Life and Death

01 January 2006 |permalink | email article

A somber W. continues to liberate the “way forward” in Iraq, apparently still believing a military solution in Baghdad will snatch victory from defeat despite the grim conditions on the ground.

But the real news, as 2006 ended, was the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the death of an underappreciated President Gerald Ford.

Saddam’s hanging, always inevitable, pales by comparison to the joy felt by the White House with his capture in December 2003.

The reasons: W’s war is approaching its fifth unsuccessful year, sectarian violence surging and, most urgently, the U.S. death toll on Sunday was 2999.

America’s past cozy diplomatic relationship with Saddam, prior to 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, thus triggering the Persian Gulf War, successfully led by W’s father, Bush 41, is not generally known by the American people.

It’s chilling to recall Donald Rumsfeld, President Reagan’s envoy, kissing the brutal killer Saddam in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s when the US was overtly aiding Iraq to punish Tehran.

Att Ford’s funeral, W. might meditate on Ford’s July 2004 interview, not released until after his death, when he told the Washington Post he “very strongly” disagreed with the President’s rationale to invade Iraq.

“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the President made a big mistake in justifying going to war with Iraq. . .but I felt strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do,” the Post’s Bob Woodward wrote.

A cock-sure W. said he did not consult with his father, but a higher Father, about going to war. He never sought Ford’s advice, or if he did, ignored it in his blind obsession with the discredited premise that Saddam was linked to Osama bin Laden on 9/11.

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