Posted on 11/16/2009 12:54:51 PM PST by Baladas
CHIANG MAI, Thailand (Nov. 16) -- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Monday that he had no regrets about his handling of the Iran hostage crisis more than 30 years ago, saying he didn't attack the country as his advisers proposed because thousands of people would have died.
Islamic militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and seized its occupants. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days.
Carter acknowledged that his failure to bring the hostages home including a botched rescue mission in which eight U.S. servicemen died led to his election defeat to President Ronald Reagan in 1980. The hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, just minutes after Reagan was sworn in as the new president.
"I don't have any doubt that was the main factor in my defeat," Carter told reporters in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, where he was helping build houses for Habitat for Humanity. "Obviously, if I had rescued the hostages or they had not been taken, I would have been re-elected."
Carter said one proposed option was a military strike on Iran, but he chose to stick with negotiations to prevent bloodshed and bring the hostages home safely.
"My main advisers insisted that I should attack Iran," he said. "I could have destroyed Iran with my weaponry. But I felt in the process it was likely the hostages' lives would be lost, and I didn't want to kill 20,000 Iranians. So I didn't attack."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.aol.com ...
Do you believe this guy?
bttt & ping
He took it more than once too.
This is the guy that gutted the American nuclear industry because once upon a time Hyman Rickover was mean to him.
What a POS.
Has anyone else noticed that when Jimmah goes to other countries to observe their vote that his approval tends to go to the bigger bully? Don’t want post-election violence, do we now? Just wait until after Jimmah gets back home.
Yep, Jimmy doesn’t realize that Reagan defeated him for reasons other than the hostage crisis.
Even though he lost some support in the election due to the hostages, that alone doesn’t explain a 44 state landslide for Reagan.
Thousands of people died in NYC on 9/11.
Carter finally admits he’d rather have Americans die than our enemies.
Of course, Jimmy. The American people would easily have overlooked gas lines and shortages, double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, etc. Besides, your overall premise is patently false. You did not possess the leadership capability to rescue the hostages. It is your micromanagement shortcomings that directly caused the death of eight military servicemen in the desert of Iran. Had you not aborted the mission on eight separate occasions, the mission might have worked.
Please, please, please do America a favor and shut your mouth.
People forget that it was a different world back then, Reagan barely made the hostage crisis an issue at all, out of respect for the sensitivity of the status of the hostages. He certainly ran on rebuilding America's military and diplomatic might, however, implying that such humiliations should never happen in the first place.
Yes, an act of war was committed against the US under your administration, but you couldn't be bothered to defend the nation you were sworn to protect, even as your own hand-picked advisers urged you to do so in the strongest terms. What a despicable Quisling. The only difference between Carter and 0 is that it seems that Jimmuh's advisers at least urged him to take action, whereas 0's advisers, like their chief, appear to take smug satisfaction in America's defeats and humiliations.
Oh Jimmah...Jimmmah, please give it up.
You can no longer resuscitate your legacy.In fact you can now take it easy now...you are no longer considered the 'worst' president!
Now, it's just a smallish spot in history's dustbin. A wee spot over there Jimmah...
I heard from a career officer at the White House (directly from the officer, not a repeat), that just prior to the hostage situation, while they were warning Carter of what was going to happen in Iran if they didn’t support the Sha, Carter got strangely obsessed with radio frequecies of wireless microphones and whether certain frequencies should be released for civilian use.
Carter apparently got quiet excited about the whole wireless microphone thing, because a certified expert in the subject, and apparently made some bright decisions.
Of course, while he was off doing the FCC’s job, Iran fell and the hostages were taken.
He put himself out there as a nuclear Engineer, when his ratings was as something else. Total phoney.
He continues with the "I, I, I, I,I!"
What we have in the White House today, along with his complicit and equally evil Congress and staff, is an abomination, but Carter was the most ignorant ninnyhammer to (dis)grace the executive mansion for four years.
Why doesn't this asshat come back to America, go to Plains and sit on his front porch, drink beer and take a whiz against the side of his ramshackled house?
Oh, that was another Carter. America would have been better off had Billy Carter been elected President both then and certainly now.
But then it's OK to associate with racists as long as you happen to be a Democrat.
There are a few black sheep in my family who live up north who might life him, but the vast majority do NOT.
Out of all the people that I freely associate with, I cannot think of any that like this guy.
The democrats needed a candidate and recognized that this pea-NUT farmer could be elected and used, they thought, to the party’s advantage.
It is absolutely true, to boot.
My informant was a career intelligence officer who happens to be a blood relative.
Heard this at the time and heard it many times afterwards, including from other officers who came and drank at our house and bitched about it.
Carter was completely incapable of priorities.
Did he carry little steel balls in his pocket?
Carter has no regrets?
All Carter had to do was to continue US policy to support the Shah and the US Embassy takeover would never have happened. The Khomeini radical revolution would have been suppressed and he wouldn’t have had to kill “thousands of people” anyway because of the hostage crisis that he himself enabled would never have occurred.
Carter’s stupidity matches Zero’s arrogance.
It’s all ball bearings these days.
Who is “he” my informant? No, and I would know.
Carter? No idea.
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