Richard WarnickGerald Ford’s Parting Shot
Up front, let me say I was never a fan of President Gerald Ford after he pardoned Nixon. It seemed to me he was putting the best interest of the Republican Party ahead of what was best for the country. He deserved to lose the 1976 election.
Tomorrow’s Washington Post has a front-page exclusive by Bob Woodward that’s going to shake things up a little. I just wish President Ford had mustered the courage to speak up in public two and a half years ago. Don’t forget that Ford worked closely with both Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Yet he says the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake. The interview was granted to Woodward on the condition it could not be published until after Ford’s death.
Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush had launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford’s own administration.
In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney — Ford’s White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
I can’t wait to read the article, though, like you, I wish President Ford would have spoken these words directly and forcefully to those who needed to hear it as soon as they needed to hear it.
December 28th, 2006 at 6:34 am
Like the other unelected numbskull, that he even supposes an illegal war based on lies to be his option or responsibility, is preposterous. R.I.P. George W. Ford. What cowards!
This war is over.
December 29th, 2006 at 9:54 am
I wish Ford had spoken up too, but I’m pretty sure Bush the Less would have ignored him like he’s ignored his dad’s other cronies. And his dad, for that matter. He listens only to his higher Father.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:01 am
When I heard how Ford felt about the War, I lost all respect for him. What is a man who cannot speak out when the stakes are so high?
What has leadership in this country come to when part protects their own at such great cost to the country and the world?
Thank God for President Carter.
December 29th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Carroll Quigley, a mentor of Bill Clinton (and probably other elite American politicians) had this to say in his book “Tragedy and Hope”:
This is why I am not surprised that Gerald Ford would not come right out and lambaste a fellow president. But this is also why I do not thank god for President Carter. As a general rule, they have all been the same, with their own brand of theatrics to mark their administrations, but underlying it all is a trend toward bigger government and less freedom.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
I’m guessing this was written before the extreme shifts in policy pursued at every level of gov’t by the Bush admin.
Also, there is a big diff between lambasting a ‘fellow president’ and speaking out against a major illegal war of choice. Don’t you think FRANK?
December 29th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Frank,
To suggest the Carter has “been the same” as Bush II is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Each may have possessed agendas, but the means of accomplishing those agendas was radically different, and the ends of Carter’s agenda fell far short of the tens or hundreds of thousands killed vis-a-vis the ends of Bush II’s agenda.
The gallows for Saddam will be missing a deserving guest - George W. Bush standing right next to Saddam wearing a comfy neck tie.