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I must have missed this, or it was underreported. What were some of the reactions from this?
Quote:
Ford: Bush made 'big mistake' on Iraq justifications
Quote:
Story Highlights
•NEW: Ford to Bob Woodward: Bush made "big mistake" in justifying Iraq
•NEW: Ford made the comments in a four-hour interview in 2004
•NEW: Interview appears in Washington Post
•NEW: Ford disagreed with Bush's approach to spreading democracy
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In an interview never before published, former President Gerald Ford said President Bush and his chief advisers "made a big mistake" with their justifications for the Iraq war.
Ford made the comments in a four-hour interview in 2004 with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.
Woodward is famous for being part of the writing duo who exposed the Watergate scandal, which led to Ford becoming president.
The interview was conducted at Ford's home in Beaver Creek, Colorado.
"I don't think, if I had been president -- on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly -- I don't think I would have ordered the Iraqi war," Ford said in a part of the interview broadcast on CNN's "Larry King Live" Wednesday.
"I would have maximized our efforts through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer," the former president said.
Ford died Tuesday, at age 93, at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. An official cause of death has not been released. (Read the full story)
His body will lie in state in California and Washington before interment January 3. (Watch announcement of Ford's funeral)
Ford replaced former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 during a scandal surrounding the burglary of Democratic Party offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. (Watch how Ford's legacy will remain strong)
Ford was regarded as a man with a quiet style who was not quick to criticize, Woodward and others who worked with him said on "Larry King." (Watch President Bush praise Ford)
Ford requested that Woodward not publish the interview until Woodward had written a planned book about Ford or until the former president died.
"He made it very clear that he did not agree with the reasons President Bush laid out for the war, namely the belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or that there was some obligation that the United States or the president had to expand democracy."
The Washington Post published other excerpts from the interview.
"(Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and (Vice President Dick) Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq," Ford said.
"They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction. 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."
Cheney served as President Ford's chief of staff and Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense in the Ford administration.
President Bush has long defended the war in Iraq as part of a larger plan to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
The 38th president said he disapproves of that strategy.
"I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security," he said.
The bolded part is EXACTLY how I feel....
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In an interview never before published, former President Gerald Ford said President Bush and his chief advisers "made a big mistake" with their justifications for the Iraq war.
Ford made the comments in a four-hour interview in 2004 with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.
Woodward is famous for being part of the writing duo who exposed the Watergate scandal, which led to Ford becoming president.
The interview was conducted at Ford's home in Beaver Creek, Colorado. "I don't think, if I had been president -- on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly -- I don't think I would have ordered the Iraqi war," Ford said in a part of the interview broadcast on CNN's "Larry King Live" Wednesday.
"I would have maximized our efforts through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer," the former president said.
Ford died Tuesday, at age 93, at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. An official cause of death has not been released. (Read the full story)
His body will lie in state in California and Washington before interment January 3. (Watch announcement of Ford's funeral)
Ford replaced former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 during a scandal surrounding the burglary of Democratic Party offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. (Watch how Ford's legacy will remain strong)
Ford was regarded as a man with a quiet style who was not quick to criticize, Woodward and others who worked with him said on "Larry King." (Watch President Bush praise Ford)
Ford requested that Woodward not publish the interview until Woodward had written a planned book about Ford or until the former president died.
"He made it very clear that he did not agree with the reasons President Bush laid out for the war, namely the belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or that there was some obligation that the United States or the president had to expand democracy."
The Washington Post published other excerpts from the interview.
"(Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and (Vice President Dick) Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq," Ford said.
"They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction. 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."
Cheney served as President Ford's chief of staff and Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense in the Ford administration.
President Bush has long defended the war in Iraq as part of a larger plan to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
The 38th president said he disapproves of that strategy. "I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security," he said.
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; Page A01
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 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.
