Harold Ford on the Round Table

Anybody heard his interview? It was June 27th, 2005. I'm listening to this one cause I'm thinking about voting for him. I like Kurita and agree with her on majority of the issues but on her interview the host asked her about the DSM and she never once talked about it. Someone sent an Email to the show asking her about it but she turned it around about "supporting the troops" and all that. Ford signed Conyers letter and I've heard he is for an investigation if he makes it into the Senate. But I would definitley encourage both interviews. They're really good to get to know both of them and then decide. Some heighlights from Ford's from my pov:

- Why he's running for Senate: Need to get rid of dependence on middle east oil, making sure public schools work for the 21st century, find ways to curb our spending and get the defecit down, more concerned about the Chinese government bid on an energy company in California called Unicall and offered 18 and a half billion dollars in cash. A bit that rivals it's closest compettor and bidder in a significatant way. If the Bush administration and our government is puzzled and confused about what to do the implications are enormous. To bring the troops home soon.

- If your niece or nephew is in Iraq you might look at it differently. They don't live in great conditions and are struggling to train the Iraqi troops from what he saw when he was in Iraq. They (the Iraqi's) don't play by our political time table. Win or lose he's going to raise the issues in the race. We're at war and we need better strategies and better ideas there.

- Success is by a few events by what we agree upon as republicans and democrats. 1) They need a constiution written to help decide some guidelines for their government. Especially rights for the minority (such as those who think differently and practice a different religion). 2) Train their military and police forces. The government is only as good as to defend itself and it's policies and ideals and they're a long way from doing that there. 3) The Iraqi's judge us by their infostructors and their changes. They don't have electricity, sewers, water in many areas across the country and it's in fact worse.
A part of that the security is worse. He hasn't been there in over a year and the last time he was there he didn't have to wear flag jackets and helmets in the safe zone's. They didn't have to wear anything in the green zone. They only drove one place in Falljuah and the rest by hellicopter which showed him it was less safe. The general incharge of training their military indicated that a 107 need to be up and standing for their military to defend their country. By May 29th there were three and there's a 134 left to go. One of his suggestion's is to send the Iraqi's trainies to European and American military and police trainy academies (this was what John Kerry said he would do if elected) all in an effort to help instill the respect, order and discipline and intregrity and ethics needed in military leadership and officers and police forces to ensure they don't caught up in their community and not intimidated and not frustruated and our military don't get frustrated in training them (and they don't keep getting killed). With electricity and water he suggest's one of our firms should send some people over to help get everything up and running and they would have employee's be committed to going over and helping. The Constiution the Sunni's and Shi'ite's don't get along and we have to find a way to help make them understand. The only way he can think of to do this is to send schoalors across the globe that have helped write Constiution's, such as they have in Bosnia, to send them there and put them on the ground as a team and to help both sides to understand the fighting and fuding is not going to produce the kind of future for their children they want. If it doesn't work and they don't want it it's not our job to stay and force it upon them. We're not accomplishing everything we want to on the ground and the speed the American people want and there's a better and faster way to do it.

- Biggest problem in Washington is we're so polarized. He told his story about visting the FDR memorial and reminded him of why he's a democrat. FDR is hands down the greatest American in his opinion. He was in a wheelchair and lead us through the depression, deafeated the greatest enemy in the 20th century of freedom and did it while holding people together and involving both conservatives and liberals and today's definiton of strategies and principle's. We find ourselves now where we're not faced with a depression but he thinks we don't start to get more stuff right about how we educate kids and how we educate this country we're going to find ourselves with a mismatch with the Chinese and Indians ten years from now and it'll be incomprehensable. We'll find ourselves not only in a war with Iraq but without allies around the globe.

- August 15th is when the Constiution is expected to be written. October 15th is the referendom of the Constiution where the people will vote on it presuming they go well and if it's passed. December 15th will be another round of elections and December 31st the government will be seated. We'll have some metric in how this thing is guided by and progress. In his view if the Constiution there is passed it's a positive step because the Shi'ite's and Kurds will both have to play a role in it. Once they reach the point of everything we'll have to reduce our presence and second to make sure the military and police security are trained. He's made the proposal to Bush about sending them to another country for training but Bush hasn't responded.

