Now They Said It, Now They Don't

First Tom Ridge said the color-coded terror alert system had been politicized. Then he said it hadn't. Now Michael Chertoff is saying they definitely hadn't. I know it's important to figure out if the program was misused, but at this point I'm more interested in finding out if they had any demonstrable effect on anyone's behavior at all. If it turns out they're just useless, we can get rid of them and have the political arguments later.