Nation Continues To Remember, Honor Ford

Americans Continue To Pay Their Respect To Late President As He Lies In State

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31, 2006

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The public waits in line outside the Capitol to see former president Gerald Ford lying in state, Dec. 31, 2006. (AP)

Dignitaries Mourn Ford

A steady stream of dignitaries and family members pay their final respects to President Gerald Ford while he lay in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Sharyl Attkisson reports. | Share

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  Americans' Goodbye To Ford (1:35)
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  Mourning Gerald Ford (2:18)
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Washington Remembers Ford

Nation honors former President Gerald Ford in funeral ceremonies at Capitol.

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Ford Funeral Plans

Memorial services for former President Gerald Ford will traverse the nation, from California to Washington and finally Michigan.

(CBS/AP) Eyewitnesses to history, Americans paraded through the Capitol on Sunday to pay their final respects to former President Gerald R. Ford, with parents seeking to convey to their children the significance of the 38th U.S. president's short tenure.

They remembered a leader without pretensions or even the ambition to be president until the job was thrust upon him in the last chapter of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal in August 1974.

Dan Shirey of Herndon, Virginia, said he was moved, as a teenager, by Ford's declaration that "our long national nightmare is over" as Ford replaced Nixon. Shirey and his family — wife Juliette, and son Joshua, 6, and Nathan, 9 — left home at 6:30 a.m. (1130 GMT) Sunday for the chance to view Ford's closed, flag-draped casket in the Capitol Rotunda.

"I think they have to recognize where they come from so when they grow up, they understand," Shirey said, explaining he wanted his sons to witness history. Added his wife: "This is part of building up memories with our children."

Some visitors said it took about an hour to pass through security checks and make their way past the casket. Mourners lined up for a few blocks, starting near the U.S. Botanic Garden at the base of Capitol Hill. Some people wore blue jeans and sweat shirts; others had something like their Sunday best.

Ford will lie in state for two more days before his funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday and interment the next day in a hillside tomb near his presidential museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the city he served in Congress for a quarter-century.

President Bush and his wife, Laura, on vacation in Texas, planned to view the casket upon their return to Washington on Monday. Mr. Bush will deliver a eulogy at the cathedral service.

Ford's decision to pardon Nixon after Watergate, so divisive at the time that it probably cost Ford the 1976 election, was dealt with squarely Saturday in funeral services by Dick Cheney, the current vice president who was Ford's chief of chief.

"It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe," said Cheney, speaking in the Rotunda where Ford's body rested. "Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon."

The Washington portion of Ford's state funeral opened with a procession that took his casket from Maryland to Virginia. Then it was over the Memorial Bridge — adorned with flags and funeral bunting — and to the World War II Memorial. Next, the procession went past the White House and to the Capitol.

"I think that history is going to look kindly on President Ford," said CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. "In the first part of his presidency people thought he would be just sort of a footnote to history but, in fact, what he did may be one of the most significant things that any president in the last half of the 20th century did. He gave the country a chance to catch its breath and go forward."

"All those who eulogized President Ford talked about his commitment to country, his decency as an individual and of course, his love for Betty Ford," reports CBS News anchor Katie Couric. "It was really quite moving. One quoted the president as saying 'I'm indebted to no man, and only one woman.'"

Although Ford's family planned the state funeral to emphasize Ford's long service in the House, Watergate quickly set the tone of the proceedings.

Said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican of Illinois: "In 1974 America didn't need a philosopher-king or a warrior-prince. We needed a healer, we needed a rock, we needed honesty and candor and courage. We needed Gerald Ford."

Cheney, an honorary pallbearer, stood silently among the dignitaries attending the brief arrival ceremony, which was punctuated by cannon fire. The arrival opened the Washington portion of Ford's state funeral, with procession that took his casket from Maryland to Virginia and then over the Memorial Bridge — dressed in flags and funeral bunting — to the memorial, past the White House without pausing and on to the U.S. Capitol for the first service and a lying in state that continues until Tuesday morning.

Mrs. Ford sat stoically in the snaking line of gleaming limousines, clutching a tissue and dabbing her face on occasion, then walked slowly up the steps of the Capitol in the arm of her military escort, soon followed by the casket bearing her husband of 58 years. Another round of cannon fire rang out.

On the way to Capitol Hill, World War II veterans and Boy Scouts gathered by the memorial and saluted at the brief, poignant stop. Mrs. Ford waved through the window. A bos'n mate stepped forward to render "Piping Ashore," a piercing whistle heard for centuries to welcome officers aboard a ship and now to honor naval service.

