Ford UFO Files

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STATEMENT FOR RADIO TAPE FOR 5TH DISTRICT STATIONS
FOR TAPING WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 1966
My friends of the Fifth Congressional District, this is your
congressman, Jerry Ford, speaking to you from the nation's capital.
Inevitably, whenever a member of the minority party criticizes those
in power, the question that comes flying back at him is: "Well, how would
you do it?"
My answer first of all is that all of the criticism I have voiced
concerning the Johnson-Humphrey Administration's handling of our foreign
and domestic affairs carries with it the implicit statement that if the
minority were to become the majority things would be run better. I firmly
believe that.
So let's take a look at the Vietnam War and talk about what we, the
minority, would do if we were in a position of responsibility. In some
cases, we'll have to talk about what we would have done because certain
mistakes can never be remedied.
We would have handled the Vietnam situation in a positive, decisive
manner early enough to have confronted the enemy in force before the North
Vietnamese had infiltrated South Vietnam in such great numbers that our
entire operation became more or less a numbers matching game.
In this connection, it should be remembered that we now have more
than 240,000 ground troops in South Vietnam, as compared with only 25,000
when Lyndon Johnson became president in November, 1963 ••••• and only
last year at this time.
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