Free Republic

The United States knew about an abortive coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002, and may even have taken part, former US president Jimmy Carter has told a Colombian newspaper.

When Fox News reported today from Gaza that former President Jimmy Carter plans to urge President Barack Obama to take the Palestinian militant group Hamas off the U.S. terrorist list in meetings later this week, Washington Democrats and the Obama administration collectively cringed. "The president has addressed Hamas questions, including in the Egypt speech," an administraton official said. "[We] won't have more to say about this." "Just like with President Clinton, Carter is becoming a huge problem and a growing concern for Obama," a Washington Middle East hand said. "They are very pissed with him." After observing Lebanon's elections,...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Former President Jimmy Carter said on Friday the "atrocious economic policies" of the Bush administration had caused the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Carter told reporters on a stopover in Brussels that "profligate spending," massive borrowing and dramatic tax cuts since President George W. Bush took office in 2001 were behind the market turmoil and economic crisis.

LONDON — Former President Jimmy Carter caused a stir over the weekend when he claimed that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal of 150 weapons. While experts have long maintained Israel has a nuclear arsenal, the Jewish state has refused to confirm or deny it. Most estimates, many based on evidence leaked in 1986 by Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, put the number of Israeli nuclear weapons at between 100 and 200. But other experts have said the number is as low as 60 or as high as 400.

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...

"The US has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviet Union (sic) has about the same; Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more," he said.

In a speech at a literary festival in Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner said: "There is no reason to treat these people this way," referring to the blockade, in place since the Islamist Hamas movement seized Gaza in June 2007. While president from 1977 to 1981, Carter was the architect of the landmark 1979 peace deal between Israel and Egypt, the first such treaty between the Jewish state and an Arab country. According to Carter, the failure of the European Union to support the Palestinian cause was "embarrassing." He said European countries should be "encouraging the...

Former US President Jimmy Carter breaks nuclear taboo and continues to push for direct negotiations with Iran's leaders Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions. His remark, made at the Hay-on-Wye festival which promotes current affairs books and literature, is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence. Nor do US officials deviate in public from that Israeli line. Carter, who has immersed himself...

The world must stop standing idle while the people of Gaza are treated with such cruelty The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished. This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international...

Ex-US president blames Israel for denying Gazans food, water; says Hamas won elections 'fair and square' WASHINGTON – Blaming Israel, again: Former US President Jimmy Carter says that following his meetings with Hamas leaders the group offered a truce in Gaza but Israel rejected the offer. During an interview with NBC, Carter also blamed Israel for denying the citizens of Gaza basic supplies such as water and food. "I think it was productive, because all the things that we asked Hamas to do, they basically agreed to do," Carter said, referring to his recent trip. "One was to have a...

MADRID (AFP) — Last week's meeting between former US president Jimmy Carter and the exiled leader of Hamas militants did not produce any results, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said here Wednesday. "President Carter came to the region thinking he could achieve something. Unfortunately president Carter left without anything concrete," he told a conference in the Spanish capital. "The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else," he said. "Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions....

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter embraced a leading Hamas figure Tuesday, according to participants in a meeting that infuriated Israeli officials already upset by Carter's freelance Mideast peace mission. Carter also laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, whom the Bush administration and many Israelis blame for the breakdown of peace talks seven years ago and the violence that followed. At a reception in the West Bank town of Ramallah organized by Carter's office, the former president hugged Nasser Shaer, a senior Hamas politician, meeting participants said. Embraces between men are a common custom...

JERUSALEM - Former President Jimmy Carter brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace deal, but he's getting a cool reception in Israel during his latest visit to the Mideast. Israeli leaders are shunning the globe-trotting peacemaker for planning to meet with Khaled Mashaal, the head of Israel's archenemy Hamas, and comparing the Jewish state's policies to apartheid. A schedule released by the Atlanta-based Carter Center showed no plans for the former president to meet any of Israel's key players: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Defense Minister Ehud Barak during this week's visit, which began Sunday. The only high-ranking...

Former President Jimmy Carter said he feels "quite at ease" about meeting Hamas militants over the objections of Washington because the Palestinian group is essential to a future peace with Israel. Carter, interviewed Saturday for ABC News' "This Week," airing Sunday, also said he would oppose a U.S. Olympic boycott and hopes all countries will join in the Beijing games. He spoke from Katmandu, Nepal, where his team of observers from the Carter Center monitored an election that appeared likely to transform rule by royal dynasty into a democracy with former Maoist rebels in a strong position, judging by incomplete...