I don't want to give the whole interview away but check it out yourself at http://www.thepublicforum.org

He was like Kerry and voted for the resoultion. The host asked him if we knew then what we know today if he would still have voted to go into Iraq he said he wouldn't have voted for the resoultion and he said he would've hoped that Bush wouldn't have asked. He said many people around the globe believed that he posessed wmd's (my note: uhh not really) and one of the reason's we were convienced he had wmd's is because we gave them to him (at least he knows that much!) in the 80's with the war with Iran. The host asked him why we're fighting in Iraq and Kurita said it's to fight terrorism there. Ford said it's part of the effort (uh no) in light of what we know now and before we committed ourselves to Iraq and we all shared that the first goal should be to find BinLaden and go after WMD's in Iraq. He was always a believer of Colin Powell's inspector's in Iraq and then after that everything fell apart. He thinks the Bush administration was intence and misguided in many ways. They became frustrated they couldn't find the WMD's and he said he would've handled it differently but we're in a different point now. It's not worth considering. We took down Saddam Hussein and that was a policey of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. We've insence learned our intelligence is wrong. What we've not done since 9/11 is fixing our intelligence. Since 9/11 we should have made sure the intelligence was fixed (that we could trust it etc). He thinks they (Bush administration) slowed walked the process of the reform of Iraq. He wants to serve on the armed services and finance and intelligence committes if he makes it to the US Senate. He can't do that on his first term but hopes to be re-elected if elected so he can. Why aren't the CIA and FBI working better? You can be partriotic and still be against the war and want the troops home. It's sinful and criminal (:shrug:) to think that somehow raising question's and policies about Iraq doesn't make you patriotic ("Patriotisim Includes protest"~John Kerry). He told the troops in Falljuah don't confuse question of policy with supporting them and that the people who are questioning the war care more about you then others.

That post was alot of work!
Harold is impressive but step back and wait.
Kurita put me off with her reference to "my soldiers". That works fine in the home district but when I meet her I want to know if, as a U.S. Senator, she can make that leap to "my constituents". She will have to represent a broad range of people.
She knows that going after Bush and the DSM is a dead end for her. Ford knows that too so he won't touch it.
Ford is slick and ambitious. The former I don't mind but the latter does bother me somewhat. I wonder if he would serve the voters interests or his own.

Wait and watch them both.

I have never seen the perfect candidate.

But to know that Ford signed Conyers letter is a start. They didn't ask him about the DSM like they did her. :shrug: Kurita said she wasn't for an investigation and I didn't like that. :( But her and Ford I have found agree on issues and agree with me.

Ford nor Kurita to go hot and heavy in attacking the war.
Same goes for an investigation of the lies that led us into it.
I know it sucks, but both will have to toe the line to get the
swing vote necessary to win.

BTW: Ford was a last-minute no-show at the DFT convention.

They had him listed as a invited guest, but he was in West Tennessee all weekend, so he couldn't make it.

then backed out the day before the event.
Whether it was poor scheduling, or campaign
strategy, his backing out at the last minute did
not go over well with a crowd that was anxious
to see a head's up appearance with Senator Kurita.

It was also my understanding that he had confirmed
to appear. I wouldn't worry, I don't see it as anything
close to a make or break issue.

From DFT's event recap:
'U.S. Representative Harold Ford, Jr., of Memphis, was also invited to attend the Convention. Although Ford had initially accepted the invitation to speak to the DFT assembly, his staff called on Friday to say that there was a last minute “scheduling conflict” and so Rep. Ford did not show.'
http://democracyfortennessee.smartcampaigns.com/index.php?q=node/view/352

Is that on their site a few days before hand they had him listed as being invited and had beside his name (maybe), as if they didn't know if he was attending. I also found out that Thursday he wouldn't be there for sure.