Posted on 12/28/2006 9:36:03 AM PST by ARealMothersSonForever
WASHINGTON - Former President Gerald R. Ford questioned the Bush administration's rationale for the U.S. invasion and war in Iraq in interviews he granted on condition they not be released until after his death.
In his embargoed July 2004 interview with The Washington Post, Ford said the Iraq war was not justified, the Post reported Wednesday night.
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, the Post's Bob Woodward wrote. The story initially was posted on the newspaper's Internet site.
"I don't think I would have gone to war," Ford told Woodward a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion.
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 secretary of defense.
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
In an interview given with the same ground rules to the New York Daily News last May, Ford said he thought Bush had erred by staking the invasion on claims Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
" Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed to the Daily News. "But we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does (Bush) get his advice?"
In the Daily News interview, Ford was more defensive about Cheney and Rumsfeld. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. "Dick's a classy guy, but he's not an electrified orator," Ford said.
The former president did not like Bush's domestic surveillance program.
"It may be a necessary evil," Ford conceded. "I don't think it's a terrible transgression, but I would never do it. I was dumbfounded when I heard they were doing it."
Woodward wrote in the Post that his interview took place for a future book project, though the former president said his comments could be published at any time after his death.
In another interview released after his death, Ford told CBS News in 1984 that he initially was against using the phrase "long national nightmare" in his first speech as president following Richard Nixon's resignation, concerned that it was too harsh.
Ford said he reconsidered and sought his wife's advice. "After thinking about it and talking to Betty about it, we decided to leave it in and, boy, in retrospect, I'm awfully glad we did," he said.
In the Daily News interview, Ford, a few weeks from his 93rd birthday, showed frustration with the toll health problems had taken on him, saying he thought doctors were too strictly limiting what he could do.
At one point, he offered to share some butter pecan ice cream, his favorite dessert, with his guest, correspondent Thomas M. DeFrank.
Asked what his doctors would think about that, the former president said, "We have it anyhow."
___
Q: How valuable is yet another interview with a former president?
A: Not too, unless the person SELLING said interview makes some claim like this (having to wait until after the death to release it). Woodward knows the marketing side of "journalism" well. His failure to wait until the funeral has passed demonstrates his greed and I think is quite revealing.
You must be a newbie. I have opposed this occupation from the beginning on FR just like I opposed the Kosovo quagmire back in the late 1990s. I didnt' vote Democratic so my party didn't win anything
You didn't reply to my specific points (for example, do you think of the fact that Iraqis elected Shi'te fundamentalists?) but I will reply to yours. Neo-cons can be defined a group of folks who are mostly former Democrats, but broke from the Democratic party because they regarded it as "too isolationist." Neo-cons tend to favor using American foreign policy as a means to spread democracy (whether in Kosovo or Iraq) but also reject the traditional GOP opposition to welfare state.
There is no news here. There is not even anything controversial here, knowing who Gerald Ford was.
The left is using this to bash President Bush. And the slimey Woodward for his own self-aggrandizement.
That's it.
"I supported him (Carter) and helped to get some votes in the U.S. Senate at the time of the Panama Canal Treaty"
Well that was a great move.
The only reason he isn't remembered as one of the worst ever in those categories is because he was followed by the absolute worst possible President in those categories.Nixon was very bad in a lot of ways, but his move to recognize China and drive a wedge between them and the Soviets was brilliant. Not cost free, but brilliant. It was one of the key elements of winning the Cold War.
"SECURITY COUNCIL EXTENDS MANDATE OF MULTINATIONAL FORCE IN IRAQ UNTIL
31 DECEMBER 2007, UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTING RESOLUTION 1723 (2006)
Also Calls for Review of Force by 15 June 2007,
Earlier Termination of Mandate if Requested by Iraqi Government"
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8879.doc.htm
The UN is calling the shots and running the war in Iraq. President Bush is a UN lackey.
So Woodward is a capitalist.
That doesn't negate Ford's remarks.
The UN is calling the shots and running the war in Iraq. President Bush is a UN lackey.Forget it. It's not going to work. It's a stupid game you're playing and no one here is going to fall for it. You're a DU'er having fun. So clever. So cutesy and predictable.
