Worst Ex President of US Ever Exceeds Expectations

[Lisabob]

Consider the practices of private and public diplomacy. In some ways, Carter is attempting to do a bit of both. I am 110% certain that no trip of this sort by a former president (let alone one with a reputation for mediating nasty disputes, often with good outcomes) is done without the tacit blessing of the US government. And that has nothing to do with one's evaluation of his presidency, or of the North Korean government's policies.

[vol_scouter]

Pack,

 

When first running for president, Carter claimed to be a Nuclear Physicist only to be corrected, then he claimed to be a Nuclear Engineer only to corrected, and finally he admitted that he was a nuclear technician. Those were lies. His policies on nuclear energy showed that he knew nothing about reactors.

 

Carter was associated financially with his OMB director, Bert Lance, who had to leave office because of his shady dealings. In the 1980's, the Butcher brothers banking empire was about to be investigated by the FDIC. A helicopter landed on top of Jake Butcher's bank in Knoxville where it was reported that Carter was seen coming and later leaving. Many documents were shredded that evening before the FDIC came a day or so later. The demise of Southern Industrial Banking of the Butcher's destroyed many lives because it was no insured though signs seemed to imply that it was. Many people lost their life's savings and retirement. In my book, Carter is a crook.

 

Carter gave North Korea the reactor technology to allow them to make atomic weapons. For that he got the Nobel Peace prize - that speaks poorly of both.

 

From my vantage point of knowing people ruined by Carter's cronies and seeing his nuclear idiocy, he is neither smart nor a good man. In my book, he was, without a doubt, the worst president in my lifetime (Eisenhower on) until Obama made him look relatively good.

[packsaddle]

Thanks vol_scouter, and yes, that claim of being a nuclear engineer would constitute a lie in my book as well. For anyone to claim with authority something that they either know to be false or know that they are not authoritative constitutes a deception that I could fairly call a lie.

 

I checked about your claim, "Carter gave North Korea the reactor technology to allow them to make atomic weapons. For that he got the Nobel Peace prize - that speaks poorly of both."

 

There is no mention of North Korea in the Nobel Prize ceremony award speech. In fact, unless the Nobel Prize committee is also engaging in a deception, it seems that the primary reason for the award to Carter had to do with his long-term involvement with promoting peace, especially in the middle-East. Here is a snippet:

 

"Jimmy Carter should of course have been awarded the Peace Prize a long time ago. It is no secret today that the Norwegian Nobel Committee wished to give him the Prize in 1978, together with Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin. A mere formality prevented Carter from receiving his well-earned Peace Prize at that time: he had not been nominated by the 1 February deadline. And no member of the Committee nominated him at the Committee's first meeting. They could of course not have known in February what was to happen at Camp David in September. In September, the Committee wanted to add Carter's name to the list, but the statutes of the Nobel Foundation made that impossible."

 

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2002/presentation-speech.html

 

Moreover, because YOU claim to have expertise in the field of physics and nuclear science, I hold your opinion as authoritative. However, according to several sources, including this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_North_Korea

 

the nuclear program in North Korea began in the 1950's with the support of the Soviet Union, culminating in their reactor program in the early 1960's. Unless there is some kind of time warp that had Carter in office decades prior to 1976, I must question your assessment.

 

More to the point, if I applied the standard for truth that you applied to Carter, how should I characterize your claim?

[vol_scouter]

Packsaddle,

 

The news media talked about Carter helping to ensure peace on the Korean peninsula by promising new reactors as well as the camp David Accords. I, foolishly, trusted the media to be providing the correct reasons for the awarding of the Nobel peace prize. I have never looked it up so that appears to be incorrect.

 

As to providing LWRs, it is in the article that you cited: "...in exchange for construction of two LWRs by 1000 PWe each at Kumho again...". The US and several other nations formed KEDO which supplied the reactors. They came from the US. See for example:

http://www.nautilus.org/publications/books/dprkbb/agreedFramework/kedo.pdf

 

So I was correct in the attribution of the Nobel award according to the media and about the reactors.

[CalicoPenn]

"The demise of Southern Industrial Banking of the Butcher's destroyed many lives because it was no insured though signs seemed to imply that it was. Many people lost their life's savings and retirement."

 

Just a touch misleading there, dont you think? Southern Industrial Banking Corp was a bank holding corporation, not a bank. The deposits held at the banks owed by SIBC were, of course, insured through the FDIC. The signs at the banks informing folks that their deposits were insured applied only to the bank deposits.

 

Investments in the bank holding corporation, however, are not insured. I can't think of a single stockholder investment that is insured by the government. Except for those who had deposits greater than the guaranteed insured amount, the folks that lost money were the stockholders, not the depositers.

