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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Woodward couldn't wait to toss repectful rememberance of Gerald Ford, a decent man, under the bus of partisan political meaness. Even though such behavior is now expected from the likes of Woodward and other leftists like him, one can't help but be reminded of a heavy question, once asked in another political era -- "Have you no decency, sir?"
You tell them all how the GOP is going to run this war! The GOP will stay the course, call up more troops, and make an eternal commitment. The troops will stay there as long as there is a GOP president and majority in Congress, by golly.
Oh wait. The GOP lost the majority in congress. What to do now? How conservative is it to spend $2 trillion to prop up a corrupt Shiite Hezbullah dominated Iraq?
Keep it up with GOP policies like that, and you will have Hillary and Edwards getting more conservative every day. Thanks for nothing.
And some on FR are cheering them on.
Well said!
Congress gave 23 reasons for the invasion. It was the MSM that decided to boil it all down to WMD.
Ford also opposed the war because he was against Bush's Wilsonian policy of spreading democracy. Ford has his faults but Bush's Iraq disaster proves that he was right on that issue.
His foreign policy, such as it was, was crafted by "the realists," the same people who did nothing about Islamist terrorism until it hit home in a spectacular way on 9/11. As the GOP leader of the House, he was accustomed to being in the minority, and was willing to engage the Democrats in a way which would have ensured the GOP's minority status for eternity.
Keep on plugging. The facts (i.e. the obvious Bush/neocon disaster in Iraq) are on your side. Back in the late 1990s, conservatives actually opposed Wilsonian nation building....that was before Bush led them down the garden path.
Well, that tears it! If I'd known what Gerry was thinking I NEVER would've supported the war in Iraq. Um...sure.
I can envision hoards of lefties ripping off their old "Wellstone!" stickers and replacing them with "What Would Gerry Do?"
Oh - the world has suddenly turned upside down!/sarc
Not so fast my friends.
Thank God someone else noticed. I thought I was the only one.
It matters not whether or not it is "hearsay". It matters not that it is the words of Gerald Ford. He was entitled to his opinion. That does not make his opinion any more of an "authority" on the subject than anyone elses. He has been out of office, out of the intelligence information loop, out of the policy making chair for over thirty years. He was a nice guy. May he rest in peace.
But there is one reason and only one reason this opinion of Ford's is being reported: it is an opinion supported by those reporting it. You can be damn sure that if Ford had been on record as supporting the Iraq decision, it would not warrant a feature story at this time. It is reported now on the same basis as is the Iraq-war opinions of George Clooney - their celebrity value and the use of that celebrity value to market that opinion, period.
Don't beleive anything Bob Woodward writes. Almost none of it is verifiable and I for one, think he makes most of it up. I think he's a scumbag deluxe.
So what...Does that make him bad?
This statement is closer to the truth than you think. Back in 2003, the Wilsonians on FR were dismissing the insurgents as just a bunch of holdouts who were taking potshots (and would soon disappear) or would lose heart once Saddam was captured, pooh poohed the possiblity of sectarian violence, predicted that the the Iraqi war would "pay for itself" via oil, predicated that the toppling of Saddam would set off a rapid democratic revolution in the Middle East, predicted that the Iraqis wanted freedom and democracy (they elected Shi'ite fundamentalists instead) etc. The evidence is in. All these predictions were wrong. The Wilsonians were right and those who opposed getting into this quagmire were right.
Who?
Pres Ford?
Woodward?
AP?
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