Bob,

Have you got any backup for these charges? The first 2 sound like a baseless character assasination.

The last if accurate sounds like you had to look hard to find a failure for Carter as a governor.

Whatever Carter's failings (many), to assign him sole blame for the events in Iran is simplistic to the point of inaccuracy. Iranians remembered that the US was deeply involved in the 1953 coup that overthrew Premier Mohammad Mossadeq and put the Shah in place. Which is to say that Carter inherited a complex and volatile situation in which the US was already deeply unpopular in some quarters of Iranian society.

Well isn't dat convenient mon. Ya was in da military intellingence when da Nixon was in de White House an' ya was in Georgia when da Carter was de guberner. I tink dat was at de same time mon. How can ya be so far up de ladder on de military as if ya was in dat pentagon ting and be in da Georgia? M'be ya is a liar or m'be ya is crazy wit de spirits from de bottle mon. Dey'll let jus' 'bout anybody write on dis here ting an' not check de person out, mon.

Jah Rastafari!!!!!

Thanks for the insight, Mr. Ingram. I've heard the same from other vets and some Secret Service guys who were active duty at the time. Carter was a micromanager who screwed up about anything he put his hands on.
Please ignore the buffoons on here who can't handle the truth about their liberal heroes. They drop in every day to spread their lies and try to rewrite history.

Paulie
You know you are right. Carter inherited a country full of people just loving us for puttin the shah in power with his torturing ways. They woke up every morning just thinking how they could repay us for this gift and it is only Carters micrmanagement that brought on the revolution. All presidents before him are innocent here.

And I still miss something here about weakening the military. Nixon was at the height of a war;why would he reduce the military and who would have expected him to. Cater inherited a nation going through major vietnam withdrawls any president including a republican would have had a hard time keeping the military up. The people were not interested in it at the time. I mean that is like blaming Truman for reducing and weakening the military post WWII. OOPs forgot I have read somewhere where he got the blame for this. Another wacky liberal president.

So Paulie before you rewrite the history lets not forget the times the men lead in.

Hey mon,you didn't have to be high up in the Nixon administration or live in Ga.under the Carter administration to see what a disaster Carter was for this country. All you had to have is 2 eyes and ears. No,Carter was not solely responsible for the debacle in Iran,but going back to 1953 and trying to dredge up excuses for Carter is a bit too much to swallow. He did inherit a volatile situation. But it is how he responded to that situation that is in question.To send a couple of helicopters into a desert at night where dust storms are the norm shows a lack of good judgment.
Although radical islamic fanatics existed long before Carter,it was under his administration that they began to flourish to the point of violence.(Iknow there will be a few who will cite other dates here as proof that it was not Carter's fault) But it was Carter who showed weakness in the face of adversity by backing down and bowing to the feet of these fanatics after the failed rescue attempt.
Carter DID cut the military budget,not Nixon or Ford like the revisionists like to claim.
Cartes did lack something to bring the hostage crisis to a quick and decisive halt,but it was not military might.

Mr. Hayes, I was not addressing the underlying history of the debacle that happened under the Carter administration, I was just commenting on Carter's handling of same.
Mr. Ingram was spot on with his observations.

He forgot to blame Clinton for our current state of affairs. lol.
Normally what a neo-con would do.

Wow! I'm really impressed with someone who has to go back almost thirty years and dredge up an issue. Hindsight is twenty/twenty so I'm not so impressed with this writer's observations because they have been made over and over again. It's something we all knew twenty years ago. It's beating a dead horse. For twenty-five years Carter has not been in office. Why are you so concerned over what he did back then now? I think you're lacking something in life and need this to make you feel like a somebody. Get out of the past, start moving into the present and be more concerned about the future. Carter holds no power and has no hold over anyone's life at this point in time.

Is it just me or is one group so consumed by hatred that they are reaching back a quarter of a century to assasinate the character of whatever Democrat they can. How 'bout let's get back into the failings of Grover Cleveland while we're at it. Only Democratic President between the Civil war and Woodrow Wilson. Gotta be some red meat there for you guys.

