[Andyman]

As much as I dislike Carter as a Pesident and an ex-President, I simply cannot see him doing this.

[pepsionice]

I don't necessarily believe that Carter himself allowed it...but he was one of the worst presidents in 100 years when it came executive management and capable people under him. There were dozens of Carter appointees who were simply out of their league and allowed various special companies and special interest groups to walk all over the US government. This was Bill Clinton's problem too. There is something to be said about men who have managed large companies and realize that the people you bring in...often have agendas in mind. And you have to set these people in the right frame of mind on day one....and if they can't perform right....you have to be able to terminate them. Carter could not accomplish that...and simply ran a very-poor government.

[Ditto]

I can buy some of his Georgia buddies trying to strong-arm the Shaw. Old Mr. Peanut played some rough politics and contrary to popular wisdom, he was never a "nice person." He was always and remains, and egocentric prick.

But I lost it with the embassy takeover. There was absolutely no upside for him that I can imagine to support that. As to allowing the Shaw to fall, I agree he allowed it to happen and probably was glad. Not out of any geopolitical interests, but he simply hated the Shaw because of his own moral smugness which prevented him from seeing the greater national interest in supporting the Shaw.

Jimmy Carter is above all, a self-rightous jerk.

[Southack]

Jimmy Carter Unmasked--Finally! - From KGB Ties To His Rigged Nobel Peace Prize

Book: Carter, Democrats Asked Soviets to Stop Reagan, Sway U.S. Elections.

 

http://www.americanpresident.org/history/jimmycarter/

 

James Earl Carter Jr. (1977-1981)
39th President of the United States Vice President: Walter Mondale (1977-1981) Born: October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia Nickname: "Jimmy" Education: Georgia Southwestern College, 1941-1942; Georgia Institute of Technology, 1942-1943; United States Naval Academy, 1943-1946 (class of 1947); Union College, 1952-1953 Religion: Baptist Marriage: Eleanor Rosalynn Smith (b. August 18, 1927), July 7, 1946 Children: John William (Jack) (1947-); James Earl III (Chip) (1950-); Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff) (1952-); and Amy Lynn (1967-) Career: Soldier; Farmer, Warehouseman, Public Official, Professor Writings: Why Not the Best? (1975); A Government as Good as Its People (1977); The Wit and Wisdom of Jimmy Carter (1977); Keeping Faith (1982); Everything to Gain (1987); An Outdoor Journal (1988); Turning Point (1992); The Blood of Abraham (1993); Always a Reckoning (1995); Living Faith (1996); The Virtues of Aging (1998); An Hour Before Daylight (2001).

	Contributing Editor: Robert A. Strong, Washington and Lee University

Biography: A Life in Brief

James Earl ("Jimmy") Carter’s one-term presidency is remembered for the events that overwhelmed it—inflation, energy crisis, war in Afghanistan, and hostages in Iran. After one term in office, voters strongly rejected Jimmy Carter’s honest but gloomy outlook in favor of Ronald Reagan’s telegenic optimism. {The “morning in America” theme is from the 1984 presidential campaign, not from 1980.  Does it belong here?}  In the past two decades, however, there has been wider recognition that Carter, despite a lack of experience, confronted several huge problems with steadiness, courage, and idealism. Along with his predecessor Gerald Ford, Carter must be given credit for restoring the balance to the constitutional system after the excesses of the Johnson and Nixon "imperial presidency."

Carter was the first American president born in a hospital, and was raised on his family’s farm outside the small town of Plains, Georgia, where the family home lacked electricity and indoor plumbing. Jimmy was named after his father, a businessman who kept a farm and store in Plains. Carter’s mother, "Miz" Lillian, a nurse by training, set a moral example for her son by crossing the strict lines of segregation in 1920s Georgia to counsel poor African American women on matters of health care.

Jimmy graduated valedictorian of the class at Plains High School. Captivated by the stories of exotic lands that his uncle visited in the U.S. Navy, Carter enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy. He graduated in 1946 in the top tenth of his class, and signed on as an officer under the tough but inspirational Captain Hyman Rickover in the Navy’s first experimental nuclear submarine. (Rickover was later to become an admiral, and build America’s nuclear submarine force.)

Sowing Seeds of Change

In 1953, Carter and his new wife Rosalynn faced a difficult decision. His father, Earl, had died of cancer, and the family peanut farm and his mother’s livelihood were in danger. Resigning from the Navy, Carter and his wife returned to Georgia to save the farm. After a difficult first few years, the farm began to prosper. He became a deacon and Sunday school teacher in the Plains Baptist Church and began serving on local civic boards before being elected to two terms in the Georgia state senate. There he earned a reputation as a tough, independent operator who attacked wasteful government practices and helped repeal laws designed to discourage African Americans from voting.

Though he had always stood up for civil rights and inclusion, and was able to win reelection to the state senate against a segregationist opponent, Carter was stung by a humiliating defeat in a run for governor of Georgia in 1966. He attributed this loss to a lack of support from segregationist whites, who had turned out in large numbers to vote for his opponent, a nationally known segregationist named Lester Maddox. In a bid to win their vote in the 1970 governor’s race, Carter minimized appearances before African American groups, and even sought the endorsements of avowed segregationists, a move that some critics call deeply hypocritical. Yet after he became governor of Georgia in 1971, he surprised many Georgians by declaring that the era of segregation was over!

Presidential Politics: Scandal, Conflict and Crisis

As Carter watched the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972, he knew he would have to market himself as a different type of Democrat to have a shot at the White House in 1976. He was completely unknown on the national stage. In the aftermath of Nixon’s Watergate scandal, however, this became an advantage. It also helped Carter that the disgraced Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew were replaced on the republican ticket by Gerald Ford, a political insider with no charisma and an uncanny knack for falling down stairs on camera. Despite an ill-advised interview in Playboy magazine, which plummeted his rating in the polls, Carter squeaked out a narrow victory.