NEW YORK CITY — Former President Jimmy Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world. The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Tuesday that Carter was planning a trip to Syria for mid-April, during which he would meet with Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, on April 18. Deanna Congileo, Carter’s press secretary, confirmed in an e-mail to FOXNews.com that Carter will be in the Mideast in April. Pressed for comment, Congileo did not deny that the...

KATHMANDU (AFP) — Former US president Jimmy Carter met the leaders of Nepal's former Maoist rebels Tuesday, even though the group remains classified by Washington as a foreign "terrorist" organisation. Carter, whose democracy and human rights organisation is monitoring this Thursday's landmark elections in the Himalayan nation, was given assurances by the Maoists that the polls would be peaceful. "President Carter wanted to know about the election situation and expressed his concern over whether it will be free and fair," Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists' second-in-command, told reporters after the meeting. "We assured him that the elections will be held in...

Leadership: When it comes to economic performance, there's no contest: Apart from the early years of the Depression, Jimmy Carter's brief tenure as president was the worst in the 20th century. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Profile In Incompetence: Second In A Series More on this series-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Carter's rather smug attempt to rank President Bush as the worst president ever wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so wrong. The irony, of course, is that the peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., shares that distinction with a number of other presidential mismanagers of our nation's economy. Carter apparently has gotten so used to being called...

Sabeel, a group trying to promote the view that Christians should not offer support to Israel, announces the opening of the Carter Center on the West Bank. This is nothing less than an attempt to weaken Christian support for Israel This is a new low from you-know-who. This support is based, in part, on a view that God has a covenant with Jews that Christians are Biblically bound to honor. The Sabeel group has been propagandizing the view that this Covenant between God and the Jews is broken and that Christians (in particular, Palestinian Christians) have replaced Jews as the...

Leadership: So Jimmy Carter calls the Bush administration "the worst in history." This from the man who wrecked the world's greatest economy and made a nuclear Iran and North Korea possible. Profile In Incompetence: First In A Series We didn't think we'd see the day when a president-elect of France would be more appreciative of America's role in the world than one of our own former presidents. But here is Carter telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that President Bush's "administration has been the worst in history," one that has "endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war even when our own security is...

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.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter expressed his support for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria, rejecting White House criticism of the visit. "I was glad that she went," Carter said Wednesday. "When there is a crisis, the best way to help resolve the crisis is to deal with the people who are instrumental in the problem." Pelosi arrived in Syria on Tuesday, in an attempt to open direct dialogue with Syria's leader, something President Bush opposes. Pelosi also discussed with President Bashar Al-Assad concerns about Syria's support for militant groups. Bush on Tuesday called the trip "counterproductive"...

Jimmy Carter’s Jewish Problem For those with eyes to see, there were hints as far back as the 1976 presidential campaign of the trouble to come. Early that year, Harper’s magazine published “Jimmy Carter’s Pathetic Lies,” a devastating exposé of Carter’s record in Georgia by a then little-known journalist named Steven Brill. Reg Murphy, who as editor of the Atlanta Constitution had kept a close eye on Carter’s rise in state politics, declared, “Jimmy Carter is one of the three or four phoniest men I ever met.” Speechwriter Bob Shrum quit the Carter campaign after just a few weeks, disgusted...

Former President Jimmy Carter once complained there were "too many Jews" on the government's Holocaust Memorial Council, Monroe Freedman, the council's former executive director, told WND in an exclusive interview. Freedman, who served on the council during Carter's term as president, also revealed a noted Holocaust scholar who was a Presbyterian Christian was rejected from the council's board by Carter's office because the scholar's name "sounded too Jewish." Freedman, now a professor of law at Hofstra University, was picked by the council's chairman, author Elie Weisel, to serve as executive director in 1980. The council, created by the Carter White...

Carter defends Mideast book as accurate By CHARLES ODUM, Associated Press Writer 29 minutes ago Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that the storm of criticism he has faced for his recent book has not weakened his resolve for fair treatment of Israelis and Palestinians. "I have been called a liar," Carter said at a town hall meeting on the second day of a three-day symposium on his presidency at the University of Georgia. "I have been called an anti-Semite," he said. "I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward....

Exclusive: Handwritten Note From Jimmy Carter Interceding for Nazi SS Guard Proven to Have Murdered JewsWe now have a copy of the note that Jimmy Carter sent to the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, interceding on behalf of a Nazi SS Guard. We first reported on this story this morning.

Harvard law professor and lawyer Alan Dershowitz has labeled former President Jimmy Carter a coward for refusing to debate him over Carter's controversial new book. Carter will visit Brandeis University to discuss his book on Palestine but won't debate academic Dershowitz as originally proposed. Will You Read Book? "It's the height of cowardice," said Dershowitz. "He released this book saying he wanted to spark a debate and now he refuses to do just that." In an opinion piece in the Boston Globe Dershowitz also called Carter a "hypocrite" for telling Brandies officials he would not debate Dershowitz. He also wrote,...