[packsaddle]

I didn't see any reference in the pdf document earlier than 1995 when KEDO was first formed. This is in the first paragraph of the document. When I searched for 'Carter', there were no matches. Huh? Wanna try again? One of us is REALLY confused.

 

You said, "Carter gave North Korea the reactor technology to allow them to make atomic weapons."

In 1975 North Korea was already preparing to separate the plutonium from the graphite reactors that the Soviets had given them long before. Carter was hardly responsible for that material. Moreover, your choice of words implies motive, hardly within your expertise or any sort of knowledge, I would say. Is that a poor choice of words or just an opinion?

 

Edit: the reference you gave from the article I cited also referred to the 1990's.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[vol_scouter]

CalicoPenn,

 

What you say about SIBC being a holding company is true. However, SIBC acted and advertised like a bank. The depositors who had checking and savings accounts as well as retirement accounts there, thought that it was a bank. Unless you were also living in Knoxville in the 1980's as I was, you could not be expected to understand that. Certainly, a very careful person would have easily discovered that. However, many formerly well to do folks lost nearly everything after a lifetime of business investments. Bert Lance was involved with the whole banking scandal and through apparently so was Carter. Although, to my knowledge no smoking gun was discovered except for eyewitnesses seeing him in Knoxville, in my book he is a crook as well.

 

Pack,

 

I do not believe that Carter intentionally gave North Korea reactors to obtain material for their bombs. That is a sad statement as he held himself out to be an expert and demonstrated himself only to be a fool. Those reactors are being used to produce bomb material. Some of that information is in open sources.

[packsaddle]

Vol_scouter, there is still a discrepancy on the dates. When do you think the Carter administration gave those light water reactors to North Korea? KEDO didn't exist during his administration. The only LWR technology that I can find reference to was in 1995 or thereabouts, decades after Carter. You still have not clarified this.

[vol_scouter]

Packsaddle,

 

Carter went to North Korea during the Clinton administration 'without official authorization' and brokered a deal in which North Korea agreed to stop their nuclear weapons program in exchange for two LWRs. That is part of the reason for KEDO. If one compares the effort at Hanford to the capabilities in North Korea prior to the LWRs, you can connect the dots.

[packsaddle]

You claimed the connected dots. Therefore YOU should make it clear. How did a private citizen 'without official authorization' manage to broker a deal involving multiple nations including the US? ...about supplying North Korea with nuclear reactors? Those dots DON'T connect. Or else he had powers of persuasion that border on miraculous. Give us the WHOLE story.

 

If you are going to lay the blame for North Korea's nuclear weapons at the feet of a person who wasn't even a nuclear engineer, and who was decades after his presidency, then YOU are going to have to do more than admonishing the rest of us to connect the dots.

[Scoutfish]

Without taking sides...I will say this: I have worked on military bases where the people in certain building needing garage doors .."Officaily" did not exist!

 

Areas within a military installation that were under the guard of private security forces who were nbot constrained and bound to what the regular military police were.

 

Of cource, there is no ned for me to say any more, nor could I prove anything I said because - the government said that "officaily" , they DO NOT EXIST!

 

[packsaddle]

Scoutfish, a few years ago I was one of those persons doing the procurement of those garage doors. But I and all of my counterparts understood the profound difference between a garage door and a nuclear reactor.

 

I am merely asking vol_scouter to clarify his claim that "Carter gave North Korea the reactor technology to allow them to make atomic weapons." The Carter administration was in the 1970's and the light water reactor vol_scouter refers to was part of an agreement in the 1990's. AND in 2003, the USA stopped that program.

I want vol_scouter to explain the details of his claim. I ask this because I have read conflicting claims that "North Korea's main reactor, where practically all of its plutonium has been produced, is a 5MWe gas-graphite moderated Magnox type reactor." This means that NK's bomb material was produced from Soviet reactors, long before the LWR agreement.

 

If vol_scouter has a way to 'connect the dots' that really does lead to Carter, decades after he was President, I would really like to understand how those dots are connected. It's that simple. And I'm still waiting.....(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[acco40]

James E. Carter tells it like it is, not as some Americans want to hear it so his comments on foreign policy in the middle east and North Korea are not welcomed by all.

 

However, he does have credibility outside of our borders (not trying to imply he does not inside our country.)

 

It is my understanding that no one may "invite themselves" to North Korea and visit without the approval of the USG.

 

With the threat of war hanging over the Korean peninsula in 1994, Jimmy Carter flew to Pyongyang and reached a surprise deal with the reclusive regime to freeze its nuclear program and start talks.

 

Seventeen years later, the former US president went back to North Korea this week but with no breakthrough, no meeting with the top leader and with Washington and Seoul cautious at best over his calls for reconciliation.

