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2005-11-02 Home Front: Politix

Carter: White House Manipulated Iraq Intel

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Posted by BrerRabbit 2005-11-02 12:23|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Wow. This will impress...no one.
Kinda like his presidency.

Posted by tu3031 2005-11-02 12:36|| 2005-11-02 12:36|| Front Page Top

#2 Carter....carter....Oh, ya. Isn't he dead?

Posted by mmurray821 2005-11-02 12:38|| 2005-11-02 12:38|| Front Page Top

#3 The decision to go to war was the culmination of a long-term plan to attack Iraq that resulted from the first President Bush not taking out Saddam, Carter said on NBC's "Today" show.

Of course the morons on the Today show didn't realize that Carter opposed the Gulf War and even sent letters to other countries asking them to also oppose military action. Ignorance favors the liberals.

Posted by mhw 2005-11-02 12:40|| 2005-11-02 12:40|| Front Page Top

#4 HEY JIMMY< STICK IT UP YOUR ASS!!!!! Go tend your peanuts!!!

Posted by ARMYGUY 2005-11-02 12:40|| 2005-11-02 12:40|| Front Page Top

#5 How would former President Carter know? It isn't like he was in the inner circle, he wasn't even in the outer circle for this stuff!

Posted by trailing wife 2005-11-02 12:47|| 2005-11-02 12:47|| Front Page Top

#6 Can we trust anyone who trusts Hugo Chavez?

Posted by BigEd 2005-11-02 12:49|| 2005-11-02 12:49|| Front Page Top

#7 Bush 41 had to follow his word that the first Gulf war wasn't about getting Saddam and the democrats were part of the reason he had to promise that.

So it's all their fault, like everything else is.

Posted by Silentbrick">Silentbrick 2005-11-02 12:54|| 2005-11-02 12:54|| Front Page Top

#8 He still can't get over being irrelevant (other than Habitat for Humanity).

The article from the WSJ today says everything you need to know about this hypocritical loser:

The World According to J.C.
"Tedious" doesn't begin to describe the new book by America's worst ex-president.

BY BRET STEPHENS
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Jimmy Carter's 20th book is a tedious meditation about the appropriate uses of moral values in political life--as wisely and humbly exemplified by Himself--and of their misuses under the current Bush administration.

But tedious isn't quite the right word here, because it suggests mere boredom while Mr. Carter's prose manages to be irritating as well. Is there an English-language equivalent to the German Rechthaberei, which loosely translates as the state of thinking and behaving as if you're in the right and everyone else is in the wrong? Yet even such a term doesn't quite capture the sanctimony, the self-congratulation, the humorlessness, the convenient factual omissions and the passive-aggressive quirks that characterize our 39th president's aggressively passive world view. Mr. Carter is sui generis. He deserves his own word.

Everything about "Our Endangered Values" is wrong, beginning, obviously, with the title. The values Mr. Carter says are "ours" are certainly not mine and probably not yours and therefore, necessarily, not ours. In fact, it is not at all obvious that the things Mr. Carter speaks of even qualify as values, properly speaking, unless you believe that "economic justice" is a value, or you subscribe to Marxist liberation theology (Mr. Carter considers the Catholic priests who practiced this theology to be "heroes"), or you would like to pay your "personal respects" to Syria's dictator (never mind that he just had the prime minister of Lebanon assassinated), or you can think of nothing bad to say about Saddam Hussein except, perhaps, that he is "obnoxious."

Subtracting "Our" and "Values" from the title, then, the reader is left with "Endangered," the form of the verb here characteristically rendered in the former president's favorite voice. Who, or what, is doing the endangering? Mr. Carter's animating concern is the rise of fundamentalism in religion and politics, but don't suppose that this has anything to do with Islamic fundamentalism. What chiefly exercises Mr. Carter's indignation are neoconservatives, the Southern Baptist Convention and their allegedly converging and insidious influence on government. Together, Mr. Carter believes, they have contrived to set America loose "from the restraints of international organizations" like the United Nations and "global agreements" such as the Kyoto Protocol, apparently for the purpose of eradicating the separation of church and state and creating "a dominant American empire throughout the world."

This is an odd complaint, given the source. Mr. Carter admits that as president he worked "behind the scenes" with the head of the Southern Baptist Convention to develop a program called Bold Mission Thrust, "designed to expand the global evangelistic effort of Baptists." Weirdly, Mr. Carter offers this anecdote in the context of his ostensible opposition to the "melding of church and state," which, he gravely notes, "is of deep concern to those who have always relished their separation as one of our moral values."