President Gerald R. Ford, center, with Chief of Staff Donald H. Rumsfeld, left, and Rumsfeld's assistant, Dick Cheney, on April 28, 1975. (By David Hume Kennerly -- Ford Library Via Associated Press)
"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 a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.
"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical "whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interest." He added: "And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."
The Ford interview -- and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 -- took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisers Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.
"He was an excellent chief of staff. First class," Ford said. "But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious" as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell's assertion that Cheney developed a "fever" about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. "I think that's probably true."
Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. "I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly," he said, "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer."
Ford had faced his own military crisis -- not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end. In many ways those decisions framed his short presidency -- in the difficult calculations about how to pull out of Vietnam and the challenging players who shaped policy on the war. Most challenging of all, as Ford recalled, was Henry A. Kissinger, who was both secretary of state and national security adviser and had what Ford said was "the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."
"I think he was a super secretary of state," Ford said, "but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend."
In 1975, Ford decided to relieve Kissinger of his national security title. "Why Nixon gave Henry both secretary of state and head of the NSC, I never understood," Ford said. "Except he was a great supporter of Kissinger. Period." But Ford viewed Kissinger's dual roles as a conflict of interest that weakened the administration's ability to fully air policy debates. "They were supposed to check on one another."
That same year, Ford also decided to fire Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger and replace him with Rumsfeld, who was then Ford's White House chief of staff. Ford recalled that he then used that decision to go to Kissinger and say, "I'm making a change at the secretary of defense, and I expect you to be a team player and work with me on this" by giving up the post of security adviser.
Kissinger was not happy. "Mr. President, the press will misunderstand this," Ford recalled Kissinger telling him. "They'll write that I'm being demoted by taking away half of my job." But Ford made the changes, elevating the deputy national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to take Kissinger's White House post.
Throughout this maneuvering, Ford said, he kept his White House chief of staff in the dark. "I didn't consult with Rumsfeld. And knowing Don, he probably resented the fact that I didn't get his advice, which I didn't," Ford said. "I made the decision on my own."
Kissinger remained a challenge for Ford. He regularly threatened to resign, the former president recalled. "Over the weekend, any one of 50 weekends, the press would be all over him, giving him unshirted hell. Monday morning he would come in and say, 'I'm offering my resignation.' Just between Henry and me. And I would literally hold his hand. 'Now, Henry, you've got the nation's future in your hands and you can't leave us now.' Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."
Ford added, "Any criticism in the press drove him crazy." Kissinger would come in and say: "I've got to resign. I can't stand this kind of unfair criticism." Such threats were routine, Ford said. "I often thought, maybe I should say: 'Okay, Henry. Goodbye,' " Ford said, laughing. "But I never got around to that."
At one point, Ford recalled Kissinger, his chief Vietnam policymaker, as "coy." Then he added, Kissinger is a "wonderful person. Dear friend. First-class secretary of state. But Henry always protected his own flanks."
Ford was also critical of his own actions during the interviews. He recalled, for example, his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to remain in office, when he was under enormous pressure to dump Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller from the Republican ticket. Some polls at the time showed that up to 25 percent of Republicans, especially those from the South, would not vote for Ford if Rockefeller, a New Yorker from the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was on the ticket.
When Rockefeller offered to be dropped from the ticket, Ford took him up on it. But he later regretted it. The decision to dump the loyal Rockefeller, he said, was "an act of cowardice on my part."
In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford. After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated from Vietnam, Ford was often labeled the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.
"Well," he said, "I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it."
Too bad that Ford had to die for anyone to care about his opinion again.
__________________
We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.
Too bad that Ford had to die for anyone to care about his opinion again.
Its also interesting that he told Woodward not to release the interview unless he died, or in his book. Then, look at the timing of his death. Right when we are at the "crossroads". He dies while Bush is reviewing the policy and Ford's views are released. Pretty wild.
Ford was a good guy and a team player - he wasn't going to throw fellow Repubs under the bus while he was alive - though he did want his thoughts to be known at an appropriate time.