Jimmy Carter's Seductive Crypto-Marxist Story of Palestine versus the Christmas Story "And you will be hated by all nations because of me...and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people." Matthew 24: 9-11 Former President Jimmy Carter recently came to Pasadena (California) to sign copies of his new book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Let's forget for a moment the detailed content of Carter's vitriolic and intentionally provocative book or Carter's tragic record as a President. I think all of us recognize he is a decent and intelligent man. But since it is Christmas time let's look at the underlying...

We're well into the Christmas season, and if the spirit of the Christ child is under assault we have an abundance of air and wind, a lot of it vile and foul. One of the study commissions at the United Nations, perhaps stacked with vegetarians overdosing on tofu and bean sprouts, concludes that the flatulence of cows is more damaging to the environment than automobiles. Poor Bossy, contentedly chewing her cud and minding her own business, now exposed as just another scapegoat (scapecow?) to blame for global warming. But it's not just cows. Some of our most distinguished statespersons are...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Friday called upon the Bush administration to make a commitment to withdraw the American troops from Iraq, although not immediately but in a year or so. "I don't think so far there's ever been any commitment from our government in Washington ever to totally withdraw from (the) Iraq military. I would like to see that commitment made," Carter, who is visiting India for a charity project, said in a statement.

Former President Jimmy Carter will be campaigning with his son, Democratic US Senate candidate Jack Carter, during stops in Elko, Fallon, Reno, Las Vegas and Henderson this week.

Former US president Jimmy Carter lashed out at British Prime Minister Tony Blair for being "so compliant and subservient" to the Bush administration in Washington. "I have been surprised and extremely disappointed with Tony Blair's behaviour," Carter told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper as he promoted his new book "Faith and Freedom." "I think that, more than any other person in the world, the prime minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington, and he has not," said the 81-year-old former head of state. He faulted Blair for not having been a constraint on US President George W. Bush's decision...

SPIEGEL: Mr. Carter, in your new book you write that only the American people can ensure that the US government returns to the country's old moral principles. Are you suggesting that the current US administration of George W. Bush of acting immorally? Carter: There's no doubt that this administration has made a radical and unpressured departure from the basic policies of all previous administrations including those of both Republican and Democratic presidents. SNIP..... SPIEGEL: You also mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this...

"In my opinion, maybe the worst ally Israel has had in Washington has been the George W. Bush administration, which hasn't worked to bring a permanent peace to Israel," Carter told the newspaper.

Carter: Bush pursuing 'erroneous' policy 41 minutes ago Former President Carter, who helped broker the historic Camp David peace accord, said President Bush has pursued an "erroneous policy" that has fostered violence in the Middle East. Carter said the United States should work for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and the world community should concentrate on a long-term solution, but he is uncertain whether Bush can accomplish a cease-fire. "It depends on whether world opinion is strong enough to get the administration to change its erroneous policy, which has been to encourage the continuation of attacks on both...

The anti-Israeli bias in Jimmy Carter’s op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post could not have been more evident if he had concluded, “Allahu akhbar!” Unlike Mel Gibson, Carter presumably wrote while sober, but his analysis and demonology barely differed for it. The moral equivalence that led the worst president of the 20th century to decry our “inordinate fear of Communism” was on display from his first sentence, in which he took aim at “key players on all sides waiting for every opportunity to destroy their enemies.” The genocidal intent of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran is well known; he failed to indicate...

WASHINGTON— Gov. Bill Richardson said Monday the U.S. should not take out North Korea's test missile before it is launched, arguing that diplomacy would be more effective and less risky. "I believe a pre-emptive strike is ill-advised... What needs to happen is direct talks, as I've always urged, between the United States and North Korea." Richardson, who has negotiated with the North Koreans on several occasions, is staking out a different course than the one proposed by several other prominent Democrats in recent days. He said he disagreed with a Washington Post opinion column last week by former Defense Secretary...

Tom Daschle, once the most important Democrat in the Senate, tested a possible appeal to New Hampshire voters Thursday to make him the most important Democrat in 2008. The former three-term senator, who is considering a White House bid, excoriated President Bush in a speech to local New Hampshire Democrats, arguing that the chief executive and his administration "have got to be the most arrogant crowd I ever worked with." Daschle criticized Bush for launching the war in Iraq, secret domestic wiretapping and a national debt that he argued will be passed on to future generations. He complained that the...

