I'm sick of ford, & cheney, & rummy, & baker & bush's already.

[Philosoraptor]

Those photos of president ford with his cabinet, the very men who now have the world's balls in a vice, sicken me. To watch ford being lauded as some sort of hero also sickens me, but I can take it, been taking it up the --- for 35 years now with these very monsters at the helm all the while.

These are the very fuckers who destroyed America, and who now threaten the globe, these are the maniacs who gave us reagan, daddy bush and jr. the ape, and they've all lived way too long, and have gained way too much power, and have gotten away with way too much and their names will forever be associated with tyranny.

Yet, there they all still stand, mocking us, sucking off of us, sacrificing our children, patting each other on the back and giving themselves raises and high fives.

Can you please tell me when we'll be rid of these men?

[Swamp Rat]

1. Hopefully Jeebus will call upon the other two monsters in that photo

Hope Springs Eternal. :)

Three cheers for the Ford supporters! :sarcasm: Thanks for helping me update my 'ignore' list. :)

[terrya]

3. Yes, Ford was the antichrist.

And his administration made the Third Reich look like a picnic in the park. Yes, we get it already.

There are people here, such as myself, who didn't and don't regard Gerald R. Ford as some sort of cross between Hitler, Stalin, and Caligula. I still think Ford was basically a decent guy. Yes, he did things that rankle me. But so did Jimmy Carter. And so did Bill Clinton.

And thank you for helping me update my 'ignore' list. :-)

[Swamp Rat]

4. Why don't you do some reading before embarrassing yourself again.

After all, one of your stated hobbies is "reading." :shrug:





US Endorsed Indonesia's East Timor Invasion: Secret Documents

(snip)

"The documents prove conclusively for the first time that the United States gave a 'green light' to the invasion, the opening salvo in an occupation that cost the lives of up to 200,000 East Timorese.

General Suharto briefed US president Gerald Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger on his plans for the former Portuguese colony hours before the invasion, according to documents collected by George Washington University's National Security Archive.

When Ford and Kissinger called in Jakarta on their way back from a summit in Beijing on December 6, 1975, Suharto claimed that in the interests of Asia and regional stability, he had to bring stability to East Timor, to which Portugal was trying to grant autonomy.

"We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto told his visitors, according to a long classified State Department cable.

Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have."

(snip)

"The president will be back on Monday at 2:00 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better, if it were done after we returned."

The invasion took place on December 7, the day after the Ford-Suharto meeting."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1206-03.htm
---------------------------------------------------


FORD, KISSINGER AND THE INDONESIAN INVASION, 1975-76

Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to
Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975:
New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 62
Edited by William Burr and Michael L. Evans

December 6, 2001

(snip)

"Although Indonesia was a major site of U.S. energy and raw materials investment, an important petroleum exporter, strategically located near vital shipping lanes, and a significant recipient of U.S. military assistance, the country—much less the East Timor question—barely figures into Henry Kissinger’s memoirs of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Gerald Ford’s memoir briefly discusses the December 1975 visit to Jakarta but does not mention the discussion of East Timor with Suharto. Indeed, as important as the bilateral relationship was, Jakarta's brutal suppression of the independence movement in East Timor was a development that neither Ford nor Kissinger wanted people to remember about their time in power. That the two decided on a course of action of dubious legality and that resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Timorese may well have also discouraged further reflection, at least in public. No doubt the omissions from Ford's and Kissinger's memoirs also reflect the low priority that East Timor had during the Ford administration. For senior officials, the fate of a post-colonial East Timor paled in comparison to the strategic relationship with the anti-communist Suharto regime, especially in the wake of the communist victory in Vietnam, when Ford and Kissinger wanted to strengthen relations with anti-communists and check left-wing movements in the region.(1) But it is not simply a matter of omission; on several occasions Kissinger has explicitly denied that he ever had substantive discussions of East Timor with Suharto, much less having consented to Indonesian plans.(2) The new evidence contradicts Kissinger's statements: Indonesian plans for the invasion of East Timor were indeed discussed with Suharto, and Ford and Kissinger gave them the green light. As Kissinger advised Suharto on the eve of the invasion: "it is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly" but that "it would be better if it were done after we returned" to the United States."

(snip)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/
-------------------------------------------

... ad infinitum

[izzie]

2. Looks like we have to do this stuff like they did with the Czars

I am not sure what it all means as I am in my 70's and the only big deal I recall is FDR then they sort of started all this with JFK and now every one seems to want to out do each other. I fit it in with this love of building 'things' to wars and Presidents going on, plus Congress re-naming every thing after them self or Presidents. Course I grew up in a town named after some English Duke, town in Maine, but the whole thing makes me feel it is the dying days of a empire thing.

[Peace Patriot]

5. I don't think Republicans have a monopoly on monstrous acts. We

Democrats have LBJ to reckon with. (In my first vote for president, I voted for the "peace candidate." LBJ. 2 million people slaughtered, by the time it was over. Lesson: Beware of Democrats bearing peace.) But I've got to say that the Republicans have taken the prize ever since. Half of those 2 million dead in Southeast Asia were Nixon's. Then there's Ford and East Timor--not to mention Chile (US/Ford collusion with Pinochet--thousands tortured and 'disappeared'). And then there's Reagan, and the 200,000 Mayan Indians and leftists slaughtered in Guatemala and Central America, with his full complicity, and all the teachers and mayors slaughtered in Nicaragua, in a war that Congress had forbidden, and the death squads in El Salvador, trained in the US, who shot the Bishop of El Salvador dead on his altar, for advocating for the poor, and raped and murdered nuns and left their bodies on the road. MONSTROUS acts, with the full approval of the US government under Republican presidents.

And then there's Bush, who stopped the outsourcing of torture and mass slaughter, and brought it right home, to our everlasting disgrace as a nation. The toadying war profiteer puppet who has equaled the death toll on 9/11, in US soldiers, and who slaughtered 100,000 innocent Iraqis in the initial bombing alone, in a completely unnecessary and unjustifiable war, without a thought, without a care, without so much as a blink of the eye, and is now going to get his jollies off hanging Saddam.

At least LBJ had the good grace to recognize that he'd made a mistake, and declined to run for a second term. We have that--that the slaughter in Vietnam at least caused serious turmoil in the Democratic Party, and attempts at reform.

However, I don't think we're seeing the decline and fall of an Empire (a la Rome), as someone upthread suggests. I think we're seeing the decline and fall of the Corporate Rulers, and the rebirth of democracy in Latin America, and here.

The South Americans are way ahead of us on this--with leftist (majorityist) governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador (and next election cycles, Peru, and even Paraguay--my prediction). Daniel Ortega--leader of the Sandinista revolution that Reagan tried so hard to destroy--was just elected president in Nicaragua. And there is a huge leftist movement in southern Mexico (centered in Oaxaca) and Mexico City, which will eventually transform Mexico and central America. A tidal wave of democratic, anti-corporatist reform is sweeping the hemisphere--which we are barely aware of here, due to corporate news monopolies. But it will affect us in many ways, perhaps the most important one being the example of what TRANSPARENT elections can do, as to the interests of the majority being represented in government, in proper proportion to our numbers. The South Americans are showing the way. THEY will help us restore democracy in the US!