Ford Critical of Iraq

Boy, if you ever doubted that the news media was against Bush and the Iraq war, it should be crystal clear now!

Would the interview ever have been published if President Ford would have agreed with what Bush and his staff are doing on the Iraq war?

Gerry Ford passed away the day after Christmas. Funeral plans have yet to be completed. Betty, his wife, has not been seen or given any "live" comments about her 50+ years of marriage, but Bob Woordward sure lets us know what President Ford thinks about how the present President Bush is handling things on the "Washington Post" website today.

The following is quoted from the Austrailian "Hearld Sun" posted to the web several hours ago.

"US President George W. Bush and his top advisers made a "big mistake" in their justification for invading Iraq, Gerald Ford told journalist Bob Woodward in an interview embargoed until after the former president's death.

Ford, who died on Tuesday at his home in California, aged 93, said he would not have gone to war, based on what was known publicly at the time, said the report on The Washington Post website today.

“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 Iraq war,” Ford said.

“I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”

In a four-hour tape-recorded interview in July 2004, Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq advocated and carried out by key Bush advisers and veterans of his own administration – Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – reported Woodward.

“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.”

The Bush administration's initial justification for the war was that Iraq posed a threat because it had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. None were found."

I'm sure you'll find many more articles on the web, in the papers and all over TV. I was watching the morning news at 7AM, when I found out what was going on with the Ford inverview that Bob Woodward had and promised to keep "quiet" until his death.

I'm not happy with the way the war effort is going in Iraq, but would it be better to pull the troops out and fight the war here at home?