Dueling Headlines

38th President Leaves A Legacy of Healing.

Well, up to a point:

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq:

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.

Sanctions...okayyy.....

...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."...

He didn't understand the war. Rest in peace, but that's a heckuva farewell present from one president to another, only one of which still bears the burden of trying to make things work.

Update: Hat tip to James Sturcke at the Guardian's News Blog for the link. Sturcke also points to Carry On America with Ford's observations about a thin-skinned Henry Kissinger, and another Address From the Grave transmission with Thomas DeFrank at the New York Daily News that may force me to revise my quick criticism of Ford's Iraq War comments:

Ford was a few weeks shy of his 93rd birthday as we chatted for about 45 minutes. He'd been visited by President Bush three weeks earlier and said he'd told Bush he supported the war in Iraq but that the 43rd President had erred by staking the invasion on weapons of mass destruction.

"Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed, "but we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of mass destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does [Bush] get his advice?"

I don't know if Ford was being inconsistent in telling Bob Woodward that he would have pushed for sanctions (for another decade?) and DeFrank that there was justification for getting rid of him, but I'll take another look for some kind of internally coherent view. The way things are going I'll have a lot of material to choose from. Meanwhile Bill Bennett at NRO asks Ford to "show a little decency" but I think he's only sending messages.

Comments

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