posted on May 21, 2007 09:29:43 AM new
Carter Says Remarks on Bush 'Careless'
May 21 09:41 AM US/Eastern
ATLANTA (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday his remarks were "careless or misinterpreted" when he said the Bush administration has been the "worst in history" for its impact around the world.
Speaking on NBC's "Today," Carter appeared to retreat from a statement he made to Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in which he said: "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." The comment was in a story published in the newspaper Saturday.
Carter said Monday that when he made the comment, he was responding to a question comparing the Bush administration's foreign policy to that of Richard Nixon.
"I think this administration's foreign policy compared to president Nixon's was much worse," Carter said. But he said he did not mean to call it the worst in history.
"No, that's not what I wanted to say. I wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history but just with President Nixon."
The White House on Sunday dismissed Carter as "increasingly irrelevant" after his harsh criticism. In response, Carter said: "Well, I don't claim to have any relevancy. I have a completely unofficial capacity. The only thing I lead is the Carter Center."
After the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette story appeared, Carter spokeswoman Deanna Congileo had confirmed his comments to The Associated Press.
"The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me," the newspaper quoted Carter as saying.
In his comments Monday, Carter said he has not been timid about sharing his opinions directly with the president and other world leaders, but said he has been careful not to level personal criticism against Bush.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on May 21, 2007 01:09:07 PM new
He must have taken a TON of 'heat' for his unprofessional bashing to make him come back with this. Protocol used to be past presidents didn't get this LOW and mean. Anymore they still seek out the media attention. tsk tsk tsk
He's irreverent anyway.....has been....few listen to him anymore....except when he meets with the communist leaders he buddies up with.
He needs to stick to his habitat for humanity and not embarrass himself in front of the world any longer.
posted on May 21, 2007 01:45:19 PM new
And for all you rabid Carter fans that I'm sure will defend him and his CRAWfishing, apparently his CRAWfishing was another Carter lie.
Editor Who Interviewed Carter: I Quoted Him 'Fair' and 'Accurately'
By Mark Fitzgerald
Published: May 21, 2007 3:10 PM ET
CHICAGO Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Religion Editor Frank Lockwood -- who set off a firestorm of criticism that reached into the White House with his story quoting Jimmy Carter calling George W. Bush the worst president in history -- said Monday that he quoted the former president accurately, fairly and in context.
The proof, he says, is in audio posted on the Democrat-Gazette Web site http://www2.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/may/19/carter-calls-bush-administration-worst-ever/ and his own blog, http://www.biblebeltblog.com/.
"I think the president's words speak for themselves," Lockwood told E&P. "He's accurately quoted, he's quoted in context, and it's fair."
Lockwood's story in Saturday's Democrat-Gazette quoted Carter as saying: "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."
After a national uproar over the weekend that included a scolding by a White House press spokesman, Carter said on the Today Show that his comments were "careless or misinterpreted."
Carter added that he had been asked a question comparing the foreign policies of the administrations of George W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that the "worst" title was limited to foregn affairs.
But in the audio of the interview, which the Democrat-Gazette posted on its Web site Saturday, Lockwood can be heard asking: "Which president was worse, George W. Bush or Richard Nixon?"
And in a telephone interview, Lockwood noted that Carter went on to condemn the Bush administration for a wide variety of faults in domestic as well as international arenas.
"He criticized the current president's policy on war, the environment, the separation of church and state, arms control, diplomacy -- it was broad, sweeping criticism basically," Lockwood said.
Lockwood interviewed Carter Friday morning for a story, scheduled to run in next Saturday's religion pages, about the former president's new audio book, a collection of Sunday school lessons called "Sunday Mornings In Plains."
"I felt like the comments the former president had made were too newsworthy, and too important to sit on them for a week," Lockwood said.
Readers of Lockwood's blog apparently agree with Carter's assessment of his successor, Lockwood noted. An online survey that had attracted 241 votes by early Monday afternoon showed 73.8% of respondents agreed Bush was "'the worst in history'" as far as having 'an adverse impact on the nation around the world.'"
