We’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, right? Our newly deceased former president, Gerald Ford, will now be turned into some kind of hero. That’s the role of the media–to say happy things to put us in the mood to buy the products they advertise. Therefore, the media is already busy touting Ford’s alleged role as a “healer” for his post Watergate service.
But now what have we here? Today we learn that Ford sat on his hands while the current president lied us into war in Iraq. It’s clear as day, according this article published by the Washington Post. [1] Here’s an excerpt:
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 had 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.
“Embargoed,” eh? Isn’t that a euphemism for lacking the courage of one’s convictions? A euphemism for cowardice?
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.
So congratulations, President Ford, for failing to speak up at a time when you could have helped to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Instead, you sat on your hands so that you didn’t embarrass your fellow republicans. You and hundreds of other people who could have made a difference. But didn’t. For no good reason.
That’s unpardonable.
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