Carter’s newcomer status soon showed itself in his inability to make deals with Congress. Sensing his shallow public support, Congress shot down key portions of his consumer protection bill. Carter was determined to free the nation from dependency on foreign oil by encouraging alternate energy sources and deregulating domestic oil pricing. But the creation of a pricing cartel by OPEC, the oil producing countries organization, sent oil prices soaring, caused rampant inflation, and a serious recession. Carter was also deeply troubled by public scandals involving his family, including a mysterious $250,000 payment by the government of Libya to Carter’s brother Billy.

Foreign affairs during the Carter administration were equally troublesome. Critics thrashed both Carter’s plans to relinquish control of the Panama Canal and his response to Soviet aggression in Afghanistan by pulling out of the Olympics and ending the sale of wheat to the Russians. His recognition of communist China, which expanded on Nixon’s China policy, and his negotiation of new arms control agreements with the Soviets, were both criticized by conservatives in the Republican Party. But the most serious crisis of Carter’s presidency involved Iran. When the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power there, the U.S. offered sanctuary to the ailing Shah, angering the new Iranian government, which then encouraged student militants to storm the American embassy and take over fifty Americans hostage. Carter’s ineffectual handling of the much-televised hostage crisis, and the disastrous failed attempt to rescue them in 1980, doomed his presidency, even though he negotiated their release shortly before leaving office.

Carter is positively remembered, however, for the historic 1978 Camp David Accords, where he mediated a historic peace agreement between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat. This vital summit revived a long-dormant practice of presidential peacemaking, something every succeeding chief executive has emulated to varying degrees. Nevertheless, because of perceived weaknesses as a domestic and foreign policy leader, and because of the poor performance of the economy, Carter was easily defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Since leaving office, Carter has remained active, serving as a freelance ambassador for a variety of international missions and advising presidents on Middle East and human rights issues.

[dalebert]

I can see Carter doing this.

[Calvin Locke]

I simply cannot see him doing this.

He had some pretty sleazy people in his Administration as I recall. Maybe one or more misrepresented the "demand" as coming from Carter.

OTOH, Carter was and continues to be completely oblivious to the results of his proven incompetence.

Maybe he thought he was doing it for the "good of the people".

In any case, he did go to the Soviet Union in hopes of getting help to defeat Reagan.

[happygrl]

The vigilante then asked why the Islamic Government would bother to be so accommodating to the Great Satan and was told that the whole operation was planned in advance by Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan’s revolutionary Government with Pres. Carter in return for Carter having helped depose the Shah and that this was being done to ensure Carter got re-elected. “He helped us, now we help him” was the matter-of-fact comment from the cleric.

I find this to be unbelievable. The students in the street in Iran didn't differentiate between Carter and Reagan, they thought all of America was The Great Satan and wanted revenge for the CIA's assistance in overthrowing Mossadeh back in the 1950s.

There was speculation in some Iranian quarters — as well as in some US minds — at the time and later that Carter’s actions were the result of either close ties to, or empathy for, the Soviet Union, which was anxious to break out of the longstanding US-led strategic containment of the USSR, which had prevented the Soviets from reaching the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

Carter’s mistaken assessment of Khomeini was encouraged by advisors with a desire to form an Islamic “green belt” to contain atheist Soviet expansion with the religious fervor of Islam. Eventually all 30 of the scenarios on Iran presented to Carter by his intelligence agencies proved wrong, and totally misjudged Khomeini as a person and as a political entity.

So which is it ?

Carter in sympathy with the USSR, of Carter wanting an "Islamic Belt" to encircle the atheistic Communists ?

This is the message that the "leakers" of this strange attempt at putting a spin on those events of 1979 are really about:

In 1978 while the West was deciding to remove His Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi from the throne, Shariatmadari was telling anyone who would listen not to allow “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini and his velayat faghih (Islamic jurist) version of Islam to be allowed to govern Iran. Ayatollah Shariatmadari noted: “We mullahs will behave like bickering whores in a brothel if we come to power ... and we have no experience on how to run a modern nation so we will destroy Iran and lose all that has been achieved at such great cost and effort.”

Today, Iranian-born, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the dominant Shia leader in Iraq faces Shariatmadari’s dilemma and shares the same “quietist” Islamic philosophy of sharia (religious law) guidance rather than direct governing by the clerics themselves. Sistani’s “Khomeini” equivalent, militant Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was gunned down in 1999 by then-Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein’s forces. Sadr’s son, 30-year-old Muqtada al-Sadr, lacks enough followers or religious seniority/clout to immediately oppose Sistani but has a hard core of violent followers biding their time.

This is coming from Sistani's camp. It's their attempt at lobbying.

I agree with Andy, I thought Carter was a terrible president, but one thing that I am sure of, is that he was not motivated by money, nor were his backers. They were silly people, but they weren't mendacious.

[Arthur McGowan]

Under Carter, judicial nominees were asked point-blank: How will you rule on abortion? What do you think of Roe v. Wade? Carter was the first really aggressive baby-killer in the White House. He appointed Sarah Weddington of Roe fame to the Office of Public Liaison. Anne O'Donnell, president of Right-to-Life of Missouri during the Carter years, told me years ago that she wrote a letter to Weddington each and every month of the Carter presidency, asking for a meeting of pro-life leaders with Carter. Weddington never answered a single letter.

I have no trouble believing that a pharisaical, pseudo-Christian, crypto-Communist Tartuffe like Carter would be above pushing a little kickback scheme for his Georgia friends.

Carter is a moral abortion of a human being.