GUESS I'D BETTER DO IT WHILE I'M HERE

As one who voted to re-elect Gerald Ford in 1976, partly because his pardon of President Nixon helped America recover from the trauma of Watergate, I am saddened by revelations of his public silence on our disastrous Iraq war while he was alive.

Within a day of his death, Bob Woodward revealed that Ford spoke privately of his dismay over the mistakes which brought on this disaster, but required that his thoughts be kept private until after his death. Ford should have gone public with his views while alive when they may have made some impact on the administration's ruinous war policies.

That is precisely why we who seek peace must continue to speak out about the senseless policies that will doom hundreds, maybe thousands of our courageous soldiers to an early and unnecessary death and inflate our bloated budget deficit, all for the inevitable defeat that awaits us.

President Ford's public silence on such an urgent matter should remind us all that we live on borrowed time. And we can't speak out against the lies that cause such needless death when we're gone.

Originally published in Daily Herald, January 3, 2007
Also published in Chicago Tribune, January 11, 2007