 

At age 86, Carter maintains a frenetic pace and zeal for trying to mediate some of the world's most intractable trouble-spots. Just a few weeks earlier, Carter went to Cuba for extended talks with the island's communist leaders.

 

Carter, who did not meet leader Kim Jong-Il but said he received a message from him, said Thursday in Seoul that the regime was ready for unconditional talks with the South. He also made a forceful appeal for aid to feed the North.

 

Korea expert L. Gordon Flake said that North Korea appeared to put nothing new on the table for Carter, a far cry from the 1994 visit or even the former president's trip to Pyongyang last year when he freed a jailed American.

 

"The Carter visit to me represents the diplomatic application of the economic law of diminishing returns," said Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation think-tank.

 

"There was no shift in North Korean position and no change in North Korea's rhetoric that would, if I were Washington or Seoul, give me any cause to re-evaluate where things stand," he said.

 

Analysts said that North Korea's call for unconditional talks was not necessarily a conciliatory move, but instead part of its hopes to restart dialogue without accounting for recent tensions.North Korea in November shelled a civilian part of the South for the first time since the 1950-53 Korean War, months after Seoul blamed the North for the sinking of one of its warships that claimed 46 lives.

 

US President Barack Obama's administration, despite favoring dialogue around the world, has pursued a policy of "strategic patience" with the North, saying that it must make amends with the South and clearly recommit to past denuclearization accords before any substantive talks.

 

Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, welcomed the initiative by Carter, saying that North Korea can be dangerous when ignored.

 

"America's bandwidth is at overcapacity right now with Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and whatever else is going on, and North Korea is feeling neglected," Clemons said.

 

"So if there are cheap and easy ways to stroke the North Korean ego and need for attention, then I'm all for it," he said.

 

Clemons said that Carter and the fellow leaders known as The Elders -- former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, ex-Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and former Irish president Mary Robinson -- were creating "a short-term shock absorber."

 

But Carter, who is deeply unpopular with many US conservatives, triggered outrage in parts of Washington when he accused the United States and South Korea of a "human rights violation" for, in his view, withholding food aid from the North for political reasons.

 

US Christian relief groups say that North Korea will run out of food within months. But Washington and Seoul want further assessments, with some officials charging that the regime may be exaggerating the needs as it prepares national celebrations next year.

 

Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, called Carter's statement on food aid "amazingly bizarre, given the lack of comment from any of his delegation on North Korea's atrocious human rights record."

 

"If The Elders continue their high-profile involvement in North Korea and continue to serve as a mouthpiece for the regime, then it will help North Korea's charm offensive," he said.

 

"If it's sort of a one-time involvement, then their effort will just dissipate," he said.

 

Robert King, the US envoy for human rights in North Korea, at a forum Wednesday denied any political reason for holding off on food aid. He welcomed Carter's visit as "very useful," saying it could expose the isolated nation to outside thinking. Shaun Tandon AFP

[artjrk]

I'm not going to get in on this specific debate, but want to address the broader statement by the OP. You claim Carter to be the "worst" ex-president ever. Let me ask this, what have other recent ex=presidents done to rate above Carter? We all know Reagan had health issues soon after his term. What about Bush Sr.? Bush Jr? I can't recall hearing their names in the news. Clinton?

Whether you agree with his politics or not, at least he is still doing something (ie Habitat for Humanity) and as others mentioned, he still is there to help negotiate in times of trouble.

[Scoutfish]

"Scoutfish, a few years ago I was one of those persons doing the procurement of those garage doors. But I and all of my counterparts understood the profound difference between a garage door and a nuclear reactor."

 

My point was not about garage doors or anything nuclear.

 

The point was WHERE I installed the doors.

 

The government paid us to put in a physical product in a physical place that officially did not exist.

 

Well no doubt it existed,. If it didn't why did the government pay us to put in a doors (or 7) there?

 

How could we if it didn't exists?

 

And that was "Official Info" from an "Official" standpoint of the "Official " government.

 

I remember Reagan running for and getting into office., I remember Carter with his souther Georgia bell talk about peanuts.

 

Other than that, I have nothing for or against him as I was too young to want to even want to watch or care back then.

 

But my point was about the term "official"

 

When that term comes from the government, it means nothing. Could be Carter was paid a huge chunk of money to "Officially" be a citizen on vacation.... OR that the Government was behind it 100 % but "officially" doesn't want to admit it.

 

But to my original reference

: That place I went to they didn't exist according to "Official": policy and "official" statements had about 6 times the security of any other military installation or Nuclear plant where I have either installed or serviced doors.

 

Officially..."Offical" means whatever the government wants you to think it means..or whatever supports their objective.

 

Jimmy Carter, nuke technology, or missile nose cones made from recycled Georgia peanut shells isn't the point of what I was saying.

 

(This message has been edited by a staff member.)