President Carter's Comments

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DW,
no we are not 'down to Bush implied'. You just refuse to grasp how propaganda is done, before your unwondering eyes.

You're kidding yourself.

Think about Bush and Cheney working in concert, to a steady drumbeat to generate the message. Re-read Drew's quote list. It is instructive.

A ordered B to say something crass, and himself said something milder -- but that doesn't mean A is not responsible for what B did, and tailored his statements to generate a desired message in concert with what he ordered B to say -- no matter that you cannot imagine him possibly having ordered that, or that you never heared him speak out that order.

You overlook that Cheney works for Bush. By leaving the crazy stuff to Cheney, Bush has deniability. As your post demonstrates, it works.

Your unwillingness to take into account that Bush did play you for a sucker on Iraq is directly equivalent to your refusal to take into account the possibility that Clinton, Gore or Carter could have possibly done something right. Man, you're a tribalist, if I ever met one. Geez.

[ May 29, 2007, 18:47: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Whether or not Bush implied, stated, encouraged propaganda connecting Iraq and Al Queada does not matter to me.

Originally his reason for invading Iraq was that they were producing WMD. I question the legality of his declaring war on Iraq and setting aside the UN.

I'm just disgusted by the whole thing.

 

Perhaps we should open yet another thread on Bush and the Iraqi war to sufficiently beat the subject to an unrecognizable pulp on the boards.

IIRC, the media started the Iraq/Al Queada correlation -- and the Bush administration fueled the fire. I would say that was a low point in the administration (and please let's not list them all in this thread) and was an example of questionable integrity.

Although I voted for Bush (I've said before I can't stand Kerry) I agree wholeheartedly with Nakia's comments.

Although I'm not sure how this relates to Carter's comments....

 

The lack of legal basis for the war was for me too the key reason to oppose the war. War of agression is a crime no matter if Saddam or Bush orders it. The travesty the US pulled off at the UN was just sickening.

The Bush administrations onslaught on international law is just unprecedented. I feel that Americans are still insufficiently aware how high the price of being hated as a result of Bush's reckless and needlessly antagonistic policies is. The American public, as far as I can judge from here, seems to limit their perception of America to their cozy neighbourhoods full of nice people that cannot possibly deserve to be hated. Right, but myopic. There are people doing things in their name that seriously piss people off.

In The Federalist No. 63, Alexander Hamilton put it this way:

Sound advice. Had his advice on foreign policy been heeded the US wouldn't be in the mess they're in today.

I vividly remember the '**** the rest of the world, we're right and you're not! Get in line or we'll punsih you!' mindset during the period of unmitigated war frenzy during 2002 and 2003. We had that right here on SP. Had they only listened to the advice of the sainted Founding Fathers....

T2,
the media started it? As in: "We give Judith Miller (as an example) personal briefings on putative threats or intelligence about which she then dutifully writes articles so that we then can refer to the issue as -- 'Everbody knows it, it's even in the liberal New York Times!"
As for: Although I'm not sure how this relates to Carter's comments.... It is

 

Jimmy Carter had every right to make the comments he made, and I doubt if he made such a statement frivolously, or without considerable prior thought. After all, saying publicly that the sitting President is the worst President in our history is not something to be thown lightly into the arena of public discussion when you're a former President yourself. Carter knows American history and I'm sure he's aware that it's almost unheard of, in the last half century or more, for a former President to make such a statement. You have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt on William Howard Taft in 1911-1912 to find anything similar, which doesn't mean later Presidents haven't deserved such comments; they just haven't gotten them.

Typically, Carter then backtracked and waffled, characteristics that made his own administration such a mess. (I remember a wonderful editorial cartoon by Herblock from that time: An outraged Jimmy Carter, standing in front of the Executive Desk, pounding it furiously, shouting, "Who's in charge here?")

The most amusing thing about this post is watching some of the resident neo-cons argue that Bush is NOT worse than Harding/Grant/Buchanan/Nixon... Whatever happened to "Mission Accomplished"? Rest assured that history will place your favorite President in a very select company.

Someone suggested that Carter's comment should be disregarded because he too was a "religious" President. Well, there's religion; and then there's politics. I believe Carter to be a genuinely religious man; and I believe the tub-thumping fundamentalist evangelicals to be essentially political men, relentlessly pushing an agenda that has no Scriptural basis whatsoever in the Four Gospels. And please don't give me any Old Testament quotes and claim that they are "Christian". As H.L. Mencken noted more than eighty years ago, the basis of Jesus's message is Love, but the basis of Evangelical Fundamentalism's message is Hate.

A final comment on political commentary by ex-Presidents. After his term as President, John Quincy Adams served for a number of years as a member of the House of Representatives, where he made many trenchant and unpopular comments which later turned out to be true.

[ May 30, 2007, 08:01: Message edited by: Cernak ]