Ouch. I know quite a few people feel the same way, but I can't think of another ex-president being publicly quite so undiplomatic in their criticisms. source [rquoter] Carter: Bush Admin. Is "Worst In History" (AP) Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush's environmental policies and the administration's "quite disturbing" faith-based initiative funding. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. "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." Carter spokeswoman Deanna Congileo confirmed his comments to The Associated Press on Saturday and declined to elaborate. He spoke while promoting his new audiobook series, "Sunday Mornings in Plains," a collection of weekly Bible lessons from his hometown of Plains, Ga. "Apparently, Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man," said Amber Wilkerson, Republican National Committee spokeswoman. She said it was hard to take Carter seriously because he also "challenged Ronald Reagan's strategy for the Cold War." Carter came down hard on the Iraq war. "We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered," he said. "But that's been a radical departure from all previous administration policies." Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having "zero peace talks" in Israel. Carter also said the administration "abandoned or directly refuted" every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts by other presidents. Carter also offered a harsh assessment for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone. "The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said. "As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one." Douglas Brinkley, a Tulane University presidential historian and Carter biographer, described Carter's comments as unprecedented. "This is the most forceful denunciation President Carter has ever made about an American president," Brinkley said. "When you call somebody the worst president, that's volatile. Those are fighting words." Carter also lashed out Saturday at British prime minister Tony Blair. Asked how he would judge Blair's support of Bush, the former president said: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient." "And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world," Carter told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. [/rquoter]
I'm no Bush fan and I wasn't around during Carter's tenure but from what I have read he wasn't that great either.
Carter was by no means a great president. He did have more accomplishments than he gets credit for, and he did tell it like it is. When he told Americans about energy problems, and the need to conserve, the nation went ballistic and hated him for it. Carter was ahead of his time on that one, and not people have come around to his way of thinking. As bad as Carter was, he didn't screw up nearly as bad as Bush has in almost every area. I think Mr. Clutch's line would have been funny.
As bad as Bush has been, Carter has no right to be running his mouth. It's like Milli Vanilli telling Ashley Simpson that she can't sing.
I think there is a huge gulf between how bad Carter was and how bad Bush has been. Carter at least got some things right. He did an amazing job in dealing with Israel/Egypt. He was right about the energy thing, I agree with his handling of the Panama canal. He lived up to the agreement the U.S. made. He screwed up the economy, boycotting the Olympics, and also regarding El Salvador. I can think of almost nothing that Bush has done right. It is really hard to think of even one thing. When he was pimping space exploration, I was on his side, but backed down on that. The negatives that he has done have caused more damage, and longer lasting damage than any of the negatives that Carter brought upon us.
I can think of some good things Bush has done, for conservatives at least- tax cuts, faith based initiative (which Carter for some reason thinks is so abhorrent), Supreme Court appointments, swift response to 9/11 in Afghanistan. Liberals might like that he signed McCain- Feingold (which has turned out to be completely worthless).
Jimmy Carter as an ex president owes it to American to tell the truth about Bush so that we can do better. Bush really is that bad. Bush will go down in history as at best one of the couple worse presidents in the last hundred years or so. Just horrible for America. Wasted our resources,promoted pollution and global warming, hurt all but the over $200 grand per year crowd, and made us hated, weaker and not even safer. Just stupid, corrupt and bad for America. I know Bush proclaims a Christianity of sorts, dresses up to play briefly the top gun, the scholar, the CEO etc. He swaggers which can promote a certain amount of confidence for awhile, and looks good on brief TV apps till he opens his mouth for more than a phrase or two. He also is quite bold in sacrificing the lives of other people's kids and the folks in the Middle East. He is probably even sincere in some of his foreign policiy blunders. By almost any measure a terrible president.
Hey, I agree with everyones assessment of Bush....But the 'even worse then me" and "mini vanilli" lines were pretty good.
Carter let the Allman Brothers smoke pot in the White House...he's OK by me. Presidents more than quarterbacks get credit or blame at a level they don't deserve. Economies have natural boom and bust cycles, the Fed has 100% more influence over that and Congress has the power of the purse and taxation laws. We had just begin to deal with the OPEC Cartel during the Carter years and they hadn't figured out yet that they make more money by controlling prices to a level that encourages the US economy (even though we are the Great Satan) and Carter did have the balls to try to rescue the hostages with a wildly risky incursion into Iran that failed due to lowest cost bidder equipment. Presidencies like quarterbacks are sometimes defined by circumstances beyond their control (but David Carr did suck).
