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."
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I was thinking more along the lines of the detente policies, but you make a valid point.
Hey, as much as I regard Ford as a real gentleman and patriot, if Murtha and Pelosi want to stand up and yell "This war is over because President Ford said it was a bad idea," they should be welcome to it. They will sound like idiots.
Ford could do nothing. Congress had specifically forbidden any use of U.S. Armed Forces in the Vietnamese conflict after the Paris Accords took effect. To act against the North would have meant impeachment, and Saigon just would have fell a little later.
Following Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam war, Congress exerted itself and severely weakened the Presidency. Nixon's Watergate conduct further encouraged a stronger Congress and a weakened Presidency. Ford and Carter were extremely weak Presidents which suited Congress just fine.Great point. I think it would have been hard for Reagan, or Lincoln for that matter, to be a strong president at that time. The electorate wasn't interested in having a strong president after the serial abuses you spoke of. Regan was the right man at the right time.
I was glad to serve; I believe Patton was right when he said bearing arms for ones nation was the greatest privilege of a free person.
I was thinking more along the lines of the detente policies, but you make a valid point.Of course Nixon had lots of other "accomplishments" that qualified him for the big prize :).
Don't beleive anything Bob Woodward writes...
The first one nailed it, All you need do is ask one thing,
"Was it the decent thing to do?"
I suppose that nuclear weapons in the possession of a madman is only a threat to the 'delusional.' If that is the case, I proudly wear the title.
No doubt this is true but there's never an after-the-fact or before-the-fact agreement on the condition of the battlefield is there? The issue is whether or not a stronger US position might not have been taken with the Soviets in the 70s. A stronger position might have worked or it might have resulted in nuclear war...who knows for sure. Reagan's initiation of START in retrospect looks like the right move for the time as he did insist on driving a hard bargain since he also deployed missiles in Europe. I can't help but think he knew he'd have to do such a thing all along and had to bargain from strength. I also think that after all the previous negotiations the Soviets must have been quite surprised to see America not sign off on any agreement just to have an agreement. Of course that could have ended in nuclear war too and if the Soviets were listening to the MSM they probably did think Reagan was just crazy enough to do it. ;-) Thankfully it worked. Who knows if something else might have worked sooner but it is fun to speculate.
The point is that Woodward is trying to turn Ford, at the moment of his death, into Carter rather than waiting for publication of the book in its entirety.
From The Corner
The Decent Thing [Bill Bennett]
Since "decency" seems to be the watchword of the day and the consensus modifier for Jerry Ford (a view with which I generally concur), may I nevertheless be permitted to ask this: just how decent, how courageous, is what Jerry Ford did with Bob Woodward? He slams Bush & Cheney to Woodward in 2004, but asks Woodward not to print the interview until he's dead. If he felt so strongly about his words having a derogatory affect, how about telling Woodward not to run the interview until after Bush & Cheney are out of office? The effect of what Ford did is to protect himself, ensuring he can't be asked by others about his critiques, ensuring that there can be no dialogue. The way Ford does it with Woodward, he doesn't have to defend himself...he simply drops it into Bob Woodward's tape recorder and let's the bomb go off when fully out of range, himself. This is not courage, this is not decent. The manly or more decent options are these: 1. Say it to Bush's or Cheney's face and allow them and us to engage the point while you're around, or 2. Far more decently, say nothing critical of Bush will be on the record until his presidency is over. There's a 3. Don't say anything critical of George Bush to Bob Woodward at all.
You're a former President Mr. Ford, show a little more decency to the incumbent who is in a very, very tough place and trying to do the right thing....you may recall those days and positions yourself.
Iraq declared war on us as well in the form of fatwa (as they so flatulently call it) by Saddam and Osama. And they not only declared war on our government as Germany and Italy did but they imposed a death sentence on all Americans, British, and Jews anywhere on earth. That we didn't mop them up them is the oversight we are paying for just as we did when we didn't take care of Germany and Japan sooner. Fortunately, Iraq has been no where near as catastrophic as WWII.
I can't think much of a guy who doesn't have the balls while he's alive to put his two cents out there but asks that it not be published until he's dead. Ford was always a loser.
Good riddance.
Hold on a minute.
Gerald Ford was 91 years old when he made a statement that he "would not have used WMD as the reason for going to war"...I don't think he definitively claimed that he was against the war in principle.
He was using 20/20 hindsight.
I hope when I am 91 I will not be judged so harshly on comments I might make during an interview with a "hostile" inquisitor.
Take it easy on that hair...think John Edwards;)
I am with you 100%! Cannot believe some of what I have read on here since Pres Ford died.
"He did it post humously and he did it against his own party. Traitor and coward."
There is the money quote. Yet we shall see endless criticizm of President Ford. The first one to call him a "traitor" wins a toaster, and legendary status.
45 posted on 12/28/2006 12:03:26 PM CST by ARealMothersSonForever
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Enjoy your toaster, and legendary status.
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