From Sourcewatch:
Gerald R. Ford, the only President of the United States who served without being elected to the office, died December 27, 2006, at the age of 93. …
When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned during Richard M. Nixon’s presidency, Nixon appointed Ford (with the approval of the U.S. Senate) to take his place.
When Nixon then resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford ascended the presidency and proclaimed that, “Our long national nightmare is over.”
Ford gave Nixon a ‘blanket’ pardon for his dealings in the Watergate scandal – which also forgave anything else Nixon might have ever done.
The economy was a great concern during the Ford administration.
In response to rising inflation, Ford went before the American public on television in October, 1974 and asked them to “whip inflation now” (WIN); as part of this program, he urged people to wear “WIN” buttons.
However, many perceived this as simply a gimmick without offering any effective means of solving the problem.
See also here.
And here.
Would Ford have won the 1996 elections, if comedian Chevy Chase would not have parodied him?
Mediagirl’s view on Ford: here.
Tim Wheeler’s view: here.
Ford and Fidel Castro: here.
Ford and Suharto’s invasion of East Timor: here.
Ford vs. Bush on Iraq war (see also comments on this post) here.
Ford’s funeral: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
*What Happened to Vietnam Era War Resisters?*
Posted by: “hapi22” hapi22@earthlink.net robinsegg
Wed Dec 27, 2006 6:06 pm (PST)
The death of Gerald Ford has led to some discussions about pardons and,
specifically, the pardons of Vietnam era draft dodgers, deserters and
military resisters.
Here’s a bit on that …
———————————————————-
*What Happened to Vietnam Era War Resisters?*
by Harold Jordan
American Friends Service Committee
[an excerpt]
{* The term “bad discharges” refers to several categories of discharge
from the military (such as “Undesirable,” “Other Than Honorable,” etc.)
that may result in post-service job discrimination, the loss of
veteran’s benefits, or both]
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Relief for War Resisters
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Two programs providing limited legal relief for draft and military
resisters were implemented in the 1970s. Military resisters and draft
evaders were treated differently from each other in both Ford and Carter
programs.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Ford Clemency Program (1974)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
In 1974, President Ford established a program of partial relief for war
resisters. This clemency program was considered a complement to
President Ford’s pardon of President Nixon, who had resigned from office
in lieu of likely removal by Congress. The program covered the following
categories of persons: convicted draft violators, convicted military
deserters and AWOL’s, draft violators who had never been tried, and
veterans with less than honorable discharges for absence offenses.
The conditions under which a person could receive relief were onerous
and discriminatory. Persons receiving clemency were required to do up to
24 months of alternative service and were required sign broad oath of
allegiance to the United States.
In addition to these measures, military deserters automatically received
bad discharges (“Undesirable”), although they could later apply to get
them changed to “Clemency Discharges” (considered “Other Than
Honorable”) after performing 24 months of service. Under the plan, GI
participants would automatically lose all veterans benefits, unlike many
other veterans with less than honorable discharges.
The program was widely regarded as a failure, even by people who
administered it. Only 27,000 of the 350,000 eligible persons applied;
21,800 were granted clemency, mostly men living in the U.S., not exiles.
Those granted clemency were almost equally divided between “draft
offenders” and “military offenders.” Most exile groups based in Canada,
Sweden, Britain and France endorsed a boycott of the Ford program
because of its punitive nature. The “oath of allegiance” requirement was
considered especially offensive given the generous treatment of Nixon.
Nixon received a pardon, pension, and was not required to swear
allegiance to the U.S. despite his role in undermining democracy.
Program administrators estimated that about 566,000 military “offenders”
were still in need of relief after the Ford program ended, an ultimate
indicator of the program’s failure.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Carter Program (1977)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
In 1977, President Carter established two programs to assist war
resisters. In January of 1977 he declared an unconditional amnesty for
draft resisters, both accused and those who could face possible
prosecution. Later that year, he set up the two stage “pardon” process
for military absentees.
Once again, draft evaders and military absentees were treated
differently.
Draft evaders were granted unconditional amnesty automatically if there
were no other legal charges pending. They would not have a criminal
record. Young men who were considered draft evaders did not have to
apply (in any formal sense) to get amnesty. It was a blanket amnesty
granted to all draft evaders whether they had been engaged in a legal
process or not. This is why no figure exists for the real number of
draft evaders who benefited from the Carter program. This includes
people who were never prosecuted, people who were investigated and not
prosecuted, people who were indicted, people for whom charges had been
brought, etc. The only restriction is that the person not have other
(non-draft evasion) charges pending against them. So a draft evader who
had criminal charges pending for participating in a protest would not
have those protest-related charges dropped, only the draft evasion
charges.
Similarly, military deserters and AWOL’s could apply for a limited
pardon if there were no other charges pending. Under the Carter program
deserters would automatically receive a less than honorable discharge
(“Undesirable”), but could apply for an upgrade later. The upgrade would
not be automatic and few veterans received them. They were barred from
receiving veterans benefits, unlike many other vets with less than
honorable discharges. Military resisters had to apply for relief within
a certain time frame, about 5-6 months, during 1977. Only 4,200 of them
were considered eligible for the program; less than 25% of them were
processed and received the less-than-honorable discharge. The program
allowed for a case-by-case review of potentially another 430,000 cases
of veterans with bad discharges; yet only 16,277 benefited from this
procedure.
The Carter program was more successful than the Ford program despite its
serious limitations. Many of the resisters (especially military
absentees) had trouble surviving in other countries. Exile groups urged
people to take advantage of the Carter program and work from within the
US for a full amnesty.