GWB is the Republican Jimmy Carter, albeit with a hell of alot more blood on his hands, And we all remember what happened after Jimmy Carter, now don't we? I see the same thing happening, with the political parties roles reversed, in 2008. The Republicans will be in disarray from 2008-2016 just like the Democrats were from 1980-1992.
I should have included the initial 9/11 Afghanistan part of Bush's presidency as something he did well. That was done very well. I think the tax cuts are good only for the wealthy, which is bad for our nation, and faith based initiatives haven't really been successful in any examples that I know of. As a person of the same faith as the President, I think he's been absolutely horrible for that faith as well as the country.
Huh I am certainly not anywhere close to wealthy, but over the time Bush has been President I have had a noticeable impact in my taxes. Sounds like someone has bought the standard liberal "party line"
How do we pay for these tax cuts? Reduction in spending? Has the president or Republican controlled congress reduced spending the last 8 years? Guess who has to pay for all of this? Why not have 0 taxes? Isn't that what conservatives want? The thing I love most about President Bush is he gives everybody what they want without understanding the consequences. Tax cuts for everyone, eliminate the estate tax, more government spending on defense, more spending in Iraq, more spending everywhere. No one has to pay for anything, as long as the Chinese continue buying our treasuries. President Bush has this giant VISA credit card and our debts are piling up.
I've thought this ever since Bush got re-elected. The damage he's done to the GOP is enormous. The problem is the Dems are so inept that it will be easier for the Republicans to back on their feet. As much as I detest Bush, Carter was pretty awful. He never got his hands around the job and he has no business blasting another president. I also hate the idea of a former president publicly ripping a sitting president. Not that I think much of him anyway, but Carter went down a few more notches in my book.
was it really swift? 1) how long did it take before we began a bombing campaign in afghanistan? 2) how long did it take for us to actually get boots on the ground? 3) how long did it take to capture the guy who supposedly is responsible for 9/11? answers... 1) one month (october 2001) 2) minimal special forces arrived in late october. significant forces didnt arrive till late november. 3) "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority. I am truly not that concerned about him." - G.W. Bush, responding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02 it almost seems like they let bin laden get away. Late October-Early November 2001: Al-Qaeda Fighters, Bin Laden Said to Move into Jalalabad without Hindrance "In late October, US intelligence reports began noting that al-Qaeda fighters and leaders were moving into and around the Afghan city of Jalalabad. By early November, bin Laden is said to be there. [Knight Ridder, 10/20/2002] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will later recall, “We knew from day one the likely places that bin Laden would flee to. There had been lots of work done before 9/11 on where did he hang out, statistical analysis even. We knew Tora Bora was the place where he would be likely to go. People in CIA knew that; people in the counterterrorism community knew about it. We knew that what you should have done was to insert special forces—Rangers, that sort of thing—up into that area as soon as possible.” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] Knight Ridder Newspapers later reports that “American intelligence analysts concluded that bin Laden and his retreating fighters were preparing to flee across the border. However, the US Central Command, which was running the war, made no move to block their escape. ‘It was obvious from at least early November that this area was to be the base for an exodus into Pakistan,’ said one intelligence official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. ‘All of this was known, and frankly we were amazed that nothing was done to prepare for it.’” [Knight Ridder, 10/20/2002] The vast majority of al-Qaeda’s leaders and fighters will eventually escape into Pakistan." Late October-Early December 2001: Franks Ignores CIA Request to Deploy Unused US Troops to Get bin Laden Veteran CIA agent Gary Bernsten leads a CIA undercover team, codenamed Jawbreaker, to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan. In a 2005 book, also called Jawbreaker, Bernsten will describe how his team monitored multiple intelligence reports tracking bin Laden on a path through Jalalabad to Tora Bora (see November 13, 2001). He will claim that at the start of December 2001, one of his Arabic-speaking CIA agents finds a radio on a dead al-Qaeda fighter during a battle in the Tora Bora region. This agent hears bin Laden repeatedly attempt to rally his troops. On the same radio, that agent and another CIA agent who speaks Arabic hear bin Laden apologizing to his troops for getting them trapped and killed by US aerial bombing. Based on this information, Bernsten makes a formal request for 800 US troops to be deployed along the Pakistani border to prevent bin Laden’s escape. The request is not granted. Bernsten’s lawyer later claims, “Gary coordinated most of the boots on the ground. We knew where bin Laden was within a very circumscribed area. It was full of caves and tunnels but we could have bombed them or searched them one by