Yahoo! News - Ridge Resigns Homeland Security Post

WASHINGTON - Tom Ridge, named the nation's first homeland security secretary after the Sept. 11 attacks, announced Tuesday that he is resigning after three years of reworking American security and presiding over color-coded terror alerts. He's the seventh Bush Cabinet officer leaving so far.

Ridge presided over the most significant government reorganization in 50 years. He'll be remembered for his terror alerts and tutorials about how to prepare for possible attacks, including the controversial 'disaster kits' that caused last year's run on duct tape and plastic sheeting.

Amid warnings that the country may face increased terror risks around the holidays and the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration, Ridge said he will remain on the job through Feb. 1, unless his replacement is installed sooner.

Ridge acknowledged he could not prove the costly and complex security measures that have been put in place have foiled any terrorist attacks inside the United States, but he said the country is safer today than before the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania."

I think it's really weird that Tom Ridge is leaving these as his departing words. I mean, "the country is safer today than before" 9/11? Isn't that a little like me saying that my hemp necklace is keeping me safe from bears and then proving it by asking you to look for bears? Well, there haven't been any major terrorist attacks on the U.S. since 9/11, but there also weren't any for quite a few years before that... So, by much similar logic, the Bush administration made us less safe than we were before he was inaugurated... Time for him to resign!  ¶
- david | 4:36 PM