One factor leading resisters to remain in exile was the poor advertising
of the details of the Carter relief program (1977) in the aftermath of
what was regarded as a highly discriminatory and defective Ford Clemency
program (1974). Congress refused to fund the Carter program fully. Both
relief programs had conditions many exiles found hard to accept.
Finally, the period of time under which one could apply for relief was
sharply limited.
Unfortunately, universal and unconditional amnesty was never granted to
military resisters. It is estimated that only 28,420 Vietnam Era
military resisters received any form of legal relief — many of them
received bad discharges — while another 550,000 never received any form
of relief. To place this figure in perspective, the number of ex-GI’s
who never received legal relief roughly equals the number of soldiers
who participated in the Gulf War of 1990 and 1991. This is another way
in which our country has yet to fully come to terms with the legacy of
the war in Southeast Asia. >>
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/conscientious-objection/Vietnam-war-resisters.htm
LikeLike
*Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq*
Posted by: “hapi22” hapi22@earthlink.net robinsegg
Thu Dec 28, 2006 7:33 am (PST)
It’s nice to know that Gerald Ford disagreed with Bush about invading
Iraq and lying about the reasons for doing it, but it would have served
America a heck of a lot better if Ford had spoken out when it counted
and might have helped.
Jimmy Carter had the guts to speak out …. why not Ford?
And why not any other major Republicans?
Why the Silence For Party Loyalty?
Why did they all put Party ahead of country?
Why did every g__d___ Republicans think being loyal to a Republican
president was more important than saving our country and the world from
this monstrosity Bush has created in the Middle East?
Why?
Because Republicans don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves.
It is the Party of greed and selfishness.
———————————————————-
*Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq*
by Bob Woodward
The Washington Post
December 28, 2006; A01 — Page One
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.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Christine Parthemore contributed to this report.
Read this at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/27/AR2006122701558.html
LikeLike
Re: Ford
Posted by: “robinsegg” hapi22@earthlink.net robinsegg
Thu Dec 28, 2006 9:58 am (PST)
I, too, am sick to death of this Republican and whore media worship
of Gerald Ford for just not being a crook. He was a Republican Party
hack while in Congress; as president, told New York City to drop dead
when it needed federal help; pardoned Nixon but only offered
conditional amnesty to those who had evaded the draft and only if
they jumped through numerous and onerous hoops; and then played golf
for the rest of his life as the recipient of a presidential level
pension.
= = = = = = = = = = =
— In leftwing@yahoogroups.com, Jack wrote:
>
>
>
> You know, of all the drivel I’ve been forced to endure being
blasted at me about the GOP-operative Ford, not one newscast has seen
fit to mention that he was a member of the Warren Commission.
>
> I believe he was the last surviving member of that whitewash crew.
>
> Arlen Specter, inventor of the “Magic Bullet” theory, was only a
junior counsel working for the commission.
>
> It’s tough being old enough to remember the Free Press
>
> I sure miss it.
>
>
> Jack
>
Back to top
Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (3)
2.
more on Ford
Posted by: “hapi22” hapi22@earthlink.net robinsegg
Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:32 am (PST)
We are told not to speak ill of the dead, but I would remind everyone
who will listen that as our American military men and women were dying
in Iraq for Bush’s vanity war, Bush did a comedy skit for the White
House press corps in which he pretended to look all over the Oval Office
for the Weapons of Mass Destruction that could not be found in Iraq —
which weapons were the announced reason for all the death and dying in
Iraq.
So, please do not tell me not to speak ill of the dead, especially when
we now know this dead Republican MIGHT have used his clout to intervene
and stop Bush from invading Iraq. True, Bush would probably not have
listened to Gerald Ford, but at least Ford could have made the effort
… it might have emboldened other Republicans to break their silence
and head Bush off.
*Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq* at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/27/AR2006122701558.html
———————————————————-
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Back to top
Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (1)
3.
Ford’s legacy: rampant Republican corruption…
Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@mindspring.com chocoano05
Thu Dec 28, 2006 8:07 pm (PST)
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=151567
Gerald Ford is gone, but he lives on in two of his key appointees: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Their impact on America today is greater than Ford’s, who died Tuesday at 93.
Ford appointed Rumsfeld his chief of staff when he took office after Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The next year, when he made the 42-year-old Rumsfeld the youngest secretary of defense in the nation’s history, he named 34-year-old Dick Cheney his chief of staff, also the youngest ever.
Those two Ford appointees worked together ever since.
The Bush White House assertion of unchecked presidential power stems from the lessons they drew from their experience of working for the weakest president in recent American history. “For Dick and Don,” Harold Meyerson wrote in The American Prospect last July, “the frustrations of the Ford years have been compensated for by the abuses of the Bush years.”
Ford also named a new head of the CIA — a former Texas congressman named George H. W. Bush. Thus you could also credit also Ford with launching the Bush dynasty.
It was during Ford’s presidency that the last Americans left Vietnam — that photo of them struggling to get into that chopper on the roof of the Saigon embassy remains our most powerful image of American defeat, and it shadows our current debate about how to get out of Iraq.
Ford did leave one positive legacy, as Meyerson reminds us: his supreme court appointee, John Paul Stevens. Few remember it today, but when the Court majority appointed Bush president in December, 2000, Stevens wrote a blistering dissent, damning the other Republican appointees for their blatant partisanship. And this year Stevens wrote the majority opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld declaring that the military tribunals at Guantanamo violated the Geneva Convention.
But we wouldn’t need Stevens if we didn’t have Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush — that’s the legacy of Gerald Ford.
LikeLike
Pingback: US General Haig dies | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: USA: Colin Powell regrets lies on Iraq WMD in UN | Dear Kitty. Some blog