one. The Pentagon failed to deploy sufficient troops to seal them off.” Although the area is heavily bombed, bin Laden is able to escape (see Mid-December 2001). [Berntsen and Pezzullo, 2005; London Times, 8/14/2005; MSNBC, 12/29/2005; Financial Times, 1/3/2006] A Knight Ridder investigative report will later conclude, “While more than 1,200 US Marines [sit] at an abandoned air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders [rely] on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British, and Australian special forces to stop al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from escaping across the mountains into Pakistan.” Military and intelligence officials warn Franks that the two main Afghan commanders cannot be trusted. This turns out to be correct, as the warlords accept bribes from al-Qaeda leaders to let them escape. [Knight Ridder, 10/30/2004] In 2005, Bernsten will call himself a supporter of Bush and will say he approves of how CIA Director Porter Goss is running the CIA, but he will nonetheless sue the CIA for what he claims is excessive censorship of his book. [London Times, 8/14/2005; MSNBC, 12/29/2005] November 2001: Pakistan Promises to Seal Off Tora Bora Region in Exchange for US Aid According to author Ron Suskind, some time in November the US makes a deal with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan will seal off the passages to Pakistan from the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan where Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are expected to gather. In return, the US will give Pakistan nearly a billion dollars in new economic aid. Pakistan will fail to effectively seal the border in the next month (see December 10, 2001) and almost the entire force in Tora Bora will escape into Pakistan. [Suskind, 2006, pp. 58] November 3, 2001: US Is Said to Be Relying on ISI for Intelligence in Afghan War The US, lacking local agents and intelligence in Afghanistan, is said to be heavily reliant on the ISI for information about the Taliban. The US is said to be confident in the ISI, even though the ISI was the main supporter of the Taliban up until 9/11. Knight Ridder Newspapers comments, “Anti-Taliban Afghans, foreign diplomats, and Pakistani government security officials say that pro-Taliban officers remain deeply embedded within ISI and might still be helping America’s enemies inside Afghanistan.” A leader of the resistance to the Taliban says, “There are lots of (ISI) officers who are fully committed to the way of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.” Former ISI Director Hamid Gul says, “It is a foolish commander who depends on someone else’s intelligence, especially when that someone doesn’t like him and was once friendly with the enemy.” [Knight Ridder, 11/3/2001] Later in the month another article notes that the CIA continues to rely on the ISI for covert actions against the Taliban. One CIA agent says, “The same Pakistani case officers who built up the Taliban are doing the translating for the CIA. Our biggest mistake is allowing the ISI to be our eyes and ears.” [Toronto Star, 11/5/2001] November 16, 2001: Tora Bora Battle Begins Heavy US bombing of Tora Bora, the Taliban and al-Qaeda mountainous stronghold near the Pakistani border, begins. A large convoy containing bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders arrived in Tora Bora about three day earlier. The son of a tribal elder later recalls, “At first, we thought that the US military was trying to frighten the Arabs out, since they were only bombing from one side.” Rather than send in US ground forces in large numbers, the US chooses to supply two local warlords and have their fighters do most of the fighting while heavy bombing continues. Within days, a small number of US special forces are brought in to assist the local warlords. One of the warlords chosen, Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, was actually living in exile in France and has to be flown to Afghanistan. He is “known to many as a ruthless player in the regional smuggling business.” Between 1,500 to 2,000 of bin Laden’s fighters are in Tora Bora when the battle begins. [Christian Science Monitor, 3/4/2002; Knight Ridder, 10/20/2002] There are two main mountain passes out of Tora Bora and into Pakistan. From the beginning on this day, eyewitnesses report that the US bombs only one pass. [Newsweek, 8/11/2002] The fighting and bombing will continue through early December (see December 5-17, 2001) while bin Laden and most of his forces escape via the other pass (see November 28-30, 2001). Mid-September 2001-October 7, 2001: US Fails to Strike at Bin Laden Despite Good Intelligence According to author James Risen, at some point after 9/11 but before the start of bombing in Afghanistan, “US intelligence located Osama bin Laden, but the US military was not prepared to strike him. [US] intelligence officials say that at the time, the US military was developing a plan for an air campaign over Afghanistan that was not flexible enough to take advantage of the sudden windfall of intelligence concerning bin Laden. This little-known opportunity to kill bin Laden came before the terrorist leader fled into the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan, where he became much more difficult to track.” [Risen, 2006, pp. 185] Early October-Mid-November, 2001: Air Force Is Repeatedly Denied Permission to Bomb Top al-Qaeda and Taliban Leaders In mid-November 2001, the Washington Post will report that senior Air Force officials are upset they have missed