But say what you want, and post what you want, I don't care. I support our presence in Iraq for the same reason that Iran wants us out, and Syria wants us out and Al Q wants us out:
Because that's where the war is. That's where the Front is.
btw, that was 'you' plural.
Bush haters won the election in November. Most of you under the title of Democrat/liberal, but most on this forum under that title of 'conservative.' The goal was the same. To get rid of 'RINOS' and damage President Bush.
You succeeded.
As far as your specific points go...........this is a government in its infancy, functioning under very difficult circumstances. I'm not going to call it a 'disaster' before it's gotten off the ground.
As far as the entire present mission in Iraq, it is far more than 'nation building' due to the terrorist threat in the ME. It is building an ally in a critical and dangerous region of the world.......and in that, it is already a success as well.
As for 'spreading democracy.' That was never the primary goal in Iraq. It was for the protection of the American people. Having an ally in the ME is the side effect of freeing them from a brutal dictatorship.
I appreciate the lofty goals of an isolationist like you, but they don't work in the real world. Terrorists like Saddam want to kill us, and we need to stop them.
Another story with this friggin' headline?!? How desparate is the MSM/DBM to keep this angle alive!!! It's already been proven to be excerpted out of context. These people are unbelievable. The guy's dead 30 seconds and they're tryin' to beat Bush over the head.
These losers in the media need to get a life. I'd like to see the family come out and blast them - but they obviously have more important things to tend to and have way to much class to respond.
The excerpt of Ford's remarks that Woodward is carefully editing, packaging and marketing would have meant nothing a week ago. I applaud his marketing skills, but find nothing earth-shattering about his product. Again, if timing wasn't everything then Woodward would have had the decency to wait a few more days.
Ford was indeed a moderate, although next to Reagan the most Conservative President since Coolidge. But what is funny about your comment is that on any realistic scale, Ford was far more conservative than the present Bush, and at lest slightly more Conservative than Bush, Senior.
Certainly the last two years have tended to confirm his opinion of the Iraqi venture. But so far as the issues involved in trying to impose "Democracy" on other lands, the entire history of America from Washington up until the last two years of the Wilson Administration, supports Ford's position on that. And up until 1918, we were respected as a model of freedom all over the world. We influenced others by example. Now?! Believing because you want to believe is not an answer.
William Flax
The Late President Ford.
So he didn't think it was the right thing to do. He wasn't the president, "W" did it, it was his decision, with the support of the `1998 Resolution and the UN go ahead...'
So big whoopie if President Ford didn't think it was right.
Clintoon and Carter don't support Iraq either...I suppose this is the MSM's way of equating FORD to hating Bush also...
MSM will stop at nothing to make our President look bad.
That's all I'm saying....Pres. Ford did the dignified thing and kept his opines to himself. Probablly DID talk with W about Iraq tho...but kept it quiet, like an EX Prez should.
G
Amen!
To you, perhaps. To some others, to be sure. But not to all.
And most importantly, not to those who are involved in the mission itself.
btw, do you oppose our actions in WWII as well?
The interview conducted and edited by the completely unbiased Woodward, and only made public when Ford is dead and can't respond?Gerald Ford had a choice of who conducted and edited this interview and he choose Woodward. He must have had some confidence in him and his work.
As though those of us who believe in 'free elections' don't believe in justice and liberty.
Ludicrous.
Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of The Associated Press, 
I googled her. There isn't much about her.
Funny how these socialist crook propagandists manage to hide behind a cloak of anonymity.
The key is to turn over the rock they hide under and expose them.
2007 IS THE YEAR SHE AND HER MINOR LEAGUE PROPAGANDISTS WILL BE EXPOSED AND THE AP DESTROYED.
Can't argue with this.
"The tape is in Ford's words. The sentiments expressed are new to us, ie, he had not professed them following the interview. So a request for posthumous release fits the scenario.
This shooting the messenger is approaching hysterical denial."
If you read the entire interview, Ford supported Bush on the Iraq War invasion - it was only the focus on WMD that Ford disagreed with. Woodward is twisting a dead man's words (while the body is still cold) to bash Bush over the head and further his own agenda. A truly despicable thing to do.
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