Bush exploits suffering of 9/11, says Carter (Carter/Gaurdian Double Puke)

George Bush has exploited the suffering of September 11 and turned back decades of efforts to make the world a safer place, the former president Jimmy Carter says in an interview with the Guardian published today.

Attacking Mr Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq, Mr Carter calls the war "a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements".

He also criticises Mr Bush for "lack of effort" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and accuses him of abandoning nuclear non-proliferation initiatives championed by five presidents.

The US "suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander-in-chief, fighting a global threat against America," Mr Carter says.

"He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know."

Mr Carter, 80, was president from 1977-1981, but did not win re-election amid the US hostage crisis in Iran. By comparison, support for Mr Bush's Iraq invasion is widespread, something Mr Carter attributes to a transformation in America's national mood.

"When your troops go to war, the prime minister or the president change overnight from an administrator, dealing with taxation and welfare and health and deteriorating roads, into the commander-in-chief," he says. "And it's just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush's fallacious and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions."

Mr Bush and Mr Blair are blamed for helping to fuel the depth of anti-American feeling in the Islamic world. Denying any link between his handling of the Iranian crisis and the present threat, Mr Carter says: "The entire Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, [there is] massive Islamic condemnation of the United States."

American media organisations, he adds, "have been cowed, because they didn't want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it's hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved".

On nuclear proliferation, the issue that the Democratic contender John Kerry has identified as the single most serious threat to national security, Mr Carter attacks Mr Bush for abandoning "all of those long, tedious negotiations" carried out by presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan and himself.

In recent weeks he has also warned of the possibility of a new election fiasco in Florida.

The two presidential candidates spent the weekend focusing their resources and words even more tightly on the small number of swing states considered crucial to the election on November 2.

Mr Bush told supporters in Florida that "despite ongoing violence, Iraq has an interim government. It's building up its own security forces. We're headed toward elections in January. You see, we're safer, America is safer with Afghanistan and Iraq on the road to democracy. We can be proud that 50 million citizens of those countries now live as free men and women".

Mr Carter's interview marks the UK publication of his book The Hornet's Nest, a story of the American revolutionary war and the first novel to be published by a former president. Ironically, he notes, those fighting for US independence could never have triumphed were it not for an alliance with the French.

The gibbering old goober is actually correct on this one. What he doesn't mention of course is his role in causing America's national mood to change. After all, it was his stabbing of the Shah of Iran in the back and throwing him to the Islamofascists that caused them to take the US Embassy staff hostage. And then it was his utter paralysis (save for one horribly botched rescue mission that had no chance of succeeding) while the fascists paraded the hostages before the world every night that caused them to believe that America was weak and that terrorism was an effective way to get what they want.

So yeah, Jimmah, our mood did change, since the policies you followed during your Presidency, the absolute worst Presidency in American history, directly led to 3,000 of our fellow countrymen being incinerated in attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon on 9/11/01 by the very Islamofascists that you and your protege , who spent 8 years worrying more about where his next blow job was going to come from than he did worrying about when and where the next attack on the US was going to happen, encouraged.

AP Version, shortly in all local papers.....

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Today: October 25, 2004 at 8:18:41 PDT

Carter Tells Paper Bush Exploited 9/11

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON (AP) - President Bush has exploited the Sept. 11 attacks, and a timorous American press has not held him to account, former President Jimmy Carter said in an interview published Monday.

Carter was asked by the Guardian newspaper why he failed to win re-election in 1980 against Ronald Reagan after Iranian radicals held U.S. citizens hostage for 444 days, while Bush may win re-election despite misgivings over the Iraq war.

"The basic reason is that our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander in chief, fighting a global threat against America," Carter said.

"He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know."

Carter said Bush has the advantage of being commander in chief in a time of war.

"And it's just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush's fallacious and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions," Carter said.

"The press have been cowed, because they didn't want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it's hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved."

Carter criticized Bush for abandoning arms control efforts pursued by previous U.S. administrations.

"All of those long, tedious negotiations that were done by Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Nixon and me and Reagan, to control the spread of nuclear weapons have been abandoned by Bush," Carter said.

Carter was defeated in a landslide in 1980 by Reagan, and the feeling of national humiliation over the Iranian hostage drama undoubtedly played a part. The Iranian hostage-takers waited until the day of Reagan's inauguration to release their captives.

Carter asserted that the hostage crisis was less damaging to U.S. interests than the recent war in Iraq.

"The entire Islamic world condemned Iran," Carter said, while today he said there was massive Islamic condemnation of the United States "because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq ... which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue."

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