Gerald Ford Is Dead

The news is now reporting the death of America’s only unelected president.

BroonAngina

Well, now they can name that aircraft carrier after him.

[quote=“BroonAle”]The news is now reporting the death of America’s only unelected president.

BroonAngina[/quote]

Shouldn’t that be America’s only unelected former president? :wink:

Sorry for the Ford family; not much to say about his presidency though. Perhaps his only memorable act was to pardon Tricky Dick. And the only memorable quote I remember concerning him was that everyone said he played football too long without a helmet.

Here’s your man in a quintet of presidents.

[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Perhaps his only memorable act was to pardon Tricky Dick. And the only memorable quote I remember concerning him was that everyone said he played football too long without a helmet.
[/quote]

Here is a memorable act and quote brought to you by William Blum:

[url=http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer41.htm]The American media as the Berlin Wall
In December 1975, while East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, was undergoing a process of decolonization from Portugal, a struggle for power took place. A movement of the left, Fretilin, prevailed and then declared East Timor’s independence from Portugal. Nine days later, Indonesia invaded East Timor. The invasion was launched the day after US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving President Suharto permission to use American arms, which, under US law, could not be used for aggression. But Indonesia was Washington’s most valuable ally in Southeast Asia and, in any event, the United States was not inclined to look kindly on any government of the left.

Indonesia soon achieved complete control over East Timor, with the help of the American arms and other military aid, as well as diplomatic support at the UN. Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000, a death rate which is probably one of the highest in the entire history of wars.[16]

Is it not remarkable that in the numerous articles in the American daily press following President Ford’s death last month, there was not a single mention of his role in the East Timor massacre? A search of the extensive Lexis-Nexis and other media databases finds mention of this only in a few letters to the editor from readers; not a word even in the reports of any of the news agencies, like the Associated Press, which generally shy away from controversy less than the newspapers they serve; nor a single mention in the mainstream broadcast news programs.

Imagine if following the recent death of Augusto Pinochet the media made no mention of his overthrow of the Allende government in Chile, or the mass murder and torture which followed. Ironically, the recent articles about Ford also failed to mention his remark a year after Pinochet’s coup. President Ford declared that what the United States had done in Chile was “in the best interest of the people in Chile and certainly in our own best interest.”[17]

[16] National Security Archive – www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ – Search ; William Blum, Rogue State, p.188-9

[17] New York Times, September 17, 1974, p.22 [/url]