Posted on 05/26/2008 9:18:47 AM PDT by mak5
Former US President Jimmy Carter urged Washington to establish friendly ties with Tehran, reiterating the need for his country to resume trade relations with Iran, which he described as a "rational" nation.
Speaking at the Hay Festival yesterday, Carter also suggested the US should provide nuclear power technology and fuel to Iran as a show of goodwill.
"What happens if, in three years' time, Iran has a nuclear weapon," Carter asked. "I'm not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not. So what we have to do is talk with them now and say to them we want to be their friends," the former US president said.
"The United States must let Iran know that we want to give them fuel and everything they need for a non-military nuclear program. Twenty-five years ago we cut off trading with Iran. We've got to resume trading to show Iran we are friends."
Carter also criticized President George Bush, saying it was a "serious mistake and terrible departure" from the actions of previous US presidents not to engage with countries with which they differed.
"The president of the administration in Washington is the first one to have ever done this and I think we close off ourselves from any sort of rational accommodation of the views of other parties in order to reach out on major goals," said Carter, in a further interview with Sky Arts, to be broadcast today.
jimmuh needs to go pound some nails he was good at that
The idiot will not shut up.
The man simply does not know when to just shut up.
Hmmmm maybe MORON is the wrong term... Imbecile?.... no MORON is better.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Is this real??? I honestly thought it was Scrappleface. I didn’t think even Carter was THAT stupid.
“They are rational people like all of us in this room.” ..................... Did Jimmah include himself in that remark? sarc/
Oh Really? 
That is your problem Jimmy. You didn't know the meaning of rational in 1979 and you still don't know the meaning of rational.
Just wow. The idiocy of that man knows no bounds. They are not a whit different from the Iran that caused him to sit in the Oval Office wringing his hands because it made him and everyone else see just how impotent and incompetent he was as a leader.
Then he sent good men to their deaths in a risky mission that we should have never had to try to begin with.
He was responsible in large part for the fall of the Shah.
Sometimes the peanut farmer gets it right! Anybody who didn't get up and walk out after these comments probably is about as rational as the leadership of Iran. We know Carter fits the bill.
Jimmy, how many Democrat Presidents met with Fidel Castro?
“Former US President Jimmy Carter urged Washington to establish friendly ties with Tehran”
Good idea! The U.S. State Department has a job for him. Running the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
We had very fine relations with Iran, before Jimmah destroyed them by causing the ouster of our friend the Shah. He certainly was not willing to talk to him.
Not he wants to talk with the current leader. Some people just don't know how to behave.
Coupled with other bizarre behavior on his part I believe, for the memory of his own dignity and the dignity of his former office as President of the United States, that Mr. Carter's public comments should now be studiously ignored by the press.
Not = Now
Words escape me. I am at a loss to describe the absolute stupidity of Carter’s comment.
Everybody's rational at the Hay Festival.
They are rational people like all of us in this room.
********
What a dumbass.
The sentence for one of their criminals last year was to throw him off a cliff. They’re still savage in their hearts.
it depends on what you mean by "rational."
Carter is the one who sold out the Shah and gave Iran to the Mullahs. They rewarded him by taking our embassy employees hostage until he left office. This guy is a nut case.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Jimmuh has peanuts for brains!
No. 1, Jimmuh you're not a rational guy......... if you were you'd know that the Iranian government lacks rationality.
No 2., Becoming friends with people that are killing our troops, funding terrorism throughout the world, building nuclear bombs, and threatening to wipe us and Israel off the map is not very smart or rational. It's suicidal!!!!
With friends like Iran who needs enemies?!?
Neville Chamberlain would have been proud of Carter.
I think he’s getting the words “rational” and “radical” mixed up in his silly head.
he hates america. he wishes for its demise
when he won the nobel peace prize it was a slap in our face.
Hey Jimmuh...Remember that Iran prez dude from your “hostage days”. How’d you do with those guys back then??
Jimmy isnow and always has been in league with the Mullahs. He allowed the embassy take over while talking with them.
He still doesn’t realize that talking produces death.
LOL! That’s what I was thinking, move the old windbag over there.
They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not.
When you’re senile, it’s hard to pay attention.
Only America's enemies need not be perfect, apparently.
Do they want to commit suicide? The hidden Imam commands they commit suicide in order to hasten his return. Anybody who listens to Ammanutjob would realize he is serious.
