NEWS: Former President Carter States Americans Misled

America's 39th President, Jimmy Carter, stated that Americans were misled regarding the war in Iraq. Carter also said that the administration's pre-emptive strike policy is a spurious basis for a war when there is no immediate threat to America.



As I recall, there were many leaders of the Republican Party who thought the public really needed to know all of the dirty details about Clinton's personal liaisons and his attempt to keep those secret, and who very loudly denounced his lying to a grand jury about a sexual affair. George Bush capitalized on this by promising to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House. Apparently, that was just a lie, too.

I am tired of lies and obstructionism. I request that the administration finally live up to its pledge of integrity; to do "not only what is legal, but what is also right; not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves." The public deserves the truth, not about personal improprieties that have no impact on public policy, but the whole truth about decisions that have taken us to war and emptied our public coffers.

Not long ago, Americans prided themselves on our ethical leadership. The mere perception of impropriety would be cause for resignation; if not, an apology at minimum. Good thing that President Bush has lowered that standard for all of us. Now we have to be indicted by the courts to have to worry about paying for our sins.

I think it's time for a new America.

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I watched his interview tonight with Wolf Blitzer, and was surprised at the critical rhetoric, but you also have to take it into context. He was reluctant to go as far as saying the American public was purposefully deceived by the Bush administration, because that is what still needs to be investigated.

More so, I thought this statement was more important.

"We'll bomb, strafe and send missiles against their people even though our security's not directly threatened," he said. "This is contrary to international law. It's also contrary to what every president has done in this country for more than 100 years, Democrat or Republican."

Contrary to international law, is saying the preemptive war in Iraq is criminal, which some have claimed before, but coming from an ex-president, makes one take pause.

Jimmy Carter may not have been the strongest president, but one thing he was is honest.

Go Carter... open a few more eyes of your people.. I am proud of you... and they always said Jimmy was a crappy president..I think he just proved otherwise.....

Thank God... someone in the world still has a conscience

Yep...even those there are plenty who seem to equate invading Iraq with defending our freedoms (which ones? I like to ask and have yet to get a coherent answer).........pre-emptive attacks are called acts of aggression and no amount of spin will change that.

Wasn't Carter himself implicated in turning a blind eye to the worst massacre of the modern age, in Cambodia?

When, exactly, did this guy become the paradigm of virtue and good decisions? I must have missed that meeting.

I don't want my point to be confused, I'm not defending the criminals in the contemporary political machine. I just won't side with a criminal from a past political machine either.

Carter is an odd case, a really odd case. If he is a man of conscience, which he certainly portrays himself as, what the hell was he thinking when he sat in the big chair? Why did he make the decisions he made then, and even more critical to finding out the truth, why is he saying the things he's saying now?

New boss, old boss, shills in the audience, rigged shell games, entertainment, my head hurts.

He should stick to what he's good at ... building houses for the
underpriveledged in America.

He was a lousy president and he never had a clue how to
defend this country. Seems he still doesn't.
Also, Carter doesn't give a rats backend about the people
in Iraq and how they were being mass exterminated and
mass tortured with Saddam in power.

Also, Carter doesn't give a rats backend about the people
in Iraq and how they were being mass exterminated and
mass tortured with Saddam in power.



And Bush does? He "doesn't give a rat's backend" about the people in this country (unless of course you are huge contributor), so surely you jest about his compassion for the people of Iraq. His splendid little war is all about ego...his ego. Compassionate conservative my ample rearend. I have seen plenty of conservative, right wing conservative and I have yet to see any genuine compassion. At least Carter makes the effort...I have a hard time envisioning Bush swinging a hammer to help a poor person unless of course its a quick photo-op.

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
Wasn't Carter himself implicated in turning a blind eye to the worst massacre of the modern age, in Cambodia?

That's a matter of perspective. You don't win the Nobel Peace Prize by carpet bombing the other side of the negotiations table.

When, exactly, did this guy become the paradigm of virtue and good decisions? I must have missed that meeting.

Apparently you did.

At least regarding his virtue and moral leadership. He was drafted, nay thrust to leadership following the Vietnam conflict, Nixon controversy and churning stagflation disaffecting the nation almost solely by his Christian base as the first (and last in my estimation) truly evangelical President. His openly spoken of faith was equally openly ridiculed by the press and right alike.

