Hey, isn't now the time for HEALING? I know the dead East Timoresians would agree, just like the all the dead Iraqis killed by Saddam who are now saying that the current war is a good thing.

Jeez, haven't you learned anything from the Christmas season?
--SF

Good you! Me, I'd be positively ecstatic at this point to see it mentioned in just about any of the liberal *gag* blogs I read some of the really should know better Wonks are wankers all

(PS- Dennis dear, I'm coming home. I just got little carried away there since that whole Florida deal went sour back in '00. Now, where are my pistols?)

Good on you! Me, I'd be positively ecstatic at this point to see it mentioned in just about any of the liberal *gag* blogs I read some of the really should know better Wonks are wankers all

(PS- Dennis dear, I'm coming home. I just got little carried away there since that whole Florida deal went sour back in '00. Now, where are my pistols?)

I wonder how many will mention that he also was a member of the Warren Commission whitewash of the Kennedy assassination. I wonder how many will mention that Arlen Spector was the Chief Counsel to the Warren Commission. Ancient History? Maybe, but it was the singular cause of the rise of conspiracy theories among boomers.

All the Liberals are going to fall all over themselves praising Gerald to the heavens for one simple reason... they want to be able to pretend they are not partisan hate-mongers through-and-through.

Good luck with that.

Ah, soon the airwaves will hum with youtube images of Chevy Chase stumbling and the Timorese and Tricky Dick enraged will fade into the laugh track...
sic semper beigists!

Not all the liberals, chilluns.

I'm kind of sick of the revisionism. Ford didn't heal a national nightmare: he prolonged it. And he failed to serve the country or justice with the pardon. Your reminder of Suharto and the invasion of East Timor is just another data point. People also forget that he also vetoed the FOIA in 1974 (Congress overrode the veto). He was no devil, but he was no saint and I wish people would just see the way he really was. All that business about him being a nice family guy, that's swell, but I don't vote for the best family man nor do I vote for the worst. I vote for the guy who would make the best president. I never voted for Ford, the first of our two appointed presidents. He was no great president and he did some things that were very bad. It's fine to send condolences to his family, but let's keep things real.

. Your reminder of Suharto and the invasion of East Timor is just another data point.

I must be mistaken. I had thought it counted for around 200,000 such "just another" data points. But thhen what the fuck do I know?

I guess I am feeling contrary today; for all kinds of personal reasons, I have a soft spot for Gerry Ford. So in his defense:

Primary blame for the slaughter in East Timor belongs to Suharto, not Ford. If the eastern half of Iowa wanted to be its own country, who would oppose the US trying to rein it in? Unfortunately, the response from the Indonesian military was insanely brutal, and for various moral and strategic reasons proved to be a tragic example of how NOT to handle a renegade province that wants its independence.

I am all in favor of keeping the atrocities in East Timor in the collective American memory, but I question the need to dance on Ford's grave over this. Isn't this kind of like saying that biographies of British Prime Minister Henry John Temple should highlight the fact that he didn't stop Sherman from burning Atlanta?

Isn't this kind of like saying that biographies of British Prime Minister Henry John Temple should highlight the fact that he didn't stop Sherman from burning Atlanta?

No. #1, East Timor wasn't part of Indonesia. #2, Indonesia was a client state of the U.S.; the U.S. wasn't a client state of England. We could have stopped Indonesia from invading if we wanted, but England certainly couldn't have stopped Lincoln from fighting the civil war. #3 (connected to #2), the U.S. gave Indonesia huge amounts of military support to deal with Timor.

Does this mean we're going to have another week-long weep orgy like we did for the Gipper?

If the eastern half of Iowa wanted to be its own country, who would oppose the US trying to rein it in?

Jesus Christ. I know some Americans are ignorant of the rest of the world but... wow.

Sorry about that unnecessary "p".

How could Saddam have possibly believed Glaspie?

Actually as an inhabitant of the region, I thought that as long as Suharto approached the matter like the British did Quebec after they defeated the French, I thought well of it. East Timor was itself a former Portuguese colony, and the Portuguese were arguably the worst in terms of legacy among the colonial powers and left very little behind in terms of infrastructure or anything else in East Timor. Right now the new nation of East Timor is struggling to stay afloat, and from what I have heard it is in a terrible condition.

Yes, well, speaking as another inhabitant of the region, that's bollocks.

RobW,

I am Singaporean and during my military service I did an exercise stint over in East Timor, from what I saw it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good either. But I do not excuse Suharto's actions and agree he deserves to burn when his time comes. Which part are you from?

By pardoning Nixon, he proved to all successor presidents that the office of the US president was above the law.

And how many will further mention:

Cited under "fair use".

By MIKE FEINSILBER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (July 2) - Thirty-three years ago, Gerald R. Ford took pen in
hand and changed - ever so slightly - the Warren Commission's key sentence
on the place where a bullet entered John F. Kennedy's body when he was
killed in Dallas.

The effect of Ford's change was to strengthen the commission's conclusion
that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and severely wounded Texas
Gov. John Connally - a crucial element in its finding that Lee Harvey
Oswald was the sole gunman.

A small change, said Ford on Wednesday when it came to light, one intended
to clarify meaning, not alter history.

''My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory,'' he said in a
telephone interview from Beaver Creek, Colo. ''My changes were only an
attempt to be more precise.''