I don't mind these trips through memory land but when you superimpose these modern hate-radio talking points on top of it, it gets pretty tedious and boring and really kind of pitiful when you realize the state of political discourse in this country.

I was not trying to "dredge up excuses for Carter," I merely pointed out that along with Carter's many failings he inherited a complex situation in Iran. Does anyone really believe that the coup that the American-engineered coup that put the Shah in power and the resulting Iranian attitudes toward the US are not relevant to a discussion of his overthrow and its aftermath?

Not everyone looks at every situation through the same old left-right prism, and to reduce every discussion to that perspective is to invite simplistic and inaccurate analysis of complex events.

Joe, going back almost 30 years to dredge up an issue? How long did Nixon live in the halls of newspaper eds.? He is still being ridiculed by lefties.
As for Carter holding no power today,he is in the news quiet often disputing every move and decision made by Bush. He is calling for the end or the "torture" in Gitmo. Altough I personally think he is a disgrace to the country,he does draw an audience whereever he goes,and to villify the US where ever he is,especially on foreign soil,is a disgrace to this country.

YD said,

'He is calling for the end or the "torture" in Gitmo.'

Boy, isn't that awful? Would you applaud him if he were calling for the intensification of "torture" in Gitmo? If he did he'd probably be up for Sandy O'Conners job.

Listen, the man is respected in this country & worldwide for the many humanitarian services that he has performed. He won a nobel for them. I wish that we had a thousand Jimmy Carters. The fact that hate-radio has teed off on him changes none of these things. Gitmo is a disgrace to this country. His pointing it out and your anger at him pointing it out says alot about two sets of values.

Yes, Marshall, they have confirmed 10 cases of out-of-regulation incidents at Gitmo out of 28,000 interviews at Gitmo. That's a whopping 3/10,000 of one percent. Three ten-thousandths. .0003.
There has been no "torture" documented at Gitmo as defined by law. Unless you consider having Christina Aguillera songs played into your cell while you eat 3 great meals a day, read your glove-handled Koran, and sleep in a decent bed under a decent roof.
Carter is an idiot. Any respect in this country is NOT for his performance as a leader. He was a dismal president.

Paulie,

Confirmed by whom?

I will agree with you that Carter has much more respect in other countries now than he ever did when he was president. He is free to say what he REALLY thinks now insted of having to listen to all those PR people in DC. As for the Gitmo comment. He accuses OUR military of torture,never a word about the beheading of american citizens at the hands of the scumbags being detained there.
And what is "hate radio"? Do you mean Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken? How about hate internet? Move on .org. Slate.com. These venues are full of hate. But that is a GOOD hate,right? No,I don't listen to "hate"radio. Can't hear a radio where I work. I wish I could.
Carter was the typical liberal president. Try to conduct a military operation without HURTING anybody. This kind of leadership is what led to the fanatic iranians carring the heads of the downed pilots through the streets and chanting "death to america".

Marshall said: "Listen, the man is respected in this country & worldwide for the many humanitarian services that he has performed. He won a nobel for them."

Respected by whom? Maybe Kim Jong-il. Wasn't it Carter who arranged that wonderful deal with North Korea that the U.S. would stop complaining about Korea's nuclear weapons program as long as the U.S. gave aid to North Korea and helped the communists build more modern nuclear reactors?

Oh and by the way Yasser Arafat was won a nobel peace prize, doesn't say much for the peace prize does it? Unless of course you think blowing up women in children in a pizza palor is a way to achieve peace.

Yarddog
I also feel Carter as a president was not all that good. I agree his soft side,which in my opinion was based on his belief there is good in people, was not suitable for someone who is president. I do have respect for him as a person and we will have to disagree here.

But where I take issue here is this almost total blame for the Iranian crisis on him. The Shahs treatment of his people,our support for him and the growing anger of the Iranians for the shah meant Iran was a train wreck waiting to happen and any president regardless of how strong would have had to deal with that crisis. NOw maybe you can argue as someone has here Carter should have pulled the people out of the embassy but to say this would not have happened is to me not realisic.