I just can’t get over the GALL of this man. For such a failed president to be about, bleating about what HE thinks we should do makes me want to scream. Can’t his handlers CONTROL him? Is he completely unaware of what the majority of Americans THINK of him?
Oh my stars, will this damn fool ever shut his face? He is the last person on Earth who ought to be dispensing advice on how to deal with Iran.
Actually, he is a vain and bitter man. He absolutely cannot stand that he is thought of as such a bad president. He also is extremely jealous of how Nixon rehabilitated himself after leaving office. He cannot stand it period. He is so vain that when gets on an airliner he ‘personally’ walks up and down the aisle ‘shaking’ everyone’s hand. I know, because I had the misfortune to have him offer his hand to me on a Delta Flight to DC. He was an extremely bad governor, and he was worse as a president. He has however, been a particularly effective traitor.
“Iran, which he (Carter) described as a “rational” nation.”
Is Iran more or less rationale than when Jimmy Carter took office?
At that time, Iran was run by the Shah of Iran, an American ally. American allies were seldom good enough for Carter. He undermined the Shah, who was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini was anti-American and anti-Western - just the kind of dictator beloved by the American left. Khomeini radicalized Islam, returning it to its Muslim supremacist roots. Almost all subsequent Islamic terrorism traces its roots to Khomeini’s influence, and one step removed, Carter’s influence. Carter is in no position to lecture anyone about Iran.
Jimmah Carter...worst president ever
On November 4, 1979, an angry mob of young Islamic revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than sixty Americans hostage. "From the moment the hostages were seized until they were released minutes after Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as president 444 days later," wrote historian Gaddis Smith, "the crisis absorbed more concentrated effort by American officials and had more extensive coverage on television and in the press than any other event since World War II."
1979
Did somebody recently talk about appeasement???
I have some questions that have puzzled me for a while. And I ask them to this post by wlandsodidwe due to that sig line and the nature of the post. Although anyone who can enlighten please jump in.
First, I remember Carter’s presidency very well. It was a nightmare of my life and I fear that coming up, under President Obama, my own daughter will suffer the consequences of a spineless leader.
Thus I remember the hostage crisis, the gas lines, 18% interest mortgage rates....yes I remember.
What I don’t quite understand is how the Shah....
a)got booted out of Iran
b)how Carter helped it happen
c)what is a “shah” and how was he a good guy. That title sounds like royalty, some sort of elitest. Hardly an elected kind of thing although I understand that rulers born to the job can be America’s friend.
Now I want to know, seriously, how the Democrat party constantly gets a pass on this guy? They seat him in the chair of honor at their conventions. He goes on these jaunts and he undermines this country and....
....no wait! Where the hell are the Republicans??? Why aren’t they all over the place, dissing this guy, educating this country as to the horrible foreign policies he preaches while in distant lands and hey, I understand Carter has some sort of private diplomatic company and what? Is it possible he is PAID to betray this country?
Where are the Republicans?
Okay, so those are my questions.
'scuse me? Would that be the Pres of the United States you are speaking of, you anti-Semitic nincompoop?
They are rational people like all of us in this room.
You mean the same rational people that said this?
"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Allah Khomeini.
Who condemns all Muslim leaders who accept the existence of Israel as "acknowledging a surrender and defeat of the Islamic world."
Who states that Israel must be "wiped off the map"
Who tells the world that Israel is "on the verge of disappearing"
Who calls Israel a "fictitious" and "illegitimate" regime
Who tells the world to accept Israel's "imminent collapse".
Who's president says that "the US and Israel will soon die"?
You mean those rational people, you anti-Semite? What a despicable and hateful little man you are.
He's not senile, he's an dirty old leftist who, like all the rest of them, wants to see America knocked down and reshaped into a communist hellhole where the masses are firmly in their place and the unblemished, sparkling pure anointed like Jimmy Carter are in charge.
Disgusting.
CNN --- Iranian leader: Holocaust a 'myth'
CNN --- Iranian leader: Wipe out Israel
And Jimmy did so well with the ties he established with Iran....
This guy is such an idiot he gives idiots a bad name. Rational? My patooty.
“We’ve got to resume trading to show Iran we are friends.”
Yes, yes Jimmy... afterall, they’ve been training and supplying weapons to terrorists in Iraq who have killed hundreds of our military personnel. They have certainly earned our friendship.
This guy is setting the Gold Standard in Liberal idiocy.
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