Never Made A Mistake

by digby
President Bush on Wednesday remembered former President Gerald Ford as a "man of complete integrity who led our country with common sense and kind instincts" and helped restore faith in the presidency after the Watergate scandal.


Common sense indeed:

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq

By Bob Woodward

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.



Nice of him to keep it to himself. But then protecting crazy Republicans was one of his specialties.

But this is really goood:

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."


Was he ever right about that. Kissinger is, in that respect, exactly like Cheney and Rummy (and the neocons who used to loathe him.) And it's why we find ourselves reliving this Groundhog Day quagmire. Ever since I heard that Henry was lurking around the White House whispering into Junior's ear, it's been clear what was up: mulligan.

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