Dec 28, 2006 7:34 am US/Pacific
Ford Offered Tough Words On War, Cheney, Kissinger
PALM DESERT, Calif. (CBS) ―
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President Gerald Ford told Bob Woodward he "very strongly" disagreed with the president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. (File)
AP
Before he passed away on Tuesday, former President Gerald Ford said that the Iraq war was not justified, Dick Cheney was a "pugnacious" vice president and former Secretary of State Kissinger had "the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."
Ford's comments appeared in Thursday's Washington Post and were taken from an interview with Bob Woodward under the condition that they could be published after his death.
"I don't think I would have gone to war," Ford said in 2004, a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration, the Post reported.
Ford told Woodward he "very strongly" disagreed with the president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously.
Ford also criticized Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and defense secretary.
"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 told Woodward.
"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… 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."
Ford said that Cheney "was an excellent chief of staff. First class… But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious" as vice president.
When he recalled his relationship with Henry Kissinger, Ford said that "any criticism in the press drove him crazy," and he regularly threatened to resign.
"Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew," Ford told Woodward.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
Slideshow: The Life Of Gerald Ford
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