The orange political ploy?

Many in the blogosphere have made claims that the recent upgrade of our nation's alert system from yellow to orange is merely a political ploy by the Bush administration citing that much of the information was at least 3 years old. The New York Times in an article written yesterday had this to say:

After past terror warnings, critics have at times accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the threat for political purposes. But on Sunday, few prominent Democrats were making that charge, and many Democrats appeared to take the threat seriously. The code-orange announcement, by Tom Ridge, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, sent immediate tremors through financial, political and law enforcement worlds, with reverberations from Wall Street to the presidential campaign trail.

It seems Kerry has sent out a lone and expendable horseman to make blanket charges against the administration politicizing our nations security for Bush's own political ambitions. Is Howard Dean the new James Carville?