http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010724/us/carter_bush.html

Tuesday July 24 3:32 PM ET

Carter Criticizes Bush's Term

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) - In a rare instance of one former president criticizing a current one, Jimmy Carter is taking issue with just about everything George W. Bush has done in office.

Carter criticizes Bush for not pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip (news - web sites), for threatening to abandon the anti-ballistic missile treaty and for not supporting human rights more strongly.

He says Bush has ignored moderates in both parties and calls Bush's proposed missile defense shield a ``technologically ridiculous'' idea that will ``re-escalate the nuclear arms race.''

``I have been disappointed in almost everything he has done,'' Carter told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in an interview last week from his home in Plains.

Carter also was critical of President Clinton (news - web sites) during the fellow Democrat's administration, calling the Monica Lewinsky scandal an embarrassment and disparaging Clinton's policy in North Korea (news - web sites) and Haiti.

Carter is ``a guy with strong views, and I think that's always been the case,'' said presidential scholar Charles Jones of the University of Wisconsin. ``What surprises me is a kind of a sweeping critical analysis, at what has to be said is an early stage.''

Carter noted that he had volunteered to be one of the few Democrats at Bush's inauguration because he was optimistic about the administration.

``I hoped that coming out of an uncertain election he would reach out to people of diverse views, not just Democrats and Republicans but others who had different points of view,'' Carter said. ``I thought he would be a moderate leader, but he has been very strictly conforming to some of the more conservative members of his administration, his vice president and his secretary of defense in particular. More moderate people like Colin Powell (news - web sites) have been frozen out of the basic decision-making in dealing with international affairs.''

He was also critical of Bush for not calling for the removal of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

``George Sr. took a strong position on that issue, and so did I,'' said Carter, whose offer to mediate the conflict was declined by both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

-- (Carter@vs.Bush), July 25, 2001

Answers

Is Amy still workin that bookstore w/ her boyfriend? Always liked Amy especially when she was getting arrested for our good.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), July 26, 2001.

LOL Carlos! You repugs always change the subject to someone else. It's only a matter of time before "libs are idiots" crawls out of the woodwork and spews something about Clinton!

-- (repugs@predictably.hypocritical), July 26, 2001.

New York Post editorial

THE SAGE OF PLAINS

July 26, 2001 -- Somebody put a microphone in front of ex-President Jimmy Carter the other day, and the former peanut farmer found fault with President Bush.

After just six months, "I have been disappointed in almost everything he has done," says Carter.

He complained - among other things - about the administration's Middle East policy, negotiations with the Russians, not paying enough attention to human rights and for "strictly conforming" to the views of conservative Republicans.

First of all, Carter shouldn't be talking. Period. Former presidents don't publicly criticize the current occupant of the White House.

Protocol aside, Jimmy Carter is attacking George W. Bush on foreign policy?

It is to laugh!

This is the president who admitted "surprise" at the Soviet Union's aggression into Afghanistan - which even Ted Kennedy mocked.

Meanwhile, Bush has met with Vladimir Putin twice and managed to bring the Russian leader a fair way toward the U.S. position on missile defense.

Carter says that Bush isn't being tough enough on Israeli settlements.

Then he said that " . . . Africa is much more serious than the conflicts in the Middle East."

Not to take lightly the continuing tragedy that is sub-Saharan Africa, but if Carter actually means that, he's simply lost his mind.

America has vital strategic interests in the Mideast. Not so in Africa.

Regarding U.S. foreign policy, hardly anything is "more serious" than Mideast stability.

Carter, of course, was the first U.S. president to be euchered by Yasser Arafat - and the world is living with the consequences of that momentous miscalculation to this day.

It's sad to see the former president being (pardon us) held hostage to the memory of his own policy failures.

Indeed, he didn't have much to say on the economy. Perhaps it's because that would remind everyone that Bush passed the biggest tax cut in 20 years. (The previous cut - Ronald Reagan's - was of course necessary to get America out of the high-inflation/high-interest "malaise" that marked his tenure.)

For sure, Carter is entitled to his views.

But he should keep them to himself.

-- Wubya (Dubya@yougo.guy!), July 26, 2001.