Also for the reduction or the weakening, if you like this word better, of the military. I know he did this but again my point is to keep in perspective the mood of the country following vietnam. I feel to many here condemn the man for this but ignore the times. The attitude about the military in 1980 under reagan was worlds apart than in 1976 under Carter. Like or not maybe the country wasnt anti-military but it did have a bad taste in its mouth for it at the time.

And as someone commented give them time I am sure Truman or Johnson is soon in the crosshairs of many here. I have concluded for many here all the evils of our country is only because we have allowed dems to be president and they are slowly pointing out these evils while at the same time you are a clueless moron for even thinking a republican president has something to do with some of our countries ills.

And Trish you can say the same for his Israeli counterpart(forget his name) who shared it with him. Unless course you think occupying a land and treating the people as 2nd rate citizens on their own land, holding and torturing people in prison without being charged with a crime is way to achieve peace. It goes both ways. There are crimes and wrongs being committed from both sides here.

Marshall, straight from the loonies at Amnesty International, even THEY could only document 10 cases.
Quote from the story cited below, May 25, 2005:
"At least 10 cases of abuse or mistreatment have been documented and investigated at Guantanamo. Several other cases are pending."
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=789402

Another one from the House Armed Services Committee hearings:
"...10 servicemembers had been punished for misconduct, out of 10,000 men and women who have served at Gitmo, where more than 28,000 interrogations have taken place."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161171,00.html

Much ado by the liberal press about nothing.
You guys crack me up trying to invent dirt to throw on the administration during war time.

Yarddog
Didnt completely read your last post. You put the blame of the iranians going around with pilots heads on Carter.

So guess that means decades of supporting a dictator who imprisoned and tortured his people and basically through us being the only reason he stayed in power had NOTHING to do with it.

Hates,I will give you the point of the situation in Iran was a long time in the making.But that is not the point. The point is how Carter RESPONDED to the hostage crisis.
Also,you comment on how the "mood of the country" was to justify Carter's military budget cuts. I ask you:is this leadership or following the whims of the latest polls at that time?

Hayes, sorry for the typo. I never meant to call you "hates".

Re Iranian sandstorms: Given the variance and volatility of the tides at Inchon, South Korea, any idiot could see that an amphibious invasion there was doomed to fail. Except that Doug MacArthur was no ordinary idiot.

On D-Day, the lousy weather broke just long enough for Allied air forces to achieve superiority and make critical attacks on German fortifications so that the landings could succeed. The weather went lousy again within a day.

In war, sometimes you just get lucky, or unlucky. If Carter's raid had succeeded, there's little doubt he'd have been re-elected, lousy micromanagement (which was definitely the case) and all.

Paulie,

Carter said,
"The U.S. continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation � because of reports concerning abuses of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo," and therefore should be shut down.

He didn't say anything about torture only that Gitmo was hurting our country. He's right on that. He was only pointing out the obvious.

Hate radio can include both Rush & Franken, add O'reilly, Hannity and many others that only exist to make people mad. Our country is being hurt by these people. It's becoming imposible to have civil discourse. Any disagreement & people go immediately to defcon 5.

Last remark direct to Yarddog.

Yarddog
Like I said I also thougth Carter was a weak president maybe for different reasons than you. And like the previous blog wrote IF the weather had been different who knows.

I always find it interesting in sports when a coach tries a high risk play and succeeds he is a geniuous but fails then he is a moron.

I agree with the point about following polls,but how many dont do that, but my point is given the mood it would have been very difficult for any president whether Reagan or Bush or whoever to come in and talk about rebuilding the military or even keeping at the vietnam level.

To quote a dear friend of mine: "It's 2005."

Hayes said: "And Trish you can say the same for his Israeli counterpart"

Actually Hayes it was one example out of hundreds of why the Nobel Peace Prize is a joke.