Posted on 04/25/2010 6:22:04 PM PDT by patriotgal1787
Thirty years ago this week, James Earl Carter went before the nation to give a speech that would mark the beginning of the end of his presidency. The night before his speech, Carter gave the "green light" to the Iranian hostage rescue mission--Eagle Claw--that ended in disaster at Desert One.
Eight U.S. servicemen died at the site and had to be left behind. At the time, it was by far the worst humiliation the U.S. had ever suffered, and it cost Carter his reelection bid later that year. Ronald Reagan won in a landslide.
An investigation into Operation Eagle Claw cited lack of command and control and inter-service coordination as major reasons for the mission's failure. As a result, SOCOM was established and headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
As a president, Carter was weak; as a former president, he's a disgrace.
The Desert One Debacle: A complete history from inception to disaster.
(Excerpt) Read more at thirdwavedave.blogspot.com ...
April 25th 2011....
This wasn’t the only thing that made Carter a one term president. His total lack of competence in dealing with the economy didn’t help him any. Either way, in the end, we got Reagan. Some stories do have happy endings.
Well, the hostages were the fault of Carter. Desert One, sealed his fate, but in truth, it wasn’t his fault. The US military, which couldn’t pull off Mayaguez for President Ford, wasn’t up to the mission.
Navy Helicopters did not have filters, to keep the sand out of the air intakes, for desert use.
That was the day I turned on Carter and realized he could not do anything right. * yes I was a lib back then.
Disagree. Carter was going to be a one-term President from the very first “Sweater” fireside chat.
The initial feeling of the public when the Desert One was blown, was that Carter was at least TRYING to something, besides talking to whackjob muslims, to get our people BACK.
The one who SCREWED himself OUT of the Presidency was Teddy “The Swimmer” Kennedy when he went out and immediately denounced Carter to the press.
A lot of that was post-Vietnam malaise, but Carter further encouraged the decline of our armed forces. He was as bad at driving down morale as were Johnson and Nixon.
The brass deserves some flack for the debacle. Every service wanted a piece of the pie. What should have been an Army and Air Force mission from start to finish had portions carved out for the Navy and Marines, and the result was bad.
As bad as Carter was (and the American people knew it), he was in the race with Reagan until the end. With 10 days to go 'til the election, the race was essentially dead even and Carter was on the rise. The reason?...Ronald Reagan had not closed the deal with the voters.
Then came the debate and the rest is history.
The democrats, including Carter, had weakened the military to the point that they couldn't do the job. The big problem with that mission were breakdowns of the equipment, mainly due to lack of funds to keep them repaired. RR spent a large part of his presidency building up the military again. Since then the Clintons and Bushes have torn it down again and Bozo is trying to finish the job.
Wouldn’t of mattered. The forces couldn’t, and didn’t execute. Poor plan, bad inter service tension, mediocre pilots, divided operational and tactical command.... Basically a cluster in search of hope. All with in the military, with Generals and Colonels piled ten feet high.
Wrong. The helicopters landed because the pilots didn’t know that the blade failure sensor, even if giving true readings, didn’t mean the that there weren’t ( I forget ) ten or more operational hours on them. They put the choppers right down as if they were civilians. In short, money or no money, they didn’t know their equipment.
The MILITARY failure of Desert One was the birth of the Special Operations command. It was, after the President gave the go ahead, a military failure. And, they, this operation had all the money, equipment and pull that could be had.
Was that, “Well....there you go again!” ?
Divided command. Epic fail 101.
Son Tay Prison raid. Fail
Mayaguez. Fail
Desert One. Fail.
( See any patterns? )
Ted flopped every time he came to Iowa during his “exploration” for the presidency against a sitting Democrat president.
On one occasion in SW Iowa, Kennedy was visiting a grain elevator and a group of farmers had been invited to hear him speak. Ted looked down the railroad tracks leading into the elevator and barked, “How’s the service out here on the Wabash ?” (As if to suggest that if he heard complaints about those railroad robber barons, by golly, he’d hold hearings and demand action...)
This had a rather stunning effect on the farmers and press corps because it had been nearly 100 years since the mighty Wabash railroad had served Iowa.
It later turned out that a campaign worker had looked up “Iowa” at his local library while planning for Ted’s trip and had fed the senator with some very old data.
I disliked Carter and was a Republican then as now. I voted for Reagan but it scared me because I had heard “he is an actor” so much I doubted he would know what to do. I thank God I over came my fears and voted for him. I didn’t stay at home and give up my chance to vote for a great man.
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