Jimmy Carter: My Favorite President

I have a nasty, evil cold right now (it’s not avian flu, right?). I’m taking it easy and getting bed rest and plenty of liquids. Until I’m 100 percent better, I plan to lay off heavy-duty redglare writing duties, and let some smarter people do the talking for once.

I saw former President Jimmy Carter on Larry King Live on Wednesday night, and thought he had a bunch of great things to say.

Of U.S. presidents in power during my lifetime (I was born in 1970) Carter is my favorite, despite the “malaise” stuff. He is the one American president who acted morally, and serves an example of what I consider to be a true Christian, as opposed to the bloodthirsty, hateful brand of “Christianity” lately on display by America’s leaders.

Here are some of Carter’s best quotes....

On Bush’s ‘illegal wiretapping....

KING: What do you make of -- what do you make of warrantless wiretapping? The president defends it almost daily. In a major speech in Nashville today he did a long defense of it as he did in the State of the Union.

CARTER: I think it's illegal and improper and unnecessary. There's no reason at all why this president, as have all presidents in history, if they want to get or wiretap American citizens then all they have to do is go to a court that's set up for that purpose and let judges agree with the president that this American citizen needs to have his or her telephone tapped because it's a matter of security. That's all that has to be done.

So, there's a legal way to do it and an illegal way to do it and I think in the last two or three years we've been seeing it done and just found out that it has been done illegally. That's not necessary.

On the government’s bungled Katrina response....

KING: What's your overall view of Katrina and the very short amount of time paid by the president to it in the State of the Union?

CARTER: Well, all of us know the extreme disaster that afflicted not only New Orleans but major parts of Alabama and Mississippi. It was one of the greatest natural catastrophes in the history of our country and there were major promises made that New Orleans would be built back the way it was.

I think now after all these months the attention being given to it has been minimal and the amount of actual reconstruction has been extremely disappointing and the degree of priority that it has at the top level of our government, that is in the White House, I think was indicated by the very casual mention of it during the president's speech.

So, I hope this is not an indication of the federal agencies, all of them, state agencies as well and private organizations abandoning many of the people who have suffered in New Orleans and now are very doubtful about whether they'll ever have a home to go back to in those regions that were damaged.

KING: Why on earth would we give minimal attention to this devastation? I mean what would be the -- how could we reason that?

CARTER: I don't know. I think it's an unreasonable aftermath of this horrible catastrophe and I don't think any American, if there was a poll done, I think it would be 99 percent of all Americans would say let's give the Katrina victims top priority.

Let's make sure that they can have their lives restored. Let's build the dike to protect them from future flooding and let's give them adequate facilities to rebuild homes even better than they were. I think that's what Americans would like to see.

And, I'm very distressed not only at the lack of attention given when the catastrophe first occurred, which brought discredit on our government and on FEMA, an organization that I established earlier, but it also now is bringing additional and sustained discredit on the attention that our government is giving to these poor people.

And, finally, on Bush’s failed Iraq War....

CARTER: No, I haven't supported it from the very beginning. In fact, I wrote a major, I thought it was a major editorial in "The New York Times" a few months before we invaded Iraq pointing out that it was an unnecessary and unjust war and the editorial was repeated on full page ads in a lot of other newspapers.

So, I've always been against the war. But once we got there, obviously we need to give our young men and women our absolute and full support, so I'm not in favor of an immediate withdrawal. I think we ought to decide as a nation that we will turn over as quickly as possible not only the military responsibilities to the Iraqi people but also let them manage their own economic affairs.

I don't think we have any idea now of turning over their oil supplies and let them handle who gets to manage the oil, like even France and Russia and I hope we'll back off and let them run their own political affairs.

But, what I believe is that there are people in Washington now, some of our top leaders, who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they're looking for ten, 20, 50 years in the future...

KING: Why?

CARTER: ...having major American military board -- well, because that was the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that ten years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq.

I would like to hear that. But that's one of the things that concerns Iraqi people. And when I meet with Arab leaders around the world they all have noticed this. They're the ones that have brought it to my attention and I think it's an accurate statement.

KING: Do you believe that's the intent of the administration to keep the -- when you say high officials do you mean the Bush administration wants to keep troops in Iraq ad infinitum?

CARTER: Yes, I do and I hope I'm wrong. I don't think there's any doubt that we did not need to go into Iraq. We went in there under false pretenses, either inadvertent misunderstanding of intelligence or maybe deliberate. I'm not saying it was deliberate. I don't think President Bush was deliberately misleading us, maybe some of his subordinates.

But, I think it was a mistake to go in and I think that the United States has got to make sure that the Iraqi people know and the surrounding neighbors know we're willing to get our troops out of Iraq when and if a government is established and I hope that will be soon and the Iraqis are able to maintain order.

And, I think a lot of the violence that takes place now in the streets of Iraq are caused by the fact that American troops are still there. I think that will in itself that change will automatically reduce the terrorism considerably.