With the word yesterday that Tom Ridge’s memoirs will include the disclosure that 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

I was moved to wonder why Ridge didn’t make a bigger deal about this very important fact. His resignation was announced on December 1, 2004. The New York Times noted:

Last summer, during the heat of the presidential campaign, some Democrats accused him of politicizing the terrorism threat when he praised Mr. Bush’s leadership in announcing a heightened state of alert.

/snip/

Mr. Ridge defended the system on Tuesday as a transparent way to communicate both to the public and to law enforcement agencies that the government sees a change in the intensity of the threat to the United States.

In resigning, Ridge denied what he now admits. He came closer to admitting the political underpinnings of the alerts in May, 2005.

Sadly, Ridge is not alone in this role of resigning the Bush Administration after the 2004 election and not making a public case for his differences with the Bush policies.

Colin Powell’s resignation was announced on November 15, 2004. In a Washington Post article about the resignation, Mike Allen (now with Politico) had this little nugget of insider information:

"The decision was made to keep Rumsfeld and drop Powell because if they would have kept Powell and let [the Rumsfeld team] go, that would have been tantamount to an acknowledgment of failure in Iraq and our policies there," one government official said, requesting anonymity to speak more candidly. "Powell is the expendable one."

That was despite the fact that "Powell has consistently shown up in polls as the administration’s most popular figure". But, because Powell differed with Bush and Rumsfeld on the timing and execution of the Iraq war and he put together a Middle East peace plan that Bush would not push, he became "expendable" even though he prostituted himself with his "WMD" presentation to the UN.

John Ashcroft’s resignation was announced on November 9, 2004, but his handwritten resignation letter was dated November 2, election day. Ashcroft, along with FBI Director Mueller, Ashcroft’s chief of staff Ayers, James Comey and Comey’s chief of staff all threatened a mass resignation in March, 2004 over the illegal Bush surveillance programs, but Ashcroft and Comey held off for a while after the program was altered somewhat. Ashcroft also said, in relation to the Bush torture program "History will not judge this kindly."

So we have Powell, Ashcroft and Ridge all understanding the lawlessness of the Bush-Cheney Administration but choosing to wait until after the 2004 election to announce their resignations, when they were simply replaced with more "trusted" Bush insiders. Had these three individuals resigned before the election and disclosed their differences with the criminal policy that was being carried out, it’s hard to imagine how Bush could have been re-elected.

By waiting to resign, Powell, Ashcroft and Ridge contributed to four more years of lawlessness and war. Look at the civilian casualties in Iraq and imagine how many lives would have been saved by a Kerry victory in 2004:

Iraq body count

When it comes to the timing of these resignations, history will not judge them kindly, either.