The event, unfolding without words, recalled Ford's combat service aboard the aircraft carrier USS Monterey. In December 1944, when a typhoon struck the Third Fleet, Ford led the crew that battled a fire sparked by planes shaken loose in the storm, taking actions that some credited with saving the ship and many lives. He sought no award, and received none.

Hundreds Mourn At Saddam's Burial

Thousands More Turned Away From Pre-Dawn Interment In Hussein's Hometown

BAGHDAD, Dec. 31, 2006

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Iraqis beside the grave of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Ouja, 80 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq, Dec. 31, 2006. Hussein was buried inside a compound for religious ceremonies in the center of the town of Hussein's birth. (AP Photo/Bassim Daham)

Saddam's Body Returns Home

Saddam Hussein's body is returned to his home village for burial. CBS News' Randall Pinkston reports on the burial after the Iraqi's execution. | Share

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  Saddam's Body Returns Home (1:41)
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World Without Saddam

Around the globe, nations both vilify and mourn the former Iraqi leader in the wake of his execution.

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Saddam's Final Moments

Saddam Hussein went to the gallows Dec. 30, 2006. Contains photos some may find disturbing.

(CBS/AP) Hundreds of Iraqis went to the site where Saddam Hussein was buried Sunday in the town of his birth to pay their respects to the executed leader who was hanged a day earlier for crimes against humanity.

Thousands, however, were turned away.

Dozens of relatives and others, some of them crying and moaning, attended the interment shortly before dawn in Ouja. A few knelt before his flag-draped grave. A large framed photograph of Saddam was propped up on a chair nearby.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon on Sunday announced the death of a Texas soldier, raising the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000 since the war began, according to an Associated Press count. Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 18, of Spring, Texas, was killed by small arms fire in Baghdad late last week.

Local officials who had assisted in Saddam's rise to power attended the burial, reports CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston. His closest surviving relatives, his two daughters, are in exile in Jordan.

"I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime," said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam's clansmen who attended the interment in the village just outside Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. Some 2,000 Iraqis traveled to the village as well.

Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said "the path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood."

"God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end," Natiq said.

Saddam's followers won't be allowed to view his grave, reports Pinkston (audio). Thousands who converged on Ouja Sunday, near Tikrit, were turned back at police checkpoints. Police are not permitting anyone to leave or enter the city for four days.

Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

His burial place is about two miles from the graves of his sons, Odai and Qusai, in the main town cemetery. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gun battle with the American forces in Mosul in July 2003.

It's also near the hole in the ground where U.S. forces found the dictator on Dec. 13, 2003, eight months after he fled Baghdad ahead of advancing American troops, reports Pinkston.

The head of Saddam's Albu-Nassir's clan said the body showed no signs of mistreatment.

"We received the body of Saddam Hussein without any complications. There was cooperation by the prime minister and his office's director," the clan chief, Sheik al-Nidaa, told state-run Al-Iraqiya television. "We opened the coffin of Saddam. He was cleaned and wrapped according to Islamic teachings. We didn't see any unnatural signs on his body."

On Saturday, Iraqis watched television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare on Saturday was not far off the daily average — 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death Nov. 5.

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge.

"He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."

"I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.

"God damn you," the guard said.

"God damn you," responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam.

Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.

Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.

Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.

The floor dropped out of the gallows.

"The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope.

Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes."

The responses within Iraq to Saddam's death echoed the larger reaction across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and his defenders proclaiming him a martyr.

While Iranians and Kuwaitis welcomed the death of the leader who led wars against each of their countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule.

(AP)

Hundreds of Palestinians marched in the West Bank to protest the execution of Saddam, shouting "death to President Bush," reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. Palestinians also set up condolence tents for Saddam. He was seen as a hero because he paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and fired missiles at Israel during the first Gulf War in 1991.

Some Arab governments denounced the timing of the 69-year-old former president's hanging just before the start of the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha. Libya announced a three-day official mourning period and canceled all celebrations for Eid.

Haider Hamed, a 34-year-old candy store owner in east Baghdad, wondered what would really change after Saddam's execution.

"He's gone, but our problems continue," said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Saddam's many brutal purges. "We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite."

The execution took place on the penultimate day of the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.

Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Saddam's execution but of the loss of their decades-long political and economic dominance that began with Saddam's ouster in the U.S. invasion nearly four years ago.

There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hanged.