Nixon's own undoing aside, I'd consider Carter the first President literally "taken down" by the press with everything from "gotcha" questions about breaking sins (lusting in his heart) to seeing a UFO to a slow news day released video of him being "attacked by a killer rabbit in a row boat."



Compare his "liberal media" coverage of the Hostage Situation (Day 201 America, our top story tonight, Carter still sucks!) to the complete absence of investigative media during Reagan's criminal reign of terror.

Popular rap aside on his Presidency, both historically and reflectively Carter is more than a good man. He's one of the best to have happened to have been elected President. Certainly in the 'paradigm of virtue' department.

Can't have that. His own party scuttled his re-election as much as anyone between Ted Kennedy's bitter challenge and Jerry Brown's insanity plea. Of course, the Republican nominee secretly working with the enemy behind the President's back didn't help.

Originally posted by RANT
You don't win the Nobel Peace Prize by carpet bombing
the other side of the negotiations table.

You DO get it for being a terrorist and a pedophile
rapist ala Arafat.

The 'peace prize' isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore.

It is speculated that Carter, who had been passed over
for the Nobel Peace Prize for MANY years when he was
actually more productive, finally got the prize because it
was a strike by the euro-centric Prize committee to
embarrass George W. Bush.

THAT is a good conspiracy to look into. Did Carter actually
get the prize for his work, or because of political opportunism
by the euros? hmmmmm.

Carter does good work. But he doesn't, and never did,
understand how to run the country and keep Americans safe.

He's a nice guy, no doubt. But ....


[edit on 11/5/2005 by FlyersFan]

So the dems and liberal media have to dust off the worst president in this country's history to try and bash Bush. Nice try. I'm sure he is still bitter over the landslide loss to Reagan and his tarnished legacy of incompetence.

I could rehash what democrat leaders said in regard to intelligence up to the Iraq war but the leftists would just say "well they were tricked too". If they were "tricked" then they weren't doing their job. There is a reason we have the legislative branches. They are just as responsible if not more so than the executive branch for anything that happens in the country. Of course it's just easier for simple minds to bash Bush then hold there own senators and congress people to task. Fact is, there was NO misleading about Iraq. Everyone has the same intel. There was no intel manipulation. If you think there was, prove it. Post the factual evidence. Hell you can't even get Libby on anything except not getting all his details perfect about something that was not even a crime!

Trying to go back now and say somehow we were "tricked" is laughable.
Keep on harping on it though. The American people are on the baseless criticisms and false polls. The dems will lose more seats in 2006 and get routed in 2008 for the presidency. No one listens to CNN and the other liberal propaganda networks except those tiny blue elitist enclaves on the coasts.

Originally posted by Hal9000
Jimmy Carter may not have been the strongest president, but one thing he was is honest.

Exactly. He's a good man. Not the best president. Of course, look what we have now. I'd love to have Carter back in there! We haven't had a great president for a while now. I'd rather have an honest, mediocre president than a lying, bad president any day.

I saw the Interview, too. He's a good man.

Reagan's reign of terror! LOL!! Rant, you just won't do!

I'd really stop and wonder what the redirection by Carter is supposed to accomplish.

You guys are aware that Carter is a serious globalist and was one of the first Trilateral Commission members, right? It was the Tri-Lat Commission that insured he would be president. He is one of "them", and you oughta know who "they" are by now, folks.

Ah, forget it, give that ol' knee-jerk, non-thinking gut reaction; that's what they love.

Divide, conquor. Control both sides, inflame partisan emotions, make one side think they might get satisfaction while making the other side concentrate on beating their nemesis.

jimmy is right and he knows his politics better than anyone from the u.s.he knows what true leadership is.

You claim "jimmy" is right and that he knows his politics better than anyone else and he knows true leadership?

Thank you, Amy. While you added no identifiable analysis, your support for your dad is commendable.

RANT
I stopped the useless and time-wasting practice of comparing turds, it was just eating up too much of my day. A professional politician is a turd, slimey, nutty, better left in the dark to dissolve rather than shoved into the American living room by other, more clandestine turds who happen to own broadcast and print media outlets.

You say Reagan, I think Anti-Christ, but that fact doesn't immediately throw me into Jimmy's corner by default.

