Honestly, I really don't want to distrust the president...

Why oh why does Bush make it SO hard to have any trust in anything he or his administration says or does??? Case in point, the recent increase of the terror alert level. Even when it came out RIGHT after the Democratic convention with intelligence that seems to have come from a concerted White House attempt to pressure Pakistan to deliver well-timed Al Qaeda victories during the Democratic convention (incidentally, the Pakitstan government came through on the day before Kerry's speech), I wanted to believe that the even this administration is not so horribly corrupt and completely power hungry to manufacture a terror alert to distract the public from paying attention to their challenger. I love Howard Dean, but even I thought his questioning the timing of the alert was at the least crazy at the most crass political maneuvering. I still remember how ticked off I was at Republicans and the media at large in 1998 screaming at the top of their lungs "Wag The Dog!" when Clinton attempted to strike Al Qaeda training camps in response to the bombings of our embassies when at the same time the impeachment scandal was raging. I hated their convoluted logic at the time of "since we don't trust you, how can we trust anything you do?". I really don't want to be like that! I especially don't want to be like that because we now know Clinton was doing the correct thing. Shoot, he shouldn't have been so gun-shy, and at least a degree of his being gun-shy was the direct result of Republican screams about "Wag The Dog"! (incidentally a mediocre film, Bulworth, which came out the same year was the far better politically oriented film)
Yet, Bush makes it so hard not when it's been discovered that much if not all of the alert raising actually came from documents that are 2 or 3 years old, many pre-dating 9/11. That coupled with Tom Ridge's self-serving "... the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror..." makes it hard not to be a conspiracy nut. All the pieces are pretty obvious.
Maybe there was additional intel in that matched up to older documents. Maybe there was a real reason this was done that isn't as blatantly political in nature than what Tom Ridge's comments and the mounting evidence seems so suggest. I really want to believe, like I and pretty much all other Americans did, right after 9/11, that while I may really disagree with Bush, we're all trying to pull together to get us through this struggle against a common foe. The thought that anyone would create a terror alert from thin air for partisan advantage is simply disgusting. For sure McCain would have never pulled that, nor would Bob Dole nor would even Bush's father. I still want to believe that George W Bush is not the entirely morally bankrupt. Please Mr. President, please allow me that monicum of trust.

(edit: modified my psuedo-quote of Tom Ridge, with an actual one (courtesy of Atrios)... and I should remind myself that when I'm not quoting someone verbatim, I should not use "", instead say he/she essentially said blank)