Ford: NOT DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED

President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006)

Even today, Mohammad Mossadegh's detractors feebly attempt to justify the 1953 coup and undermine his memory by questioning whether or not the popular Iranian Prime Minister was truly democratically elected.

Yet in the almighty USA, a man named Gerald Ford succeeded in becoming Vice President, and later, President of the United States without ever having been elected. Not a single American cast their vote for the appointed President Ford, Commander in Chief and leader of the free world, in 1974.

In his only legitimate race for the Presidency in 1976, he was defeated by Jimmy Carter, and soon withdrew to a long retirement of golf and leisure. The lavish Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum, operated by the federal government with funds paid by U.S. taxpayers who never elected him, sits in his boyhood hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. As Ford admitted in a nationwide address immediately following his taking the oath of office on August 9, 1974:

"I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers. ...I have not campaigned either for the Presidency or the Vice Presidency. I have not subscribed to any partisan platform. I am indebted to no man, and only to one woman--my dear wife--as I begin this very difficult job.

I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it."

What was Gerald Ford's view of the coup against the democratically elected leader of Iran, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh? Here are his words during a speech at Missouri University on February 23, 1968, during the era of another appointed, unelected President, Lyndon B. Johnson:

"Look at the Democratic record and compare it with the previous Republican record.

The Eisenhower Administration prevented half a dozen threats from developing into wars. There was Trieste, the Mossadegh uprising in Iran, Guatemala, Formosa, Suez, Lebanon, Quemoy, and West Berlin. All these international crises resolved without war."

Note Ford's choice of words: the "uprising" in Iran. Ford actually believed that a business dispute between Iran and Britain was a "threat" that would have developed into "war". The very word, "uprising", connotes resistance of oppression and injustice. To an imperial power, that constitutes a "threat", tempting that power to resort to war to maintain its dominant position.