Posted on 04/27/2008 5:32:59 AM PDT by knighthawk
In embracing Hamas last week in direct defiance of the wishes of Congress and the President, ex-President Jimmy Carter raised the question of why he was granting precious prestige and credibility to an organization the U.S. government has designated a "foreign terrorist organization" since 1995.
If he was hoping to rekindle a flagging peace process, Carter's trip was doomed to failure; Hamas remains committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. So does this trip merely reflect a tremendous lack of judgment on Carter's part?
Perhaps the answer is more complicated. You see, the Carter Center, the ex-President's not-for-profit research and activist organization, has prospered over the years as a direct result of Arab largesse. Many of these "charitable" interests support Islamic fundamentalism and are vehemently anti-Israel.
The full extent of these connections is unknown because the amount and source of the Carter Center's funding is not public. But from various news reports and press releases, one can begin to sketch a very troubling picture.
For example, Saudi Arabia, the source of 15 of the 19 plane hijackers on 9/11 and whose royal family has funded terrorism outside the kingdom, has channeled tens of millions of dollars into the Carter Center over the years. In 1993 alone, the late King Fahd gifted $7.6 million, while more recently, the king's nephew, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, donated at least $5 million to the Carter Center. The Carter Center has a $36 million annual budget; these amounts are hardly insignificant to its ongoing operations.
Another million-dollar-plus backer is Sultan Qaboos sin Said, monarch of Oman. Considerable financial support comes from the United Arab Emirates as well.
There's more. In 2001, Carter received the $500,000 Zayed International Prize for the Environment and, the following year, praised the efforts of the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up.
The Zayed Center has repeatedly hosted anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, supported terrorism and asserted that there is an international conspiracy of Jews and Zionists for world domination, and that a Jewish-American conspiracy perpetrated the atrocities of 9/11.
It would seem that all of this money is not without its influence. Contrast Carter's relentless criticism of Israel, the most modern and democratic country in the Middle East, to his appreciation of such authoritarian countries as the UAE, which he described as an "almost completely open and free society."
Whether the United States can or should interrupt this stream of funding to Carter's operations, it at the very least should not supplement it.
Yet - believe it or not - the United States government itself has been providing millions of dollars to the Carter Center over the years. Representative Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.) estimates that the center received $19 million in federal funding since 2001 alone, and has called for passage of a bill that would immediately cut off all federal financing for the center.
Carter is free to travel around the world, stir up trouble, and cheer on terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. But U.S. taxpayers should not help him do this. And Carter should finally come clean and disclose the amounts and sources of all foreign funding for his center.
Just as the American public has a right to know whether a scientist researching the root causes of global warming is being funded by major oil companies, we should know who is supporting Carter's lobbying efforts to bring "peace" to the Middle East.
It is indeed a sad day in American history when a former President lowers himself to becoming a propaganda tool for terrorists bent on harming our country and the democratic principles by which we live - and we cannot even discover who is paying his bills.
Greif is president & CEO of Greif & Co., an investment bank, and a director of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation.
Ping
Years ago, when I bought into the line that Carter was a humanitarian trying to do good work, I sent the Carter Center a small donation. I still continue to get mail from them even though I have not sent them one thin dime since learning the truth about this asshat.
perfect
That makes more sense than any thing he has doing since he was elected POTUS.
I really don’t think Carter is quite this cynical or calculating mainly because I don’t think he’s that smart. No, I think that Jim-mah is just yer garden variety do-gooder idiot with an apostate ecumenical streak and the heaviest crentials on earth due to a freak election cycle where even Charles Manson had a shot at the WH. Like the albatross that Britain bore, Chamberlain, he’s just another imbecile more than happy to get us all killed for the sake of his personal idiocy and Star Trek philosophies. In addition, he’s something of a SOB, but then, how’d you do with a mother and wife like his?
Personally, I’d take the Billy Carter route.
Hey, this is not WorldNetDaily or the Sun.
This is a tabloid newspaper read by millions of blue-collar workers and low-level government employees, i.e. the rank and file Democrat.
Carter should be confined to his GA farm under guard with no communication link to the outside world. His bumbling stupidity got many American service men killed by Islamic fanatics while he was in office, and enough is enough. The old saying, "There's no fool like an old fool" applies to Carter more than any other old fool I know of.
Consider briefly, what it must be like to wake up in the morning, look in the bathroom mirror, and have to face the reality of once being the President of the United States, but only for one term, that one term of office stained and tainted by every kind of domestic and foreign policy disaster, to be made the butt of jokes and rude comments on a near universal scale, to have been challenged for your party’s re-nomination by one of the major powers of your party (Teddy Kennedy), to be snubbed at your own convention by that challenger after you finally get that nomination, and then to go on and be completely outclassed and outmaneuvered by a former movie star and California governor, and unceremoniously thrown out of office by 44 states in a Republican landslide, watch the grand resurgence of American influence and might on a global scale, and then watch the American people as grieve nearly as one when your conquerer passes away, hailed by many as the greatest President of the 20th Century, and you are reduced to being laughed at and ridiculed night and day, your name made into a punchline.
Now if having to face that sort of reality each and every day starting the day after the Election of November 1980 doesn’t turn you into a bitter, impotent old fart (with apologies to all the other farts out there), I don’t know what could. I have not one tear to shed for that POS.
And you know what? Jimmy *STP Carter brought it all on himself, he is solely responsible for his fate.
[*STP = Screw The Pooch]
Time to subpoena the “Carter Centers’” financial record.
“In 2001, Carter received the $500,000 Zayed International Prize for the Environment and, the following year, praised the efforts of the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up.
The Zayed Center has repeatedly hosted anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, supported terrorism and asserted that there is an international conspiracy of Jews and Zionists for world domination, and that a Jewish-American conspiracy perpetrated the atrocities of 9/11.
A prize like this is a way for foreigners directly to bribe people like Carter. Clinton similarly accepts gifts to the Clinton Library, and big speaking fees, which also are (in essence) bribes. Mrs. Clinton had “great luck” in the cattle options market (to which she has never returned, even after making a 10,000% gain in one year!). That was also a bribe, or (to be technical about it, a pay-off, because she probably already had carried out her assignment).
VVVeerrryyyy interesting!
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