Jimmy Carter calls Cheney a "disaster" for U.S.

[JGeropoulas]

Jimmy Carter calls Cheney a "disaster" for U.S
Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:42pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney as a "disaster" for the country and a "militant" who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.

Cheney has been on the wrong side of the debate on many issues, including an internal White House discussion over Syria in which the vice president is thought to be pushing a tough approach, Carter said.

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

Asked to comment on Carter's remarks, Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the Republican vice president, said, "We're not going to engage in this type of rhetoric."

Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981 and won the 2002 Nobel Peace prize for his charitable work, is a strong critic of the Iraq war and has often been outspoken in his criticism of President George W. Bush.

In a newspaper interview in May, Carter called the Bush administration the "worst in history" in international relations.

Carter did have kind words in the BBC interview for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"I'm filled with admiration for Condoleezza Rice in standing up to (Cheney) which she did even when she was in the White House under President George W. Bush," Carter said, referring to Rice's former role as White House national security adviser.

"Now secretary of state, her influence is obviously greater than it was then and I hope she prevails," Carter added.

 

[Laura]

Surely Carter is joking about War Whore Rice?!

 

[rs]

Surely Carter is joking about War Whore Rice?!

Um, of course not. *His* Secretary of State was Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski. I am hardly an expert on all things Brzezinski, but I have read "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives", New York: Basic Books (October 1997), ISBN 0-465-02726-1 in which he clearly makes the case that the future of US power lies in Central Asia (i.e. Iran, Iraq, Afganistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan) because of its central location in Eurasia (i.e. Gengis Khan did not have it wrong, he just dropped the ball) and its tremendous concentration of oil resources and the power and wealth control over those resources brings.

He also said that in the absence of a "Perl Harbor" type galvanizing event, the American populace would not have the stomach to do what was needed (i.e. to tolerate the extreme Machiavellian manipulations required).

So no, Carter is not joking, Carter is as serious as a heart attack. The disagreement is not in the goal, the disagreement is in the tactics and the fact that this administration has not been the "thief in the night" vanishing with the goods under mysterious circumstances, but instead has been "Vinnie the Goon" who sticks a gun in your face and announces "Youse money o' youse life".

I respect Carter, I admire his post Presidency activities, I voted for him, but I don't really trust him much more than our current Moron-in-Chief. There simply *is* no "clean" path to power.

 

[Laura]

I respect Carter, I admire his post Presidency activities, I voted for him, but I don't really trust him much more than our current Moron-in-Chief. There simply *is* no "clean" path to power.

Sadly, I think you are right. You are not the only person in the past few days who has told me that Carter is just as much a part of the "system" as the rest of them.

 

[Azur]

[ The disagreement is not in the goal, the disagreement is in the tactics and the fact that this administration has not been the "thief in the night" vanishing with the goods under mysterious circumstances, but instead has been "Vinnie the Goon" who sticks a gun in your face and announces "Youse money o' youse life".

There's something about the loss of finesse in the normal underground maneuvering that is important.

 

[Joe]

At this stage it seems that there WILL be a replacement for the idiot in chief and his handlers next year, despite talk of Bush attempting to make himself commander in chief for life. Maybe it will be Hilary or Obama, or maybe even Gore as a late entry now that he is up there with the Dalai Lama et al. From this perspective, it is fine for people like Carter or ex-general Ricardo Sanchez, who today savaged US political leaders as "incompetent, inept, and derelict in the performance of their duty", to speak out against the Bush junta. There IS a higher power in control it seems.

The only thing that *maybe* sets Carter apart is his criticism of Israel. In the final analysis, perhaps it is a mistake to ascribe to the ultimate controllers any form of enduring loyalty to ANY specific cause or belief other than the manipulation of all human beings. Perhaps it is the case that until now, criticism of Israel has been the ultimate taboo because the agenda was to create a certain conditions, geo-politically and socially, that are conducive to ushering in the next phase of the "master plan", and perhaps the next phase of that plan involves the destruction of Israel. In that case, it would suddenly become kosher for people like Carter to being the process of turning American and world opinion against Israel.