A Turd is a turd is a turd, and when a professional politician supports a dictator who slaughtered millions, he's not just a turd, he's a mass-murdering turd. Maybe he didn't want to do, but did anyway. Sensible folks know that's no kind of excuse, you can't even justify minor lies with that logic, nevermind the murder of millions!

Sure, Carter wasn't out in the countryside executing children with his own hands, but he WAS backing the man responsible for the atrocities.

I'm glad he builds houses for people, that's cool. I wish I had the fame and money and resources to direct public attention towards the causes I think are imporant. But the thing is, I wouldn't last five minutes in politics because of one simple fact. If Kissinger or some other turd told me to look the other way while a foreign dictator slaughtered millions, and in fact counseled me to support the mass murder financially, idealogically, and politically on the international stage, well, I wouldn't go around pretending to be Mr. Nice Guy after that.

If Carter was in agreement with the policies, he's a psychotic turd. If he was acquiescent to the bullies and their blackmail, he's a spineless turd. If he was unaware of the entire affair, he was a stupid turd.

I happen to agree with you that he's the best of the recent presidents. Then again I cemented that opinion back in the day when I was still in the habit of comparing turds...

What is such a damn shame is that in a few hundred years nobody will remember the people who suffered and died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, people probably won't even remember the Khmer Rouge itself, what will they remember? Jimmy Carter smiling a goofy smile, holding up a hammer next to some nervous nuclear family.

Your politicians love you. See? Your politicians help you. See? This is the image being piped into the minds of the next generation, despite all the howling from the right regarding this mythical liberal media. We're being indoctrinated into the cult of selective memory my friend, the entire country is feeling the crunch.

And if one thing is true in my experience it is this: Short Memory = Repeated Mistakes.

You can see the effects already, the youth of today channel their rebellion, for the most part, into self destruction, corruption, and deception rather than political activism, and it gets worse every generation.

So the ultimate irony to me is that Jimmy is right! Americans are being misled! By people like Jimmy!

Carter is good man at hart his presidency was neutral and that was OK.

Reagan's reign was good to the military and to my then Marine husband at the time so he was good to us.

As a president he was oblivious of the then growing corporative power and the Aids epidemic.

He was an actor that happen to play president in his last long lasting unforgettable role.

He was not president material.

You know-- it cracks me up, when it doesn't terrify me, to see people who almost see the truth, but stop short of actually looking at all of it.

Every time that anyone criticizes any politician, somebody comes out and says, "Oh yeah!? Well he was nothing compared to ____!" That was the real antiChrist!"

Just as here, in response to criticism of Carter, we get a tirade about Reagan or a petulant whine about Clinton. WTF? They were and are politicians, which means, axiomatically, that they were and are professional liars and manipulators driven by their desire to accumulate and wield power over others. That's what politicians are and that's what they do. ALL of them-- not just the ones on the "other side."

Would that people would figure out that the two "sides" in the struggle aren't the Republicans and the Democrats, but the politicians and the people. ALL politicians, regardless of their nominal party affiliations, are the enemies of ALL the people, regardless of their nominal party affiliation.

My guess would be that Carter criticized Bush because the powers-that-be have decided that it's time to cut Bush loose. He's become a handicap to them, and they need to distance themselves from him. They needed him to create a military opportunity in the Middle East and to push the Patriot Act through, and he's done both of those things. They don't need him any more, and, in the wake of Katrina, he's become a burden to them. And having somebody with the influence and purported integrity that Carter enjoys criticize Bush and his policies only serves to fuel the ongoing controversy and keep the people off balance and at each other's throats, which provides fine cover for the ongoing machinations of the true powers-that-be.

All is going according to plan...



[edit on 5-11-2005 by Bob LaoTse]

I agree I think Bush is going to fall. His administration has been "caught" to many times now.

I guess Carter knows what the Senate Intelligence Committee members know which the New York Times is publishing tomorrow.

Buckle in.

I liked Carter, but I don't think you should necessarily have to take his word as truth regarding the "other side." Being a Democrat, he obviously has a partisan view. But when his words coincide with more and more Republicans- including cabinet members in the W. administration- you have to wonder what point there is in attacking the man's character to dispute what he has to say here.

-koji K.