[ Post a Response | Justin Lee ]
Posted by GOP LEE on 12/28/2006, 10:00 pm, in reply to "Parting Shots" "They won't let me go in the pool and swim," the former President fumed as I joined him in the study of his Sand Dune Road home. "It's terrible." Fighting a nasty cough and more frail than I had ever seen him, Ford was furious with his doctors. An accomplished skier, a man who once religiously swam laps twice a day had just been beached. "I go in and I paddle back and forth at the shallow end," he railed. "It's terrible. It worries me that I'm under these limitations." Ford was a few weeks shy of his 93rd birthday as we chatted for about 45 minutes. He'd been visited by President Bush three weeks earlier and said he'd told Bush he supported the war in Iraq but that the 43rd President had erred by staking the invasion on weapons of mass destruction. "Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed, "but we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of mass destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does [Bush] get his advice?" Ford was predictably defensive about Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his two White House chiefs of staff. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. "Dick's a classy guy, but he's not an electrified orator."
Last lunch with a legend
Speaks candidly about the WMDs and war in Iraq
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Thomas DeFrank, the Washington bureau chief for the Daily News, is seen in this 1996 photo talking to Gerald Ford. The men struck up a friendship that lasted three decades. Below, the two chat on Air Force One.
Daily News Washington Bureau Chief Thomas M. DeFrank interviewed Gerald Ford more than three dozen times during the late President's retirement years. He saw Ford in November at his California home and spent more than two hours with him May 11 for this, his final interview.
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