Ford's biggest blunder: Ban on assasination attempts

President Ford will be best remembered for being a good, decent, modest, friendly, and dedicated man; sweeping problems under the rug (JFK assassination, Watergate); ignoring growing problems; and not stirring up any problems on his own (a good thing). We've had many worse Presidents, and few better. And, as Murdoc notes, he was an Eagle Scout (one of the greatest honors a young man can earn).

But, in the opinon of this poster, he made one blunder which Bush needs to correct.

In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 banning political assassinations:

"No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."

No succeeding President has directly countermanded it, though each has interpreted it slightly differently, and some have found "workarounds" to bypass it, as the CNN article notes.

With a madman at the helm in Iran, this policy needs to be reconsidered.

What say you? (ACE's opinion in the continuation)

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Bush needs to issue an executive order countermanding this while he's still in office. (He's already interpreted it to mean heads of state, not heads of terrorist organizations; but now we need to deal with Iran's threatening leader, and leaders of any rogue nations which harbor or support terrorists.)

If necessary, for political correctness, we could go ahead and hold a trial first and declare the trouble-maker guilty, in which case the killing will be an "execution" rather than an "assasination."

War is not a chess game. We can attack the King. In fact, it's sometimes the easiest and cheapest way to deal with threats on US and world security. Had Special Forces taken out Saddam in early 2003, his successor might have been more compliant with UN sanctions and have allowed open inspections, in which case we might have avoided 3K dead (to date) and a Trillion Bucks or so of expense.

In Iran, good underground work might help insiders get a madman out of office still alive. If so fine. If not ...