But still, his editing was seized upon by members of the conspiracy
community, which rejects the commission's conclusion that Oswald acted
alone.

''This is the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission
report,'' said Robert D. Morningstar, a computer systems specialist in New
York City who said he has studied the assassination since it occurred and
written an Internet book about it.

The effect of Ford's editing, Morningstar said, was to suggest that a
bullet struck Kennedy in the neck, ''raising the wound two or three
inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the
public as to the true number of assassins.''

If the bullet had hit Kennedy in the back, it could not have struck
Connolly in the way the commission said it did, he said.

The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that a single bullet - fired by a
''discontented'' Oswald - passed through Kennedy's body and wounded his
fellow motorcade passenger, Connally, and that a second, fatal bullet,
fired from the same place, tore through Kennedy's head.

The assassination of the president occurred Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas;
Oswald was arrested that day but was shot and killed two days later as he
was being transferred from the city jail to the county jail.

Conspiracy theorists reject the idea that a single bullet could have hit
both Kennedy and Connally and done such damage. Thus they argue that a
second gunman must have been involved.

Ford's changes tend to support the single-bullet theory by making a
specific point that the bullet entered Kennedy's body ''at the back of his
neck'' rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff
originally wrote.

Ford's handwritten notes were contained in 40,000 pages of records kept by
J. Lee Rankin, chief counsel of the Warren Commission.

They were made public Wednesday by the Assassination Record Review Board,
an agency created by Congress to amass all relevant evidence in the case.
The documents will be available to the public in the National Archives.

The staff of the commission had written: ''A bullet had entered his back
at a point slightly above the shoulder and to the right of the spine.''

Ford suggested changing that to read: ''A bullet had entered the back of
his neck at a point slightly to the right of the spine.''

The final report said: ''A bullet had entered the base of the back of his
neck slightly to the right of the spine.''

Ford, then House Republican leader and later elevated to the presidency
with the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon, is the sole surviving member
of the seven-member commission chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

{snip}

AP-NY-07-02-97 1826EDT

I do wonder though what you make of his giving up the Vice-Presidency under Reagan, and declining it. May be some ray of redemption perhaps...of course not enough to offset the rest, but still...

I should add that, Communists had taken control of Vietnam 5 months earlier. And Kissinger believed that among the East Timorese there were Communist insurgents. In other words, as far as Ford's advisor was concerned, this time the Commies would have oil! -one can guess what he probably thought.

Today's healine to puke on:

"38th President Leaves a Legacy of Healing"
The WaPost

Presidents as Dividers, Deciders, Healers, Erasers...

And the public has gotten this crap served up daily for decades now, and eats it up, and after each of these thugs is pardoned or buried, is told: THE SYSTEM WORKS

But of course it does. It keeps the Party of Wealth and Thievery and Felony in Power. And the empty slogans of empty civics lessons are recited or written daily by empty suits, and they become the Myth of America.

So, what else is new? Was it ever really different? Tell me, Shirley, vas you dere?

It is, as your fellow blogger puts it, a whitewash. Maybe that's too polite. It's putting vanilla icing on a pile of shit and serving it up as a Peopleburger, as in "of the, for the, by the..."
Where are the shitkickers?

above:
headline

Surely he should get some harsh words for keeping Henry Kissinger around, as well?

EMH:

Oz, since you ask.

I was referring to your odd argument that after leaving the Portuguese empire the Timorese should have felt grateful for being forcibly absorbed into the Javanese empire. I hadn't realised you had a "well, I did manouvres with the TNI and I didn't see any mass killings" anecdote up your sleeve. That changes everything.

OK, that was unnecessary snark. Feel free to ignore it.

As Henry points out, Timor has sizable oil and gas reserves in its territorial waters that adequately explain why the Indonesians felt it worthwhile invading rather more than the piteous state of post-Portuguese infrastructure. And Timor's present economic difficulties might have just a little to do with the Timorese being robbed by the innovative approach my country's governments have to the drawing of sea boundaries. Incidentally, if the Indonesian occupation was so economically benevolent, it does seem strange that the independent state has been left with so little to start with, even considering what the TNI and their proxies burned to the ground on the way out.

I generally regard Ford and Clinton favorably, even though I'm aware of East Timor, and Rwanda, and the 1990s sanctions against Iraq, which effected some members of my family. I'm not saying those things are no big deal, but I question whether it's possible to be president of the US for any amount of time, serve meaningfully, and emerge morally unscathed.

You want "morally unscathed?"

I suggest life in a monastary or an early death. And I'm not so sure about the monastary.

I question whether it's possible to be president of the US for any amount of time, serve meaningfully, and emerge morally unscathed.

I don't think it's a matter of being unscathed. As donescobar says, you can't live on earth and remain morally pure.

Rather, it's a matter of not participating in the large-scale murder of other people. Both that and eating a hamburger involve moral compromise, but there's nonetheless a difference.

Now, it IS true that you can't be president and not participate in the large-scale murder of others. But that indicates that people with any concern for morality won't want to be president, and will work to change the world until you CAN be president without the industrial-strength massacres.

Until that time arrives around 3600 AD, I think it's best not to admire presidents of any genre.

Jonathan:
There is B. Brecht on the subject"

"Die grossen Maenner sollte man ehren, aber man sollte ihnen nicht glauben."

Great men should be honored, but not believed.

But by "honored" BB meant putting up statues so pigeons could have a resting place/restroom.

Yeah.