Carter fittingly used a parable to illustrate how he'd like to see the political/religious debate unfold. [Sugg is interviewing the former President] "I was teaching a Sunday school class two weeks ago," he recalls. "A girl, she was about 16 years old from Panama City [Fla.], asked me about the differences between Democrats and Republicans. "I asked her, 'Are you for peace, or do you want more war?' Then I asked her, 'Do you favor government helping the rich, or should it seek to help the poorest members of society? Do you want to preserve the environment, or do you...

Jimmy Carter out of the anti-Zionist closet Jimmy Carter is out of the anti-Zionist closet. In a column in the Pakistan Daily Times entitled “Colonisation of Palestine precludes peace” Carter writes “The pre-eminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonisation of Palestine…” To be sure, he ends his column by calling for recognition for Israel by the Palestinians, but Carter cannot possibly misunderstand what “colonization of Palestine” means to Hamas, Iran, and Bin Laden. It means the existence of Israel anywhere in what was once called Palestine. That is a deliberate ambiguity, as Carter knows perfectly well. It plays to the...

Jimmy Carter has been trying to build a legacy recently by trying to make people forget his presidency. What is Carter's real legacy? Let's see: The Real Jimmy Carter by Steven F. Hayward The Nobel Prize is just the beginning: Jimmy Carter is enjoying a new day in the sun, with left-wing historians taking a "fresh look" at his disastrous presidency and trying to bamboozle Americans into thinking that it was actually successful. This ongoing Saint Jimmy campaign would be laughable if it weren't part of a larger strategy to whitewash the records of failed Democrats and justify Carter's outsize...

"Thousands Remember Coretta Scott King" ---------- I was watching Fox News and they showed Jimmy Carter speaking at Coretta Scott King's funeral, and sure enough, he started talking about illegal wire-tapping and other examples of government run amok. I am appalled that he would use this opportunity to bash the President, but not really surprised. :-(

US ex president Jimmy Carter labeled as "completely unjustified" that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has led the acts against US President George W. Bush in parallel to the Summit of the Americas held in the Argentinean city of Mar del Plata, AFP reported. "I think that leading a demonstration against the US president is completely unjustified," Carter told CNN news channel, which aired on live the ceremony closed by Chávez before an audience of 40,000 in a sports stadium. In the ex president's view, Chávez is "a difficult person. I know it for my own experience."

NBC, ANDREA MITCHELL: Carter was told no former presidents were going to pope funeral... Developing...

<p>Former President Jimmy Carter has been linked with a key figure in the U.N.'s oil-for-food scandal by the group leading the nationwide effort to evict the United Nations from American soil and halt U.S. funding of the U.N.</p>

The ineptitude of the administration of President James Earl ("Jumma") Carter seemed to me for a long time simply to be what happens when you put a bumbling, indecisive naif in a position of serious power. Lately, however, I've come to see the dark side of Jimmy Carter, and let me tell you, it's not only ugly and disgusting, it's pathologically dangerous. Neither Jumma nor Bubba, the two surviving Democrat ex-Presidents, has the decency or the respect for the office he once held to keep his pie-hole shut and refrain from criticizing the current Commander-in-Chief. But of the two, although...

Havana (dpa) - Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and Bartholomew I, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church, have sent Cuban leader Fidel Castro get-well wishes after his bone-breaking fall, the Cuban state-run media said Tuesday. In a letter printed in the official Granma newspaper, Carter said he and his wife, Rosalynn, had been concerned about the news of Castro's fall on October 20 but were relieved that his injuries were not grave. Carter said he and his wife were praying for his recovery. Carter visited Cuba in May 2002 on the first trip by a U.S. president there since the...

As former President Jimmy Carter walked into the Woodruff P.E. Center Wednesday evening, Emory students and faculty gave him a standing ovation. Carter donned Emory colors for the occasion: a blue and gold tie, white striped shirt and blue suit. More than 1,200 students, faculty and staff filled the WoodPEC gym. James W. Dooley, the eternal spirit of Emory, arrived shortly after Carter, his wife Rosalynn, University President James W. Wagner, Vice President for Campus Life John Ford and Student Government Association President Jimin Kim. During his speech, Carter called the war in Iraq one of the most “gross and...

A little-noticed drama unfolding in a tiny courtroom at Miami-Dade's Krome detention center provides a small window into the political turmoil roiling Venezuela. It's the asylum case of José Antonio Colina and Germán Rodolfo Varela, two former Venezuelan military officers accused of bombing the Spanish Embassy and Colombian Consulate in Caracas last year. On the surface, they share much in common. But they are strikingly different. And it's those differences that confound traditional perceptions of the Venezuelan scene. Both are former lieutenants in the Venezuelan National Guard. Both broke with President Hugo Chávez. Both joined thousands of anti-Chávez protesters at...