opportunities to hit top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders since the start of the bombing of Afghanistan. According to these officials, the Air Force believes it has the leaders in its crosshairs as many as ten times, but they are unable to receive a timely clearance to fire. Cumbersome approval procedures, a concern not to kill civilians, and a power play between the Defense Department and the CIA contribute to the delays. One anonymous Air Force official later says, “We knew we had some of the big boys. The process is so slow that by the time we got the clearances, and everybody had put in their 2 cents, we called it off.” The main problem is that commanders in the region have to ask for permission from General Tommy Franks, based in Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, or even Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other higher-ups. Air Force generals complain to Franks about the delay problem, but never receive a response. For example, at one point in October, a Taliban military convoy is moving north to reinforce front line positions. Targeters consider it an easy mark of clear military value. But permission from Central Command is denied on the suspicion that the target is so obvious that “it might be a trick.” In another example, a target is positively identified by real-time imagery from a Predator drone, but Central Command overrides the decision to strike, saying they want a second source of data. An anonymous official calls this request for independent verification of Predator imagery “kind of ridiculous.” [Washington Post, 11/18/2001] The London Times paraphrase officials who claim that, “Attempts to limit collateral damage [serve] merely to prolong the war, and force the Pentagon to insert commandos on the ground to hunt down the same targets.” [London Times, 11/19/2001] By the end of the war, only one top al-Qaeda leader, Mohammed Atef, is killed in a bombing raid (see November 15, 2001), and no top Taliban leaders are killed. October 19, 2001: US Special Forces Arrive in Afghanistan US Special Forces ground forces arrive in Afghanistan. [MSNBC, 11/2001] However, during the Afghanistan war, special forces soldiers are mainly employed in small numbers as observers, liaisons, and spotters for air power to assist the Northern Alliance—not as direct combatants. [Christian Science Monitor, 3/4/2002] The first significant special forces operation on October 20 will be a near disaster, leaving military commanders increasingly reluctant to use US troops directly in battle (see October 20, 2001). [Christian Science Monitor, 3/4/2002] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will suggest in 2004 that the Bush administration did not commit more ground forces to Afghanistan because it wanted to have enough troops available to stage a large offensive against Iraq. “I can’t prove this, but I believe they didn’t want to put in a lot of regular infantry because they wanted to hold it in reserve,” Richard Clarke explains. “And the issue is the infantry. A rational military planner who was told to stabilize Afghanistan after the Taliban was gone, and who was not told that we might soon be doing Iraq, would probably have put in three times the number of infantry, plus all the logistics support ‘tail.’ He would have put in more civil-affairs units, too. Based on everything I heard at the time, I believe I can make a good guess that the plan for Afghanistan was affected by a predisposition to go into Iraq. The result of that is that they didn’t have enough people to go in and stabilize the country, nor enough people to make sure these guys didn’t get out.” The first regular US combat troops will be deployed in late November and play a more limited role. [Atlantic Monthly, 10/2004] Late November 2001: CIA Advises Bush and Cheney That Allies Won’t Help Trap Bin Laden, but No Action Is Taken According to author Ron Suskind, CIA Deputy Counter Terrorism Center Director Hank Crumpton briefs President Bush and Vice President Cheney about the looming battle in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, where about 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban are settling in. He points out the region is very mountainous, with many tunnels and escape routes. Bush asks about the passages to Pakistan that the Pakistani government has agreed to block (see November 2001). Using a map, Crumpton shows “the area on the Pakistani side of the line [is] a lawless, tribal region that [Pakistan has] little control over. In any event, satellite images showed that [Pakistan’s] promised troops hadn’t arrived, and seemed unlikely to appear soon.” Crumpton adds that the Afghan forces in the region allied to the US are “tired and cold and, many of them are far from home.” They were battered from fighting in the south against Taliban forces, and “they’re just not invested in getting bin Laden.” He tells Bush that “we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful” and strongly recommends the US marines being sent to Kandahar (see November 26, 2001) get immediately redirected to Tora Bora instead. Cheney says nothing. Bush presses Crumpton for more information. “How bad off are these Afghani forces, really? Are they up to the job?” Crumpton replies, “Definitely not, Mr. President. Definitely not.” However, the Pentagon is not voicing the same concerns to Bush. The marines are not redirected to seal off the passes. [Suskind, 2006, pp. 58-59] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/...ld=afghanistan&timeline=complete_911_timeline
