridge accused of trying to profit from terror alert accusations

A former Bush administration official said she thinks former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s recent charges that politics were behind raising the terror level in 2004 were "personally motivated." In a new book, Ridge says top Bush administration officials may have tried to raise the nation’s terror alert for political reasons in the days before the 2004 presidential vote.

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Ridge: Bush officials sought to raise terror alert before ’04 vote

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says he successfully countered an effort by senior Bush administration officials to raise the nation’s terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential vote. “An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government” after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of President George W. Bush, writes Ridge in his new book, “The Test of Our Times.” Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly advocated raising the security threat level to “orange” — even though Ridge believed a threatening message “should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level.” 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 advance of the election

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Al Qaeda No. 2 slams Obama’s first months in office

Al Qaeda’s second-in-command has accused President Obama of supporting a Palestinian state that would do the bidding of Israel. “Obama wants a Palestinian state that works as a branch for the Israeli government,” Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a nearly 90-minute video called, “The Realities of Jihad and the Fallacies of Hypocrisy.” The latest in a series of such videos was posted Monday on radical Islamist Web sites by al Qaeda’s production company, As-Sahab Media.

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Clinton and Bush Share Stage — and Mutual Admiration

“Welcome to the Bill and George Show” That was how former President George W. Bush greeted a crowd of 5,000 Friday evening in Toronto who had paid a few hundred dollars to hear Bush and fellow former leader of the free world Bill Clinton share their experiences — and perhaps their differences — as commander-in-chief. But if they paid that money in the hopes of witnessing a partisan, post-presidential throwdown, they would be sorely disappointed.

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Oil’s Sky-High Forecast

Racing between OPEC meetings in Vienna, Saudi Arabia’s powerful oil minister Ali Al-Naimi told a reporter that the cartel was “determined” to keep the price of oil at around $25 a barrel, rather than risk a slump in the market by boosting its production. Wait a minute. $25 Al-Naimi said that in April 2003 — less than five years ago — when a barrel of oil cost one-quarter of this week’s whopping $100, and when prices were regarded as high enough to keep oil-rich countries happy

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Obama, Cheney offer competing views on national security

President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney offered competing views on how to keep America safe in back-to-back speeches Thursday. Obama said his administration is trying to clean up “a mess” left behind by the Bush administration. He defended his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, his ban on torture, the release of Bush-era interrogation memos and his objection to the release of prisoner photos.

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Ex-CIA chief: Obama risks national security

A former head of the CIA slammed President Obama on Sunday for releasing four Bush-era memos, saying the new president has compromised national security. Michael Hayden, who served as former President Bush’s last CIA director from 2006 to 2009, said releasing the memos outlining terror interrogation methods emboldened terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. “What we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al Qaeda terrorist

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