The power that the lower level Israel lobby types like AIPAC etc have been allowed to accrue would of course still be a force to be reckoned with, but if at the highest levels the decision had been taken to turn against all things Israeli, then there would probably be little that groups like AIPAC could do. I suppose that the litmus test in all of this would be the angle that the mainstream media takes on the subject.

Having said that, Carter could also just be a man with a conscience and his opinion of little consequence when and if the world really goes kaflooey in the form of an economic crash, natural cataclysms, another "terror attack" or, god forbid an "alien" invasion of something of that nature.

Joe

 

[PatrickSMcNally]

Perhaps it is the case that until now, criticism of Israel has been the ultimate taboo because the agenda was to create a certain conditions, geo-politically and socially, that are conducive to ushering in the next phase of the "master plan", and perhaps the next phase of that plan involves the destruction of Israel.

While I can't pretend to have any behind-the-scenes knowledge, this sounds far-fetched. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Carter is following after events which activists in the street have initiated, rather than that Carter himself is ushering in anything? When the civil rights movement grew to sufficient proportions you suddenly had a splurge of politicians who were concerned about racism, which was hard to believe given their traditional records. Should this be taken to mean that the whole of the Jim Crow Laws and everything else related was just set out as part of a master plan which assumed that eventually there would be a civil rights movement that would them? Isn't that type of "everything pre-planned" just a bit too complicated? At least it is for me.

Now I remember when in the 1990s I was carrying around signs at demonstrations about Israel's seizure of some territories. At that time the reactions which I got made it seem like this was a big thing to be carrying such a sign. It wouldn't be so big anymore, not after Rachel Corrie and others. Carter appears at least to just be following a certain layer of political momentum, rather than really creating such. At least that's my personal impression, which could be wrong, I suppose.

 

[John G]

While I can't pretend to have any behind-the-scenes knowledge, this sounds far-fetched. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Carter is following after events which activists in the street have initiated, rather than that Carter himself is ushering in anything?

SOTT certainly knows possibilities that allow us to look for clues in their early stages but we of course don't know what possible futures we actually are going to live through and when. I think Joe just meant Carter as one possible clue, he mentioned looking at the mainstream media for more definitive clues. The activities of , coverage of, and opinions on activists certainly can be clues too.

 

[Joe]

Perhaps it is the case that until now, criticism of Israel has been the ultimate taboo because the agenda was to create a certain conditions, geo-politically and socially, that are conducive to ushering in the next phase of the "master plan", and perhaps the next phase of that plan involves the destruction of Israel.

While I can't pretend to have any behind-the-scenes knowledge, this sounds far-fetched. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Carter is following after events which activists in the street have initiated, rather than that Carter himself is ushering in anything? When the civil rights movement grew to sufficient proportions you suddenly had a splurge of politicians who were concerned about racism, which was hard to believe given their traditional records. Should this be taken to mean that the whole of the Jim Crow Laws and everything else related was just set out as part of a master plan which assumed that eventually there would be a civil rights movement that would them? Isn't that type of "everything pre-planned" just a bit too complicated? At least it is for me.

Now I remember when in the 1990s I was carrying around signs at demonstrations about Israel's seizure of some territories. At that time the reactions which I got made it seem like this was a big thing to be carrying such a sign. It wouldn't be so big anymore, not after Rachel Corrie and others. Carter appears at least to just be following a certain layer of political momentum, rather than really creating such. At least that's my personal impression, which could be wrong, I suppose.

That's more or less what I was thinking; that Carter's stance on Israel is the result of his awareness of a change in the permitted discourse and perhaps in policy towards Israel, his awareness of this change perhaps due to his position in American political life. I left in the idea that he could possibly be involved in the planning of such a change just for speculation sake, but I tend to favor the idea that he is just taking the opportunity to air his views.

Joe