Ford Administration: Same gangster enterprise as the current Bush regime

[JackRiddler]

On the occasion of Gerald Ford's death, let's use this thread to recall the awesome but now little-known criminal energies of the Ford Administration.

I invite those of you who are old enough or read-up to add your own recollections.

Here are mine:

An obscure congressman from Michigan, Ford became a made man to the spook establishment by sitting on the Warren Commission and going along with the magic bullet and the cover-up of the November 1963 coup d'etat. He would come out as the beneficiary of a later coup, making him the country's first officially unelected president.

Of course, Ford was not really president. That's true morally, as he was not elected. He didn't even steal an election, like Dubya's crew, and thus create the illusion of legitimacy. He was simply appointed by Nixon, whom he then pardoned in an apparent quid pro quo.

Second, like most of these president characters, he was a front for a mob, and rather transparently so. He was probably even dumber than Dubya, who at the least can simulate a few convictions (albeit not in English) or Reagan, who was a commanding presence (even when he didn't know where he was). Ford had nothing to say. He was brought in to play reassuring doofus while the real crew behind him performed necessary damage control following the fall of Nixon and the revelations of CIA and other covert-state crimes in investigations like the Church and Pike Committees.

The Congress, or at least part of it, was asserting its constitutional power for the final time in US history, questioning the President's "war powers" and the unsupervised, secret power of the unelected bureaucrats and self-appointed networks who considered themselves the permanent, real government, empowered to assassinate, to conduct mind control experiments on unsuspecting persons, to infiltrate and spy on political opponents, to overthrow other governments covertly, to set up wars around the globe...

Nothing less was at stake than whether government of the spooks, by the corporations, for the oligarchs might perish from the earth.

Let's have a look at the high-ranking racketeers who ran the Ford White House and its damage-control operations.

You may recall a few of the names from some musty textbook:

Secy Defense: Donald Rumsfeld
Chief of Staff: Richard Cheney
Secy State: Henry Kissinger

Dir. Central Intelligence: George H.W. Bush
Members of Bush's appointed "Team B": Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle.

Team B was charged with devising extreme scenarios of Soviet power, regardless of evidence, to challenge the CIA's supposedly too-optimistic assessments. (Later even the mainstream CIA's estimates of Soviet power were shown to be laughably exaggerated). In other words, they terrorized the rest of the government in the advocacy of higher military spending. (Do you see any similarities to what these same guys do today?)

Vice-President: As one of the country's real owners, Nelson Rockefeller had himself appointed to manage the crisis. (Interesting how several assassination attempts on Ford by mind-controlled Manson bots soon followed.)

Rockefeller ran a cover-up Commission on CIA crimes, which after all is appropriate since he was previously RUNNING the CIA as a member of the "40 Committee" (along with his sponsored intellectual, Kissinger). Gee, I don't see a conflict of interest there, do you?

Rummy (who looked just like he does today, really) and Cheney (who also looked like he does today, minus 200 lbs. and a Jabba-the-Hut complexion) came up with the original version of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Bush delayed the investigations and covered up crimes at the CIA, and won the loyalties of the ops who later made him Veep, President, and Chairman of the Board.

Carter came in, fired about 700 of the most unsavory covert operators. They coalesced around former DCI Bush and arranged his subsequent career. The model of "The Enterprise" was born.

A FEW EVOLUTIONARY STAGES LATER: THIS IS THE SAME ADMINISTRATION WE ARE LIVING UNDER TODAY, WITH MANY OF THE SAME PEOPLE IN THE SAME POSITIONS COMMITTING SIMILAR CRIMES.

I haven't even scratched the surface of their infamy.

Have at it, oh DUers Against Historical Amnesia.

[GreenTea]

1. Ford: Just another republican slime...As ALL republican are. Republican ideology is fucked!

So here are 10 points to help survive the treacle-y gush we will have to endure.

(Of course anchors of political talk shows who wish to appear as something a little more than enablers for discredited Republicans - might also care to browse these notes and use them to temper the self-serving dissembling of their guests.)

1) Gerald Ford became Vice-President because the elected Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew - a REPUBLICAN - was revealed to be an unmitigated criminal. A man who had received inappropriate financial benefits from his political position. A heinous, hateful figure who mocked decent patriotic Americans for their opposition to an illegal war. (Hmmm.... that sounds vaguely familiar.)

2) Gerald Ford then became President because the elected President Richard M. Nixon - a REPUBLICAN - was revealed to be an unmitigated criminal. A man who trashed the American constitution and treated the citizenry with utter contempt. A heinous, hateful figure who mocked decent patriotic Americans for their opposition to an illegal war. (Hmmm.... that also sounds vaguely familiar.)

3) Gerald Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon (without securing a written confession) was a dreadful and egregious mistake. The intention may have been to heal the nation - and granting the pardon was his way of doing so. But without making it conditional on securing a confession - he allowed Nixon and his apologists to spend the last 32 years rewriting history. Promoting the lie that it was all just a political coup by those pesky liberals...

(Just as I finished writing the above paragraph, Pat Buchanan appeared on my TV screen whoring that same hoary old fairy-tale about how his traitor boss (Nixon) was hounded from office by sore-loser Democrats bitter at the 49-state landslide of 1972. It is THAT pernicious Big Lie - endlessly repeated - that Ford's unconditional pardon permitted. An unequivocal confession by Nixon - with no ifs and buts - might have nailed this entire business forever. And likely inhibited the Reagan-Bush excesses of Iran-Contra and the foul deeds of the present Bush-Cheney regime.)

