As others including Atrios have noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the front-page treatment today to comments by now-deceased President Gerald Ford for an upcoming book project, including this excerpt:In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with Bush'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 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.This, to me, is a lasting remembrance of President Ford that is not very honorable.
If he believed that the Iraq war was a mistake (as well as the conduct of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, his two one-time protégés), he had a duty to speak out as soon as possible, and not hide away his comments in an "embargoed" interview so that he would have the cover of his demise to protest himself against any repercussions.
Update 12/29: And for anyone who subscribes to this notion that it's somehow bad form for past presidents to criticize current ones, Atrios dug up this interesting tidbit about what "the sainted Ronnie R" had to say about Bill Clinton around 1993 (and exploding Ronnie's misinformation would likely be the subject of another post).
Update 12/31: Jerry and Joe Long provide this admiring remembrance of Ford tinged with appropriate sacrasm towards other Repugs who will never measure up by comparison.
2 comments:
there's some responsibility that rests with woodward as well...
Good point, and it's not like he hasn't done stuff like this before either (re: his derision of those who rightly criticized the outing of Valerie Plame when he knew about it along with Cooper, Miller, and Russert).
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