Posted on 04/09/2004 11:00:11 AM PDT by SolutionsOnly
BROWNSVILLE -- Former President Carter on Thursday called the Bush administration's decision to wage war against Iraq "ill-advised and unnecessary," adding the resulting campaign "has turned out to be a tragedy."
The former Democratic president also said Bush's environmental policies are perhaps the worst in the nation's history.
Carter made the comments at the Rio R.V. Park after wrapping up a four-day birding trip with his wife, Rosalynn, in the lower Rio Grande Valley.
"President Bush's war was ill-advised and unnecessary and based on erroneous statements, and has turned out to be a tragedy," Carter said. "And my prayer has been that brave young American men and women, and others who are there, that their lives will be spared and there will be some peaceful resolution of the war."
Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, also blamed what he called Bush's pro-Israel policies for engendering animosity against America.
"The prime source of animosity towards the United States is the lack of progress in dealing with the Palestinian issue," Carter said, adding that past U.S. administrations since Harry Truman's have maintained a "balanced position" in dealing with the rights of the Arab population within the Jewish nation.
"The present administration has not done so at all. We have been exclusively committed to the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel, and have made no effort to try to have a balanced negotiating position between Israel and the Palestinians," Carter said.
Carter, who brokered the historic 1978 Camp David accords that led to peace between Israel and Egypt, noted that President George H.W. Bush threatened to halt foreign aid when Israel began building settlements in Palestinian territory.
"In the meantime, of course, the Israelis have established hundreds of settlements all over Palestinian land with no critical comment ever coming from the present Bush administration," Carter said.
Carter, who placed 103 million acres of Alaskan land under federal protection during his term, also took the current White House to task on the environment.
"This national administration is the worst for conservation in my lifetime, maybe in history," said Carter, whose family has farmed in Georgia since 1833. "In all the basic elements of preserving the purity of parks and wildlife lands, controlling the industries that are inclined to pollute ... the decimation of forest lands."
Too bad Jimmy Carter couldn't do the task of a President.
"The prime source of animosity towards the United States is the lack of progress in dealing with the Palestinian issue,"
You've said that before, Jimmy, just a part of your final solution
................
Jimmy Carter, on Israel and the Jews
1979: "I have never met an Arab leader that in private professed a desire for an independent Palestinian state. Publicly, they all espouse an independent Palestinian state -- almost all of them -- because that is what they committed themselves to do at Rabat (the 1974 Arab League summit conference)."
--President Jimmy Carter
a 1979 press conference
Early 1980: …at a March 1980 meeting with his senior political advisers, angrily snapped, "If I get back in, I`m going to f--- the Jews."
Jimmy Carter, March 1980
Late 1980: Cyrus Vance…confirmed to then-New York mayor Ed Koch that Carter, if reelected, would "sell out" the Jews
Jimmy Carter shortly before the 1980 election
2003: …had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution
Jimmy Carter, 12-1-2003
...................................
"We take the world like you find it; and Israel is a small state with a small population. It's a democracy and it exists in a neighborhood that in many - over a period of time has opined from time to time that they'd prefer it not be there and they'd like it to be put in the sea. And Israel has opined that it would prefer not to get put in the sea, and as a result, over a period of decades, it has arranged itself so it hasn't been put in the sea."
Donald Rumsfeld
Clinton wanted to make Israel/Palestine peace his legacy so bad that he dropped his shorts repeatedly for Yassir Arafat, yet Arafat still nixed every single land for peace deal offered to him.
If Carter's boy Clinton couldn't get the job done, then who is he to criticize Bush?
...his new home?
Billy Carter has announced an all-out campaign to embarrass his brother Jimmy. Thus far, Billy's efforts have included displays of loud, argumentative drunkenness, public urination, anti-Semetic pronouncements and questionable meetings with Libyan officials.
However, since the president has repeatedly ignored his younger brother, saying, "the president has no control over the opinions and actions of any American citizen," Billy has vowed to redouble is efforts.
He now reportedly plans to get drunk and drag a half-naked black woman through LaGuardia Airport shouting, "I'm sending this boogie back to Africa for giving bad head!" Should this attempt fail, Billy plans to murder some nurses.
"We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers -- women and children and farmers and housewives -- in those villages around Beirut. ... As a result of that ... we became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of our hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks." (Jimmy Carter, William Blum, American Empire for Dummies, 10/21/02)
An RV Park? Nice gig, Jimmy!
Jimmy Cahter giving advice is like i42 trying to tell the truth. Each word is worthless.
5.56mm
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