Bob Woodward notes the following in the pages of WaPo: 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.
I noted the story at OTB this morning, yawned and moved on. Somehow this struck me as neither a surprise nor a big deal. However, Memeorandum would indicate that I underestimated the story.
OK, I can see how the fact that it was embargoed until his death to be sort of interesting, and certainly any critic of the administration will love the fact that Ford directly criticized Cheney and Rumsfeld. However, it strikes me as utterly unsurprising that Ford opposed the war in Iraq. That comports with my basic understanding of his politics and foreign policy.
As such, I find this all to be rather ho-hum. Perhaps the response is an artifact of the fact that it is the holidays and a relatively slow news day?
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December 28th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
There are a couple of things interesting about this.
First if a prominent Republican conservative of Ford’s stature was questioning the Iraq war in July 2004 one wonders where in the world other conservatives were on this one?
Most were trumpeting the war like you Steven, claiming that the US invasion was likely to “to establish a secular, successful, quasi-democracy in the heart of the Middle East..[that]has a much larger potential for combatting the ideology of death that permeates Islamofascism.”
Ford saw through this type of nonsense–one wonders if there were others in the Republican ranks?
Second, given his prominence and is supposed decency, one wonders what he did to make his views known to actual decision makers? Or did he simply let his allegiance to party trump his judgement?
December 28th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
I would dispute one thing: Ford wasn’t “prominent Republican conservative”–he rally has always been considered a moderate.
And yes, I thought that there was serious potential for success. I was clearly wrong. Of course, I honestly thought that the administration had some inkling that it knew what it was doing. I have been radically disappointed (to put it mildly) on that count.