Free Republic

FALLON, Nev. - Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday major policy changes are needed because the Iraq war has divided the nation "almost as much as Vietnam." "So there's no doubt that our country is in much more danger now from terrorism than it would have been if we would have done what we should have done and stayed in Afghanistan," he said on the campaign trail with his son, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Jack Carter. The former president said the Bush administration made a "terrible mistake" by invading Iraq and diverting troops from Afghanistan. Jack Carter criticized his opponent,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Monday the Bush administration had eroded America's global influence with its conduct in Iraq and by condoning the torture of terrorism suspects. "They have redefined torture to make it convenient for them," Carter said of the Bush administration in an interview with Reuters. "Things that are unanimously almost or globally assumed to be torture, they claim that this is not torture. I don't think there is any doubt that is what they are doing," said Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981. He has since been a...

New Haven, Conn. -- Democrat Ned Lamont said Wednesday the U.S. is weaker because of the war in Iraq backed by rival Sen. Joe Lieberman, and he called for shifting forces to Afghanistan and elsewhere. "We have sacrificed our daughters and sons and our treasure in a war we didn't have to fight," Lamont said. "We have ignored the real threats and security needs in the war we should be fighting, the one against the terrorists. ... Senator Lieberman believes that President Bush has it right in Iraq. I believe that he's dangerously wrong." The Democrat, who upset the three-term...

For an event that would turn a page in American history, former president Jimmy Carter has agreed in principle to host former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami for talks during his visit to the United States starting this week. Carter's term as president was dominated by the rupture in relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days until the day he left office. Iranians made the overture for the meeting, and the Carter Center in Atlanta is working on the possible timing, said Phil Wise,...

There are so many sad things to write about today but we all need the cathartic diversion of a true laughingstock, so let us talk about Jimmy Carter. Carter, by all biological indications, is still alive, so we may speak of him ill. Very, very, incurably ill. From Jan. 20, 1977, through Jan. 20, 1981, our nation endured an unpleasant, aberrant, tragicomic episode. In the somewhat confused political atmosphere subsequent to the resignation of Richard Nixon, the electorate succumbed to the blandishments of a folksy Georgia governor who espoused a form of bland centrism. The theory, presumably, was that boredom...

I was reading "guests of Ayatollah" by Mark Bowden and wondering why they sent a combination of Delta Force, Marines and Air Force to Desert One to attempt the hostage rescue. Could they not use a better equipped, better trained Navy SEAL unit to the field??? That'd be great if any one comes up with an answer. Thanks

The story of the American hostages who spent 444 days in Iran is now more than a quarter century old and rarely told in the detail that it deserves. I should know. I was one of them. Because the 52 of us who suffered the ordeal now number only 42, I was excited to read Mark Bowden’s latest book, “Guests of the Ayatollah.” With many of us approaching our 60s, 70s and beyond, I had begun to believe the story would never be completely and properly told. Most Americans believe the beginning of modern terrorism against the United States began...

"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.

Former President Stopped In Chicago To Raise Money For Son's Campaign (CBS) CHICAGO Former President Jimmy Carter is in Chicago raising money to send another Carter to Washington. Jimmy’s son, Jack, is running for U.S. Senate in Nevada. CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine sat down with the former president to get his take on the Middle East crisis. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than 25 years since he was president. At 79 years old, Jimmy Carter is trim and active. He looks virtually the same as he did when he left the White House in 1981....

Global War On Terrorism: Jimmy Carter says it's "inhumane and counterproductive" for Israel "to punish civilian populations" for Hezbollah's aggression. If you hadn't helped overthrow the Shah of Iran, Jimmy, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Our former president made this statement in a Washington Post op-ed in which the man who helped midwife the habitat for inhumanity that is Iran spouted the standard liberal dogma about cease-fires and something called "lasting peace." He forgets that Hezbollah is the spawn of Iran, and Iran is the spawn of his failed foreign policy. Carter, upon taking office in 1977, declared that...

We Need Fewer Secrets By Jimmy Carter Monday, July 3, 2006; A21 The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) turns 40 tomorrow, the day we celebrate our independence. But this anniversary will not be a day of celebration for the right to information in our country. Our government leaders have become increasingly obsessed with secrecy. Obstructionist policies and deficient practices have ensured that many important public documents and official actions remain hidden from our view. The events in our nation today -- war, civil rights violations, spiraling energy costs, campaign finance and lobbyist scandals -- dictate the growing need and...

It seems like ancient history, but also as current as today's headlines. That's why the 1979-1981 hostage crisis in Iran had such appeal for Mark Bowden, the author of the best-selling "Black Hawk Down." Five years of research and in-person reporting, including three trips to Iran, only further convinced the indefatigable Pennsylvania journalist of the relevance of the crisis in Tehran when Iranian militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy and seized 52 American hostages. As Bowden has reflected, "I think that the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 was conceived as a small thing with local motivations...

The longest day of my short life occurred a week and a half ago. At some point while I slept in Pullman, the sun rose Thursday morning. That evening, I watched the gray sky fade from the top of the Space Needle in Seattle. On the road back to Pullman, the early morning rays lit up the sky again on the hill down into Washtucna. It was a long road trip. What was the purpose of this borderline insane trip? Former President Jimmy Carter, of course. Eighteen members of the WSU Young Democrats had an important meeting with the man...

I recently saw a Canadian documentary on the Iranian Hostage Crisis and several of the hostages interviewed mentioned one of their own collaborating with the militant students (i.e. selling out the CIA operative, giving up info on the Marines, etc.). This was mentioned in the book "444 Days" which I read too long ago for my feeble brain to remember. Can anyone provide any further info? Details?? TIA.

ATLANTA Hamas and the Palestinians Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life. Overwhelmingly, these are school teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, farm families, shopkeepers, and their employees and families who are just hoping for a better life. Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show...

This is the Memorial Marker for the Brave Men that gave their lives in service to their country on April 25, 1980, during what has become known as the Hostage Rescue Attempt. This page is dedicated to those men that died, and to those men that served with them in trying to rescue those Americans held illegally by the Iranian Government for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January , the day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Remember these names always. These men gave their lives trying to free good men and women. They did not die in vain....

WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 11, 1980, NOON The meeting began with Jimmy Carter's announcement: “Gentlemen, I want you to know that I am seriously considering an attempt to rescue the hostages.” Hamilton Jordan, the White House chief of staff, knew immediately that the president had made a decision. Planning and practice for a rescue mission had been going on in secret for five months, but it had always been regarded as the last resort, and ever since the November 4 embassy takeover, the White House had made every effort to avoid it. As the president launched into a list of detailed...

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...

WASHINGTON - A former defense secretary for Ronald Reagan says he implored the president to put Marines serving in Beirut in a safer position before terrorists attacked them in 1983, killing 241 servicemen. "I was not persuasive enough to persuade the president that the Marines were there on an impossible mission," Caspar Weinberger says in an oral history project capturing the views of former Reagan administration officials. He said one of his greatest regrets was in failing to overcome the arguments that "'Marines don't cut and run,' and 'We can't leave because we're there'" before the devastating suicide attack on...

I almost forgot to recognize a very important anniversary. This past Friday was the 25th anniversary of the release of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days by Islamic terrorists. It's especially important because one of their mad captors is now the mad leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, today. While our State Department claims he was not one of the captors, the surviving hostages, today, remember him. And I believe them. Not the liars and enablers at the State Department who are most often America's enemies fondest allies. Times Haven't Changed: U.S. Hostages in Iran Released 25 Years...