As for neocons, Mr. Carter is nearly one himself, so obsessed does he claim to be with human rights. But much as he may hate the sin, he loves the sinner. Think of his view of various world figures from his White House years: Yugoslavia's Josip Tito ("a man who believes in human rights"); Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu ("our goals are the same"); the PLO's Yasser Arafat (a "misunderstood" figure for whom Mr. Carter once moonlighted as a speechwriter). And then there is Kim Il Sung ("vigorous," "intelligent"), whose relationship with Mr. Carter is reprised in this book.

"Responding to several years of invitations from North Korean president Kim Il Sung . . . Rosalynn and I went to Pyongyang and helped to secure an agreement from President Kim that North Korea would cease its nuclear program at Yongbyon and permit IAEA inspectors to return to the site." Leaving aside the interesting question of why that Dear Leader would be so solicitous of this one, what's chiefly notable about this sentence is that it is one of the few here that isn't demonstrably false or misleading in respect to U.S. dealings with the North.

In Mr. Carter's telling, the 1994 Yongbyon Agreed Framework--in which Pyongyang agreed to trade its nuclear-weapons program for oil shipments, security guarantees and the construction of two light-water reactors--was generally going according to plan, only to be gratuitously upended the moment the Bush administration arrived in Washington. "Shipments of the pledged fuel oil were terminated, along with construction of the alternate nuclear power plants," writes Mr. Carter.

In fact, North Korea violated the Agreed Framework almost from the moment it was signed by pursuing a secret, parallel weapons program. For its part, the Bush administration continued to honor the framework's commitments; in 2002, a State Department official even attended the groundbreaking for one of the promised reactors. Only later, when the U.S. presented the North with evidence of its cheating, and the North admitted to the cheating, did the fuel shipments and reactor construction stop.

There is more of this--personal slurs, particularly against U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, factual omissions (Mr. Carter accuses the Bush administration of making hardly any effort to reduce nuclear-weapons stockpiles but doesn't mention the 2002 Moscow Treaty, which involves the most dramatic nuclear cuts in history), trite sophistries ("a rising tide raises all yachts") and the invariable, habitual, irrepressible blaming of America first for everything from degrading the environment to alienating Syria. At a certain point it all begins to ooze and blur, in the way the speeches and doings of Al Sharpton or Michael Moore ooze and blur. Past a certain point, you just stop keeping track.

Mr. Carter, however, is no gold-plated race hustler or quack documentary maker. He is--as he constantly reminds us, as if our memories aren't still vivid--the 39th president of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. Bill Clinton may have the heart of the Democratic Party, but Mr. Carter captures the Zeitgeist of the global left. "Our Endangered Values" is a distressing piece of work for many reasons, most of all because it cannot be safely ignored.

Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

Posted by anymouse">anymouse 2005-11-02 12:55|| 2005-11-02 12:55|| Front Page Top

#9 The decision to go to war was the culmination of a long-term plan to attack Iraq that resulted from...

the Iraqi Liberation Act, signed by Bill Clinton.

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2005-11-02 12:58|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2005-11-02 12:58|| Front Page Top

#10 Carter and Intel in the same sentence....pretty funny stuff

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-11-02 13:17|| 2005-11-02 13:17|| Front Page Top

#11 "Responding to several years of invitations from North Korean president Kim Il Sung . . . Rosalynn and I went to Pyongyang

Gotta be the only American I know with a Christmas card list that contains the name Kim Il Sung. This is perfect example of what too much stale 'Billy Beer' will do to ya. I applaud Anymouse's comparison of the Peanut Farmer to Al Sharpton and Michael Moore. I hope neither Sharpton or Moore will find the comparison to insulting.

Posted by Besoeker 2005-11-02 13:29|| 2005-11-02 13:29|| Front Page Top

#12 What is it with these Democrat ex-presidents as of late?

You've already had your phuquing time, now GO AWAY, dammit.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-11-02 13:53|| 2005-11-02 13:53|| Front Page Top

#13 But tedious isn't quite the right word here, because it suggests mere boredom while Mr. Carter's prose manages to be irritating as well. Is there an English-language equivalent to the German Rechthaberei, which loosely translates as the state of thinking and behaving as if you're in the right and everyone else is in the wrong? Yet even such a term doesn't quite capture the sanctimony, the self-congratulation, the humorlessness, the convenient factual omissions and the passive-aggressive quirks that characterize our 39th president's aggressively passive world view. Mr. Carter is sui generis. He deserves his own word.

Favorite book review. Ever.

Posted by Baba Tutu 2005-11-02 14:03|| 2005-11-02 14:03|| Front Page Top

#14 What about that article that Drudge has linked about the 11 hour deal to get Saddam out of Iraq. The Bush team arranged that and the Arab League scuttled it.