Cue Stephan to bring his "Ford was a RINO" take any second now...
__________________
"Seachicken - it's what's for dinner" - me (until the 'Hawks sweep the Cards)
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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."
Cowardly?? How 'bout classy, or respectful... I'm sure the recent incoherrent ramblings of Carter make him a hero in your eyes though...
No one is entitled to an opinion but you, right???????
What is classy or respectful about this? It takes a bit more courage to stand behind one's convictions, so yes, Carter's " incoherent ramblings " are more credible.
Classy and disrepectful don't seem like legitimate descriptions considering the subject matter. Where was Ford's commentary in 2001. Oh that's right ... under his hat. That would have been courageous.
Better late than never, but too many have died for this travesty during that waiting period. I don't know what effect his commentary would have had 5 years ago, but I would like to think he could have been a voice of sanity at that time. So now he joins Colin Powell and the rest of the Bush enablers, who got a sudden attack of morality 5 years too late.
__________________
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." --Voltaire
No one is entitled to an opinion but you, right???????
What is classy or respectful about this? It takes a bit more courage to stand behind one's convictions, so yes, Carter's " incoherent ramblings " are more credible.
Classy and disrepectful don't seem like legitimate descriptions considering the subject matter. Where was Ford's commentary in 2001. Oh that's right ... under his hat. That would have been courageous.
Better late than never, but too many have died for this travesty during that waiting period. I don't know what effect his commentary would have had 5 years ago, but I would like to think he could have been a voice of sanity at that time. So now he joins Colin Powell and the rest of the Bush enablers, who got a sudden attack of morality 5 years too late.
Scream and yell all you want Wally... As if he who screams the loudest - typically with little foundation, ever proves a point, creates change or accomplishes - well, anything...
In his own classy, respectful and statesmen-like manner, Ford got his points across...
Carter on the other-hand is no better than a Cindy Sheehan... A virtual laughing-stock... If ever a former President should have rode off into the sunset, never to be heard from again, it was Carter... But then, I guess that would have proven just how much of a coward he was huh??
Scream and yell all you want Wally... As if he who screams the loudest - typically with little foundation, ever proves a point, creates change or accomplishes - well, anything...
In his own classy, respectful and statesmen-like manner, Ford got his points across...
Carter on the other-hand is no better than a Cindy Sheehan... A virtual laughing-stock... If ever a former President should have rode off into the sunset, never to be heard from again, it was Carter... But then, I guess that would have proven just how much of a coward he was huh??
You are living in your own imagination. Do you have your speakers on their highest setting? Who is yelling or screaming? Maybe you are just fulfilling your prophecy to teach some of us a lesson around here.
Psssst. It is not working well.
In your incessant way, you have offered nothing more than your own opinion, so we are at best at a stalemate. BTW, mmy original statement that you have not so eloquently embellished is a s follows;
Quote:
Makes no sense that he should want his thoughts kept secret until his death. Almost seems cowardly.
Looks like your preconceived notion has amplified the statement.
__________________
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." --Voltaire
You are living in your own imagination. Do you have your speakers on their highest setting? Who is yelling or screaming? Maybe you are just fulfilling your prophecy to teach some of us a lesson around here.
Psssst. It is not working well.
In your incessant way, you have offered nothing more than your own opinion, so we are at best at a stalemate. BTW, mmy original statement that you have not so eloquently embellished is a s follows;
Looks like your preconceived notion has amplified the statement.
Yea, yea, yea... I know... Just like AZZennny has it all wrong with you and your position on Israel, you didn't call Ford a coward either...
Are you forever not to be taken seriously?
For the record - once again - I have more than atoned for those ridiculous comments made long ago, and in jest. I am not about teaching anyone a lesson... In fact, I know for sure that I learn much more than I offer here on this board. Such as - you are never to be taken seriously... Key learning and one I will try not to forget...
