Ford criticises Bush over Iraq in two-year-old interview

Former US president Gerald Ford was highly critical of the Bush administration, saying the Iraq war was unjustified, in a two-year-old interview published only today.

In the embargoed interview with the Washington Post’s famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward in July 2004, which Ford said could be published only after his death, the former president “very strongly” disagreed with George Bush’s justifications for invading Iraq.

Ford, 93, who died yesterday, said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously, Woodward wrote. The story was initially was posted on the Post’s internet site today.

“I don’t think I would have gone to war,” Ford told Woodward, a little more than a year after Bush launched the invasion.

In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Dick Cheney – Ford’s White House chief of staff – and then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his secretary of defence.

“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.”

Woodward wrote that the interview took place for a future book project, though the former president said his comments could be published any time after his death.

In another interview released after his death, Ford told CBS News in 1984 that he initially was against using the phrase “long national nightmare” in his first speech as president following Richard Nixon’s resignation, concerned that it was too harsh.

But Ford said he reconsidered and sought his wife’s advice. “After thinking about it and talking to Betty about it, we decided to leave it in and, boy, in retrospect, I’m awfully glad we did,” he said.