I Can't Believe Gerald Ford Is Dead!

[Mutt]

so young so vital. just goes to show you not to take life for granted, any day could be your last.

[Spunky]

RIP Gerald

[mikeyddddd]

He was an old fuck who was never elected president nor vice-president.

[nAtuRaLbEautY]

rest in peace...

[Chong]

he wasn't young, he was 93
and he interrupted Borat no Leno not once but twice! (network+local breaking news), fuck him!
mind you it was a rerun, but still..

[DaddyHalbucks]

Gerry Ford was a good man. We were lucky to have him. He did the right thing pardoning Nixon, who had resigned.

[Mutt]

age is a relative thing, Ford was a young man, only 93, he still had alot to give. and now we'll never know what might have been.

[Cash]

RIP Gerald Ford
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061227/...e_us/obit_ford

[reynold]

Originally Posted by Mutt

so young so vital. just goes to show you not to take life for granted, any day could be your last.

Yeah.. Very shocking indeed.

[baddog]

Originally Posted by mikeyddddd

He was an old fuck who was never elected president nor vice-president.

However, he was the only president in my lifetime that left office with no wars going on anywhere.

[Juilan]

Originally Posted by baddog

However, he was the only president in my lifetime that left office with no wars going on anywhere.

Sorry bud, the Indonesia > East Timor occupation was going on - just not in the news much at that time.

[Peaches]

Betty was always the more popular one. All the cool people have checked into the Betty Ford clinic

[he-fox]

geez, give the guy a rest. He was 93.

[aico]

I hope I die around like 65. Fuck that poopin in the pants thing.

[tony286]

he was 93 not a kid

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Ford was a career hack/flack for the Republican party, and nothing more.

Ford helped whitewash the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination (which was filled with inaccuracies and unfollowed leads), he took over as VP for Spiro Agnew who had to resign due to tax evasion and money laundering charges that he later pled "no contest" to.

In 1980, Agnew published a memoir in which he implied that Nixon, and Nixon Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, had planned to assassinate him if he refused to resign the Vice-Presidency, and that Haig told him ?to go quietly ? or else.?

Haig used similar charm on Ford when he told him that Nixon would resign, and Ford would become President, only if Ford agreed to grant a full pardon to Nixon, whom otherwise would have faced a lengthy prison sentence for the corruption that permeated his Administration.

Ford was nothing more than a weak puppet. He didn't heal the nation (as the revisionists are trying to imply) - at the time Nixon's pardon was a shock to the nation, that this so corrupt politician could simply walk away from all of his lies, deception and corruption with no punishment.

Ford then brought on a new crew, which included CIA Director George Bush Sr, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Chief of Staff Dick Cheney.

Yes, we have Ford to thank for bringing to the forefront of power many of the misguided policy makers that have been so disasterous to this country over the past quarter century.

So how did Ford choose to spend his years after losing the Presidency 30 years ago? Mostly playing golf...

Sorry if I refuse to fly my flag at half-mast for such a political tool. Only Ronald Reagan ranks higher on that list.

At least Nixon and Agnew will have good company in hell...

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[madawgz]

yeah you gotta take advantage of every day

[Martin]

Fuck that dead cracker.

[mattz]

wow, R.I.P.

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq


By Bob Woodward / Washington Post

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.

"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."

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

"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."

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. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisers Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.

"He was an excellent chief of staff. First class," Ford said. "But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious" as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell's assertion that Cheney developed a "fever" about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. "I think that's probably true."

Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. "I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly," he said, "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer."

Ford had faced his own military crisis -- not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end. In many ways those decisions framed his short presidency -- in the difficult calculations about how to pull out of Vietnam and the challenging players who shaped policy on the war. Most challenging of all, as Ford recalled, was Henry A. Kissinger, who was both secretary of state and national security adviser and had what Ford said was "the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

"I think he was a super secretary of state," Ford said, "but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend."

In 1975, Ford decided to relieve Kissinger of his national security title. "Why Nixon gave Henry both secretary of state and head of the NSC, I never understood," Ford said. "Except he was a great supporter of Kissinger. Period." But Ford viewed Kissinger's dual roles as a conflict of interest that weakened the administration's ability to fully air policy debates. "They were supposed to check on one another."

That same year, Ford also decided to fire Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger and replace him with Rumsfeld, who was then Ford's White House chief of staff. Ford recalled that he then used that decision to go to Kissinger and say, "I'm making a change at the secretary of defense, and I expect you to be a team player and work with me on this" by giving up the post of security adviser.

