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 ...
And that was when he was IN the White House.
In other words, he saved or created 20,000 lives.
Bu!!shirt!
It was just a small portion of his failures as POTUS.
notice how he says he could have destroyed Iran with HIS weaponry. What an egotistical lout. It’s not his weaponry. the same ego Obama has.
"Obviously, if I had rescued the hostages or they had not been taken, I would have been re-elected."
That's a bold-faced lie. He mishandled the economy big time and people looked at him as an idealist fool yapping about human rights all the time.
Maybe if Ford and Carter hadn't signed EO's taking assassination of foreign heads of state off the ALLOWED acts list we would not have seen a sudden huge increase in state sponsored terrorism that followed immediately afterward. Carter was pathetic as POTUS but Ford was his political twin brother.
I am taking a history class from Stephan Bacon, he was THERE at Desert 1. I take offense at Carters remarks for his sake, and the sake of all the heroes that were there, and those who lost their lives.
Carter was a micro managing incompetent jerk. He still is.
Exactly. This must be the rationalization he uses to avoid having to deal with some hard facts about the failure of his philosophy and his presidency. He failed because he was arrogant, and he continues to climb on the world stage because he is somewhat narcissistic.
Sadly, Obama is making Carter look good, politically speaking.
OK! What I get from the article is that ole Jimmuh is still a complete idiot! Some things never change.
Yeah, sure, Jimmuh. The more you try to save your legacy, the more pathetic you sound. You weren't re-elected mainly because of massive inflation and because of a certain unstoppable political tidal wave called Reagan Country.
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Right, you horse's ass... and if you hadn't been elected, the Shah wouldn't have been overthrown by islamofascists, and we'd still have Panama. |
Lester was ten times the man Carter was and in the end
he found his heart in the right place. The same can’t
be said for Carter.
I knew Maddox personally, and he was an old school seg in politics but he was a good, honest man. If that seems contradictory, welcome to the South. You had plenty of good men in that generation who talked the segregationist line, but would have given their shirt to anybody in trouble -- white OR black.
He was the first governor to appoint a black man to statewide office (he said even though he believed in segregation that the government was supposed to be by and for ALL the people), his office door was open to all (you could just give your name to his secretary and walk on in), and he left office poorer than he came in.
The news media just repeat "Lester Maddox was an evil racist" ad nauseam, and far too many people have bought into it.
I'd have trusted him in a minute rather than a snake like Carter who talks a sanctimonious line of bilge but was (and is) a closet racist. He stabbed plenty of folks in the back in his day.
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