Assuming this is true (why haven't the Bush team been saying this?), I have to wonder if Carter's dog and pony anti-war show at the time had something to do with convincing the Arab League to kill the proposal and ensure the war.

He's a sick man.

Posted by rjschwarz (no T!) 2005-11-02 14:51|| 2005-11-02 14:51|| Front Page Top

#15 Carter hasn't changed - he was a traitor when he was president (and bent over for Iran - without even a reach-around) and he is a traitor now.

Posted by CrazyFool 2005-11-02 15:12|| 2005-11-02 15:12|| Front Page Top

#16 Jimmy Carter is an embarassment to the United States. I am ashamed that he was ever elected to the Presidency. I certainly didn't enjoy my military service under this peanut-brain. If the military intelligence people told him the sun was shining, he'd have to get confirmation from three people outside the military before he'd believe it. He's NOT one to talk about "misusing intelligence". Carter is one of those animals that fouls its own nest - a sure sign of decadence and despondency. He needs to be quietly eased into a mental institution and KEPT THERE.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2005-11-02 15:20|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2005-11-02 15:20|| Front Page Top

#17 Don't take it so hard Old Partriot. He was a Democommie. Not much can be expected from them. He admitted to the media that he "lusted after women" while in the Oval office. That Arkansas idiot aka first black president, kicked it up a notch. Both of them are sorry asses of the first order voted into office by Mexifornians, east coast commies, and feckless females who thought Slick was handsome and found they could relate to Monica.

Posted by Besoeker 2005-11-02 15:52|| 2005-11-02 15:52|| Front Page Top

#18 We owe a lot to Carter. His weakness and his thinly veiled socialism is what fueled the election of the Gipper.

Posted by Hank 2005-11-02 16:04|| 2005-11-02 16:04|| Front Page Top

#19 Excellent point Hank. Never looked at it from that perspective.

Posted by Besoeker 2005-11-02 16:10|| 2005-11-02 16:10|| Front Page Top

#20 OP, I second the motion. Carter was an embarassment. He trashed the military to get rid of the VietNam hump. He screwed the economy into the ground. Gold sold for $100 an ounce at the beginning of his presidency and peaked at $880 an ounce before he left. The average inflation rate went from 6.5% to 13.5% under his stewardship. Oh, and by the way, does anyone remember him telling our allies in 1978 that the Shah of Iran was "finished" and that we would no longer support him. That worked out well didn't it. If Ford had been President instead of Carter, the Middle East might have been a very different place. For all the damage he did to this country, Jimmy Carter is lucky that he didn't get the Benito Mussloni treatment.

Posted by RWV 2005-11-02 16:21|| 2005-11-02 16:21|| Front Page Top

#21 Mortgage Rates were 20%.

Posted by Phineling Craitch5340 2005-11-02 16:57|| 2005-11-02 16:57|| Front Page Top

#22 well, i always like carter when he says nothing... its when he thinks he is helping and its only his own hate that drives him. bloggers know more than him.

Posted by Spolump Spealet5741 2005-11-02 17:10|| 2005-11-02 17:10|| Front Page Top

#23 Carter's mortgage rates were the best thing that ever happened to me. Prices were through the floor when I bought the first house in '82 and the rates were 17%. 3 years later the PRICE of the house had tripled and the rates (re-financed twice) were down to 8%. Basically I bought on Carter's low and sold on Ronnie's (God love him) high.

Course Carter also ran the construction trades into the ground so I had to change careers into computers, another cloud with a very silver personal lining.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2005-11-02 17:11|| 2005-11-02 17:11|| Front Page Top

#24 Basic bottom line. Carter's abandonment of the Shah of Iran set the critical fire that gives us Islamic terrorism as it is today. He'll beat out Buchanan as the worst president in American history Soon[tm]. Never ever elect Mr. Rogers to be president in a neighborhood of thugs, dictators, and butchers [oh, I recall how he so publicly and forcefully denounced the killing fields in Cambodia, NOT].

Posted by Omomoque Crereter5428 2005-11-02 18:12|| 2005-11-02 18:12|| Front Page Top

#25 Don't lose sight of Amuah, she's due to divide.

Posted by Shipman 2005-11-02 18:46|| 2005-11-02 18:46|| Front Page Top

#26 25 years after he was tossed out of office -- and he's still totally clueless. It must really gall him that The Gipper, Slick Willie, and Dubya all got re-elected. I hope so.

Posted by Darrell 2005-11-02 20:17|| 2005-11-02 20:17|| Front Page Top

#27 Carter is a stain on American history. Millions have died because of his perfididy. It will be hot where he goes.

Posted by Remoteman 2005-11-02 22:10|| 2005-11-02 22:10|| Front Page Top

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