US:Former US president Gerald Ford believed the Iraq war was unjustified, according to a 2004 interview with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward published yesterday.
In the interview, which was embargoed until after Mr Ford's death this week, the former president said he would not have gone to war against Saddam Hussein.
"I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly, I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximised our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer," he said.
Mr Ford also criticised vice-president Dick Cheney and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom worked in his own administration, for the way they made the case for war.
"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction.
"And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
Mr Ford spoke warmly of Mr Cheney's performance as his chief of staff but said the vice-president had become "much more pugnacious" in recent years.
Reflecting the views of foreign policy realists such as his former national security director Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Mr Ford expressed scepticism about president George Bush's suggestion that the United States had a duty to free people around the world.
"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people. Whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interests, there comes a point where they conflict.
"And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."
Although he praised Mr Kissinger's diplomatic skills, Mr Ford said the former secretary of state could never admit to making a mistake. He also said Mr Kissinger was unusually sensitive to press criticism. "Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew," said Mr Ford.