Kissinger was not happy. "Mr. President, the press will misunderstand this," Ford recalled Kissinger telling him. "They'll write that I'm being demoted by taking away half of my job." But Ford made the changes, elevating the deputy national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to take Kissinger's White House post.

Throughout this maneuvering, Ford said, he kept his White House chief of staff in the dark. "I didn't consult with Rumsfeld. And knowing Don, he probably resented the fact that I didn't get his advice, which I didn't," Ford said. "I made the decision on my own."

Kissinger remained a challenge for Ford. He regularly threatened to resign, the former president recalled. "Over the weekend, any one of 50 weekends, the press would be all over him, giving him unshirted hell. Monday morning he would come in and say, 'I'm offering my resignation.' Just between Henry and me. And I would literally hold his hand. 'Now, Henry, you've got the nation's future in your hands and you can't leave us now.' Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

Ford added, "Any criticism in the press drove him crazy." Kissinger would come in and say: "I've got to resign. I can't stand this kind of unfair criticism." Such threats were routine, Ford said. "I often thought, maybe I should say: 'Okay, Henry. Goodbye,' " Ford said, laughing. "But I never got around to that."

At one point, Ford recalled Kissinger, his chief Vietnam policymaker, as "coy." Then he added, Kissinger is a "wonderful person. Dear friend. First-class secretary of state. But Henry always protected his own flanks."

Ford was also critical of his own actions during the interviews. He recalled, for example, his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to remain in office, when he was under enormous pressure to dump Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller from the Republican ticket. Some polls at the time showed that up to 25 percent of Republicans, especially those from the South, would not vote for Ford if Rockefeller, a New Yorker from the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was on the ticket.

When Rockefeller offered to be dropped from the ticket, Ford took him up on it. But he later regretted it. The decision to dump the loyal Rockefeller, he said, was "an act of cowardice on my part."

In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford. After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated from Vietnam, Ford was often labeled the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.

"Well," he said, "I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it."

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[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by Juilan

Sorry bud, the Indonesia > East Timor occupation was going on - just not in the news much at that time.

Impressive for a GFYer...

Published on Thursday, December 6, 2001 by Agence France Presse

US Endorsed Indonesia's East Timor Invasion: Secret Documents

The United States offered full and direct approval to Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, a move by then-president Suharto which consigned the territory to 25 years of oppression, official documents released Thursday show.

The documents prove conclusively for the first time that the United States gave a 'green light' to the invasion, the opening salvo in an occupation that cost the lives of up to 200,000 East Timorese.

General Suharto briefed US president Gerald Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger on his plans for the former Portuguese colony hours before the invasion, according to documents collected by George Washington University's National Security Archive.

When Ford and Kissinger called in Jakarta on their way back from a summit in Beijing on December 6, 1975, Suharto claimed that in the interests of Asia and regional stability, he had to bring stability to East Timor, to which Portugal was trying to grant autonomy.

"We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto told his visitors, according to a long classified State Department cable.

Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have."

Kissinger, who has denied the subject of Timor came up during the talks, appeared to be concerned about the domestic political implications of an Indonesian invasion.

"It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly, we would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens, happens after we return.

"The president will be back on Monday at 2:00 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better, if it were done after we returned."

The invasion took place on December 7, the day after the Ford-Suharto meeting.

Kissinger has consistently rejected criticism of the Ford Administration's conduct on East Timor.

During a launch in 1995 for his book "Diplomacy," Kissinger said at a New York hotel it was perhaps "regrettable" that for US officials, the implications of Indonesia's Timor policy were lost in a blizzard of geopolitical issues following the Vietnam War.

"Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia," Kissinger said, according to a transcript of the meeting distributed by the East Timor Action network -- which advocated independence for East Timor.

"At the airport as we were leaving, the Indonesians told us that they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor. To us that did not seem like a very significant event."

The documents also show that Kissinger was concerned at the use of US weapons by Indonesia during the East Timor invasion.

By law, the arms could only be used in self defense, but it appears that Kissinger was concerned mostly on the interpretation of the legislation -- not the use of the weapons.

"It depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation," he is quoted as saying.

The eastern part of the island of Timor, situated north of the Australian coast, was invaded by Jakarta in 1975 and annexed the following year.

After a 25-year independence campaign and guerrilla war, the territory voted overwhelmingly for independence in August 1999 in a referendum which triggered a wave of murderous violence by pro-Jakarta militias.

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[4Man]

He's 5 feet under belive me.