(WMR) -- As the nation eulogizes President Gerald R. Ford, who
died Tuesday night in California, no one should lose sight of the fact that it
was Ford who helped launch the careers of the two ugliest faces in the George
W. Bush administration. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney and Rumsfeld
were deep-selected from lower-level positions in the Nixon administration and
named as chief of staff and deputy chief of staff for Ford's White House. After
Rumsfeld was selected as Ford's secretary of defense, Cheney succeeded his
longtime mentor as chief of staff.
Rumsfeld and Cheney
made it their cause to "restore" the power of Nixon's "imperial
presidency" to a future Republican president. That was all but impossible
under Reagan and Bush I since the entire Congress was in the hands of the
Democrats for all but six years. However, Cheney and Rumsfeld succeeded in
their goal under George W. Bush.
In addition to the
"gruesome twosome" of Rumsfeld and Cheney, Ford also propelled George
H. W. Bush into the world of future chicanery when he named the former Texas
congressman, UN ambassador, envoy to Beijing, and Republican National Committee
chair as CIA director.
Bush, who only
served as director for one year managed to involve the agency in a number of terrorist
attacks, a direct slap at those who were trying to curb the excesses of the CIA
under the Nixon administration, including outgoing Director William Colby. Bush
approved CIA assistance in the illegal car bombing assassination of former
Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his American colleague, Ronni
Moffitt, on a Washington, DC, street in the heart of Embassy Row. Under Ford,
Bush also approved the bombing of a Cubana Airlines passenger plane off the
coast of Barbados that killed over 70 men, women, and children.
Much is being made
of Ford's statement in the wake of Nixon's resignation that "our long
national nightmare is over." Mr. Ford's elevation of Bush, Sr., Rumsfeld,
and Cheney did not end our national nightmare, it merely postponed it until
January 20, 2001.
� 2006
WayneMadsenReport.com.All Rights Reserved.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based
investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist.He is author of �Jaded
Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates.�He is the editor and
publisher of the Wayne Madsen
Report.