4) The Republicans who now defend Ford's decision to pardon Nixon - all bleat the party line that Nixon had suffered enough and that endless trials and legal proceedings would continue to divide the country. The pardon was a way for the nation to "move on". A trial would be a needless distraction and would perpetuate the divide in the nation.

Yet those are the exact same Republicans who refused to allow Bill Clinton to "move on" with a censure. Bill Clinton - whose only "crime" had been getting caught in a technical fib about a personal indiscretion and who apologized repeatedly for it - was hounded and persecuted by these self-same Republicans who wanted their 200 pounds of flesh in a legal trial in the Senate. But the pardon for Nixon - who never even conceded guilt - let alone apologized - was and is considered to have been a healing gesture.

Nixon who repeatedly did to the entire nation what Bill Clinton didn't even do once to one woman...

5) Gerald Ford was considered such a decent man that the saintly Ronald Reagan and his conservative acolytes fought a vigorous battle in 1976 to unseat him and deprive him of the Republican Party nomination. (Where was that 11th Commandment then?)

6) Gerald Ford held political positions of decency and moderation that would have him hounded from the present-day Republican Party, If Gerald Ford was running for the Republican Party Presidential nomination in 2008 on the political philosophy and positions he believed in - he wouldn't stand a chance. The Republicans eulogizing him this week detest his every position and revile his beliefs.

7) Even decent men begat indecent seedlings. And two of the most prominent individuals who used Ford's presidency to advance themselves politically turned out to be the exact opposite of their boss and benefactor. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Two opportunists who will wrap themselves in Ford's reputation for decency in the next few days - hoping it will cleanse their severely tarnished images - but who are not worthy to even pronounce his name.

8) Gerald Ford disagreed with the Republican attempts to impeach and remove Bill Clinton from office - and had the courage to publicly oppose the Senate trial. Calling instead for a bipartisan resolution of censure by the Senate. Not that the Republicans who are eulogizing him this week paid any attention to his pleas. They treated him and his entreaties with contempt.

9) Gerald Ford conducted the very opposite of an Imperial Presidency. Unlike Richard Nixon (1969-1974) and unlike George W. Bush (2001-200?) he didn't become seduced by the arrogance of power. While they eulogize him in public - as a public relations exercise - behind closed doors, the supporters of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have utter contempt for Gerald Ford. They regard him as a weak, vacillating President who was not a true conservative believer.

10) Gerald Ford saw the writing on the wall with Vietnam. He eventually took the decision to concede defeat and bring American troops home. The retarded, Rambo-brained neo-cons who promulgated the Iraq war always look back on the defeat of Vietnam as a grave political mistake. A lack of will. And for that those neo-cons still blame Ford.

So - when you hear Republicans (and idiot DEMOCRATS) eulogize Gerald Ford this week - just remember the above 10 points.. A little food for thought... A little gum for chewing...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com:80/martin-lewis/10-antido...

[crickets]

5. Excellent points

For some reason your link didn't work. The article was at the top of the blog though, so it was easy to find. Thanks again; great find.

[PATRICK]

2. Ford was chosen because he was

a predictable and agreeing dupe to the Catch-22 schemes and the fact that the GOP had already been gutted of alternatives to the rabid cabals that dominated the Nixon administration. To actually BE president Ford would have had to appoint Dems and his own trusted people to most positions- NOT transition Nixon's first second or third string team of complicit gangsters who all had connections to the GOP money power base. Had he even the slightest inclination(or cutthroat talent) to do this even partly(and who among the GOP would or could?)he would not even be remotely close to the choices for anointing allowed by the generous Dem majority Congress.

He could only rise above determined expectations by some sort of personal exercise and interior innocence. The latter is the only credible thing remaining and some of his decisions, as bad or unsuccessful as they were are its bland evidence, ending in the fizzle of his own interests and ambitions. And at least he did try to be a president, better than Nixon did, and infinitely more than Caligula II. Wrong decisions in the worst company whose taint spots his every suit. Now the suit is shed- or could be more completely- by undoing that gang and their works completely as they should have been done decades ago. He came from the poor and abandonned and has been kept that way, intact by the exclusion that comes from the accidental mercy of virulently evil men reluctant to share even were it to corrupt better people than themselves.

[malaise]

3. Yep and he didn't even have the guts to

criticize them in public. That's why I love Jimmy Carter.

[damntexdem]

4. Oh no, Ford was just usual GOP corruption:

the Nixon pardon and all. It was not the full-scale attack on all that is worthwhile to America -- not the Bushista attack at all.

[JackRiddler]

8. beg to differ

It was "usual" for its time. Because Ford's non-existant administration served as a cover to bury the worst of the crimes that had preceded it and to set up a new enterprise that would remove itself entirely from oversight by Congress, it allowed the birth of the Bush mob that has ruled in one form or another ever since. If criminals never get punished, they get bolder. Many of the same guys were in charge as today.

[stevedeshazer]

6. Get ready for the personal attacks for fingering Oatmeal Man

I can't even begin to describe the vitriol directed my way for posting a similar thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2983141

On edit: K & R

[followthemoney]

7. Evel Knievel's failed jump over the Snake River Canyon...

My recollection of the Nixon pardon was the disgust at the failure of law and order to prevail.

The ignorance of the American people overwhelmed me. I could not get a word in edgewise with the Evel Knievel fans. The people in the factory I worked in hooted and screeched like monkeys about the big media distraction of the day.

The Evel Knievel story was great cover for the Nixon pardon among a certain population. The ignorant people stayed ignorant and forgot quick, if they ever knew.

Kind of like the late Friday release of bad news so it won't get much attention. Media manipulation at its finest.