But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster — and therefore didn't make much difference.

"Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam."

Zmarł były prezydent USA Gerald Ford

ulast, PAP

2006-12-27, ostatnia aktualizacja 2006-12-27 11:31

W wieku 93 lat zmarł we wtorek wieczorem (czasu amerykańskiego) w Kalifornii 38. prezydent USA Gerald R. Ford, który urzędował w Białym Domu w latach 1974-1977.

Fot. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Prezydent Gerald Ford obejmuje urząd prezydenta w 1974 r.

Fot. AP

Gerald Ford podczas konferencji prasowej w 1974 r., na której ogłosił, że "całkowicie wybaczył" prezydentowi Nixonowi "wszystkie działania przeciwko Stanom Zjednoczonym".

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• USA: Żałoba po śmierci Geralda Forda (31-12-06, 07:43)
• Bush: Gerald Ford pozwolił odbudować zaufanie publiczne do prezydenta (27-12-06, 12:05)

Od dłuższego czasu ciężko chorował na serce; w styczniu przeszedł zapalenie płuc.

Ford objął władzę w sierpniu 1974 r. po dymisji Richarda Nixona, który ustąpił ze stanowiska w rezultacie afery Watergate. We wrześniu 1974 r. "prewencyjnie" ułaskawił Nixona, któremu groziło kryminalne oskarżenie o złamanie konstytucji. Stało się to główną przyczyną jego porażki w wyborach w 1976 r.

"Prezydent wskutek zbiegów okoliczności"

Uważany był powszechnie za "przypadkowego" prezydenta, osiągając to stanowisko nie z wyboru, a wskutek zbiegów okoliczności. W 1973 r. został mianowany przez Nixona wiceprezydentem po rezygnacji z tego stanowiska Spiro Agnew, uwikłanego w skandale korupcyjne. W rok później objął najwyższy urząd automatycznie, w wyniku dymisji Nixona.

Swoją kontrowersyjną decyzję ułaskawienia Nixona, Ford uzasadniał potrzebą "uleczenia ran" społeczeństwa po aferze, która znacznie osłabiła jego morale. Jako prezydent starał się potem przywrócić zaufanie Amerykanów do rządu. W przeciwieństwie do swego poprzednika zachował reputację polityka uczciwego i prostolinijnego.

Na arenie międzynarodowej Ford kontynuował politykę odprężenia w stosunkach z ZSRR, zapoczątkowaną przez Nixona i jego sekretarza stanu Henry'ego Kissingera. Za jego rządów USA wycofały (w 1975 r.) swe wojska z Wietnamu po 10-letniej wojnie, która zakończyła się opanowaniem Wietnamu Południowego przez komunistów i przyniosła śmierć 58 tys. amerykańskich żołnierzy.

Za kadencji Forda podpisano także Porozumienia Helsińskie, które utrwalały pojałtański podział Europy, ale formalnie zobowiązywały także ZSRR do przestrzegania praw człowieka.

Fordowi zdarzały się gafy potwierdzające jego nienajlepsze przygotowanie do sprawowania roli przywódcy supermocarstwa. W 1976 r., w czasie debaty telewizyjnej w kampanii wyborczej z jego rywalem do prezydentury Jimmy Carterem powiedział, że Polska i inne kraje Europy Środkowowschodniej "nie są zdominowane" przez ZSRR.

Życiorys Geralda Forda

Gerald R. Ford urodził się w Omaha w stanie Nebraska 14 lipca 1913 r. Początkowo nazywał się Leslie Lynch King Jr., nosząc nazwisko swego biologicznego ojca. Po rozwodzie rodziców, który nastąpił, gdy przyszły prezydent miał niecały rok, przejął nazwisko ojczyma. Studiował w college'u na Uniwersytecie Michigan, gdzie otrzymał licencjat (bachelor), a następnie prawo na Uniwersytecie Yale. W czasie II wojny światowej służył w marynarce.

W 1948 r. jako kandydat Partii Republikańskiej został wybrany do Izby Reprezentantów z okręgu w Grand Rapids w stanie Michigan. W 1963 r. wybrano go przywódcą republikańskiej mniejszości w Izbie.

Znany był jako najbardziej wysportowany prezydent w historii USA; w młodości zapowiadał się na znakomitego gracza futbolu amerykańskiego.

Żona zmarłego prezydenta, Betty Ford, przez wiele lat walczyła z depresją i nałogiem alkoholowym i potem aktywnie działała w ruchu pomocy alkoholikom.