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on May 21, 2007 02:20:26 PM new
History of the 70's isn't my stong point, but I thought foreign policy was one of the things Nixon was known for doing RIGHT?
going to China.
Out of Vietnem, etc.
No?
Certainly better than Carter's letting the Iranians run all over us for more than a year.
Not that Bush isn't awful, he is. I admit that. But geez, Carter was just incompetent in foreign policy. He needs to backpedal that statement.
posted on May 21, 2007 03:36:26 PM new
I'm more than happy to mention it.
Carter allowed Iranians to hold our hostages for 444 days.
That's just ONE example of how their 'foreign policy works. In other words ......let them do whatever they want to us....and just keep TALKING. Don't ever take action.
clinton followed the same routine. FIVE attacks against US interests/soldiers/etc. and nothing was done.
Paper tigers...just as bin laden sees them...and why terrorist are very much hoping ignorant Americans will put another pro-terrorist president in the WH. One who will NEVER stand up to them.
posted on May 21, 2007 03:58:36 PM new
How quickly they forget.
Stagnation was what our economy was experiencing......and he was as 'clean' as many thought he was.
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The Real Jimmy Carter
By Alan M. Dershowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 30, 2007
I have known Jimmy Carter for years. I first met him in the spring of 1976 when, as a relatively unknown candidate for president, he sent me a handwritten letter asking for my help in his campaign on issues of crime and justice. I had just published an article in The New York Times Magazine on sentencing reform, and he expressed interest in my ideas and asked me to come up with additional ones for his campaign. Shortly thereafter, my former student, Stuart Eisenstadt, brought Carter to Harvard to meet with some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and principle. I signed on to his campaign and worked very hard for his election.
When Newsweek magazine asked his campaign for the names of people on whom Carter relied for advice, my name was among those given out. I continued to work for Carter over the years, most recently I met him in Jerusalem a year ago, and we briefly discussed the Mid-East. Though I disagreed with some of his points, I continued to believe that he was making them out of a deep commitment to principle and to human rights.
Recent disclosures of Carter’s extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?
And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially, I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School, Rachael Lea Fish showed me the facts.
They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews “the enemies of all nations,” attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States’ own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a “fable.” (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.
Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard’s decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: “This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter’s personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.
In reading Carter’s statements, I was reminded of the bad old Harvard of the nineteen thirties, which continued to honor Nazi academics after the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler’s government became clear. Harvard of the nineteen thirties was complicit in evil. I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the twenty-first century has become complicit in evil.
The extent of Carter’s financial support from, and even dependence on, dirty money is still not fully known. What we do know is deeply troubling. Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family, and among whose principal investors is Carter’s friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the bank, gave Carter “$500,000 to help the former president establish his center…[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter’s different projects.”
Carter gladly accepted the money, though Abedi had called his bank, ostensibly the source of his funding, “the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.” BCCI isn’t the only source: Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center “in 1993 alone…$7.6 million” as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. It’s worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government’s myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center’s Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis have apparently bought his silence for a steep price. The bought quality of the Center’s activities becomes even more clear, however, when reviewing the Center’s human rights activities in other countries: essentially no human rights activities in China or in North Korea, or in Iran, Iraq, the Sudan, or Syria, but activity regarding Israel and its alleged abuses, according to the Center’s website.
The Carter Center’s mission statement claims that “The Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities.” How can that be, given that its coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away from significant Arab abuses and on Israel’s far less serious ones?
No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter.
The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter, not me, who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter’s own standards, it would be almost economically “suicidal” for Carter “to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine.”
By Carter’s own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption.
I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation, that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke. These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into believing that they are fooling themselves) just as Jimmy Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that he is fooling himself).
If money determines political and public views as Carter insists ”Jewish money” does, Carter’s views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter’s off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes.
That is now Jimmy Carter’s sad legacy.
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Perhaps j. carter should review his OWN foreign policies BEFORE he speaks abou the decisions and policies of other Presidents.
