Jimmy Carter and the Shah on a trip to Tehran before the radical Islamic regime took control of the pro-American country. (Parstimes)
Wolf Blitzer interviewed America's disastrous president today on The Situation Room and got Jimmy Carter to talk about how he handled Iran:
CARTER: ...And what we should do about Iran -- first of all, do not attack Iran. Secondly, what to do? I think two things to be very brief, we don't have much time. One is to start talking to Iran, communicate with Iran. After the Shah was overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeini took over, we continued our diplomatic relations with Iran. I had, as you know, about 75 people in Tehran, some of whom were taken prisoner. And the Iranians had about 75 of their representatives in Washington. So talk to them and communicate with them.(It's kind of hard to communicate when your being held captive, isn't it?)
CARTER: Secondly, use strong diplomatic means to make sure they don't go ahead with a nuclear program. And I think that -- and to quit threatening to attack them, because that just increases their fervor in developing all kinds of protective devices...After all of these years... After all of the murdered Iranians, Americans, Jews by the regime in Iran... The one thing Jimmy Carter is willing to admit he did wrong...
BLITZER: You know, you have been criticized for your handling of Iran when the Shah was in power, you know, in the late...
CARTER: I have heard about that.
BLITZER: In the late '70s. Looking back all of these years, knowing what has happened, what, if anything, would you have done differently?
CARTER: I would have had one more helicopter in our rescue mission, which would have brought all of the hostages out safe and free. And so I had to wait from April, around until five minutes after I was no longer president when all of the hostages did come home safe and free.
BLITZER: Because the argument is, as bad as the Shah was on human rights and other issues, he was an ally of the U.S. and probably better than the current regime and that the U.S. should have stuck with him.
CARTER: Well, we couldn't stick with him, he was not overthrown by anything the United States did, he was overthrown by his own people. And as I said earlier, after they did overthrow the Shah, we took care of the Shah as best we could and we also continued our conversations with -- our diplomatic relations with the new regime.
He would have sent in one more helicopter!
In 2005, the Iranian regime displayed helicopters belonging to the United States military in a public prayer hall. These helicopters were used in a failed operation in 1980 to rescue the 52 American hostages in the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Jimmy Carter today says he would have given them one more chopper.
Macsmind and Jammie Wearing Fool have further thoughts.
I can't type. My head just exploded.
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ReplyDeleteone rotor blade away from the nutfarm..
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How utterly sad.
ReplyDeleteThe part I saw was where he advised the next President to make a 20 minute speech upon taking office for the purpose of completely reversing the negative image of the U.S. throughout the world.
ReplyDeleteAnd what should she say?
1. We won't torture anymore.
2.Honor all previous international agreements.
3. Some other things which I couldn't remember 'cause my brain quit after the first one.
He's even more clueless than you know: The consensus opinion on why the Iran Rescue Mission failed was NOT "too few helicopters"...it was "waiting too late in the year" and getting stuck in the horrendous desert sandstorms! And what, praytell, was Mr. Jimmy doing that kept him from acting until April? Why -- surprise -- he was "TALKING to" the Iranians for over 5 months!
ReplyDeleteThe whole Operation Eagle Talon plan was a disaster looking for a place to happen. Things went to hell in the Desert 1 spot and not over or in Teheran, and that's the only mercy.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if 'ol peanut brain will ever admit that he was solely responsible for the deaths of 8 members of our military during that fiasco. If I had but one wish, it would be to cement his mouth shut and ship him off to Iran.
ReplyDeleteOne has to wonder where Carter's been the last three years. Otherwise he wouldn't ahve missed three years of diplomacy to try to get Iran to quit its nuclear program.
ReplyDeleteSeriously... If that nutjob Carter would have destroyed Iran in 1980, we could have killed all those pesky hostages and started an endless war in the Middle East years ago.
ReplyDeleteInstead, all that "TALKING" lead to the release of all of the hostages so they would come home alive, and we didn't even get to kill any brown people in the process. What a wus.
Maybe Jimmah could explain the difference between "strong diplomatic means" and "threatening to attack them" because to me they're one in the same.
ReplyDeleteAlso, one more helicopter. What a hoot! That guy was a nuclear engineer and he doesn't have a clue! How about "Make sure they didn't park the helicopters so close together" or "Abort the mission when some of the helicopters got lost in the sandstorm." What a moron. It never ceases to amaze me that anyone asks him anything.
Clueless then. Clueless now. He's a true embarrassment.
ReplyDeleteThanks josh for letting us know that your ability to come to grips with reality is less than nil...
ReplyDeleteFunny but you do remind me of Carter a man that helped the terrorist road show get really supercharged...
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ReplyDeleteEarth to Josh @ 7:24 AM
[In 1980, the death of the shah in Egypt and the invasion of Iran by Iraq (see Iran-Iraq War) made the Iranians more receptive to resolving the hostage crisis. In the United States, failure to resolve the crisis contributed to Ronald Reagan's defeat of Carter in the presidential election. After the election, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations began. On Jan. 20, 1981, the day of President Reagan's inauguration, the United States released almost $8 billion in Iranian assets and the hostages were freed after 444 days in Iranian detention; the agreement gave Iran immunity from lawsuits arising from the incident.]
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ReplyDeleteBG, what's your point? 6 minutes after Carter left office, the hostages were released. Are you insinuating that Reagan had something to do with that? Negotiations would have had to start before the 20th then, as Reagan was busy at noon, I think.
ReplyDeleteAnd juandos' idea that Carter started the "terrorist road show" is laughable. The only thing the Iranians got out of the deal was their own money back. However, Iran didn't get a single original demand fulfilled and lost their international support for their war against Iraq to boot.
However, I do remember when Reagan tucked tail after 241 American servicemen were killed in a suicide attack in Lebanon. It's almost as if Islamic Jihad learned they could attack America with impunity...
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ReplyDeleteCarter's Less-Known Legacy
and that's from a left of leftist source, go fig..
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ReplyDeleteJosh..
i don't go by party, i go by issues & facts.. could care less if someone is a Dem, a Rep, or a little green Martian..
as it so happens, i was a Dem all my life, then along came 9/11 & the Dems became a party no more for me.. as a matter of fact, i consider the Dems to be traitorous.. and albeit the Dems moreso, i think both parties suq, also never liked Reagan, go fig..
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Poor Josh. Still doesn't understand what the American people and the Iranian regime understood then. Reagan was voted in to kick butt, and Carter was voted out a loser "talker". When Reagan won, Iran got serious about cutting loose the hostages, but only 5 minutes before Reagan became President, so they could grind Carters nose in the mud until the last minute.
ReplyDeletesorry RG, but "Americans" understood the situation exactly as Josh states it, although I will concede that the Iranians held out until Reagan took office in a deliberate attempt to show disrespect. So, what did the Iranians gain from this move ? How about an American president who was willing to trade arms for hostages as Reagan did in the Iran/Contra affair?
ReplyDeleteits a well established fact that Algerian diplomat Abdulkarim Ghuraib opened negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. This resulted in the "Algiers Accords" one day before the end of the Carter's Presidency on January 19, 1981, which entailed Iran's commitment to free the hostages immediately.
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