As the nation mourns the passing of former President Gerald Ford, President Bush has been appropriately respectful. Hopefully, however, the current occupant of the Oval Office’s regard for its former occupant will extend to consideration by Bush of what Ford had to say in one of his last interviews.

Asked by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about the Iraq imbroglio, Ford said in 2004, “(Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and (Vice President Dick) 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. 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.”

Both Rumsfeld and Cheney served as White House chief of staff under Ford, but the former president put loyalty to his country ahead of any deference to former aides. He did, however, ask that Woodward not make the contents of the interview public until after Bush’s presidency was done, or until after Ford’s passing.

As of Tuesday, Woodward was free to reveal Ford’s comments regarding Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the quagmire they have created.

Ford explained that he would not have chosen the course adopted by the current administration. “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 Iraqi war,” said the former president.

Rather, said Ford, “I would have maximized our efforts through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”.

In addition to identifying the specific error with regard to Iraq, Ford spoke more broadly of the Bush administration’s flawed vision of the U.S. role in the world.

Ford, a lifelong Republican, expressed the traditional view of his party with regard to military adventures abroad, saying, “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.”

———————————————————————-

John Nichols’ new book, THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism has been hailed by authors and historians Gore Vidal, Studs Terkel and Howard Zinn for its meticulous research into the intentions of the founders and embraced by activists for its groundbreaking arguments on behalf of presidential accountability. After reviewing recent books on impeachment, Rolling Stone political writer Tim Dickinson, writes in the latest issue of Mother Jones, “John Nichols’ nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic, The Genius of Impeachment, stands apart. It concerns itself far less with the particulars of the legal case against Bush and Cheney, and instead combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the “heroic medicine” that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to ‘reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.'”

The Genius of Impeachment can be found at independent bookstores and at www.amazon.com