Larry King interviewed Jimmy Carter Tuesday following King George's SOTU address. He stated what I think are some hard truths about Iraq that the American people have just not come to grips with yet. The transcript is
here. I came away from a read of it with much respect for the former president and shaken knowing that Carter is in a position to "know things" that the general public is not privy to. The interview covered a wide range of extremely vital topics. Excerpts below....
Thank you President Carter for being a voice of sanity and truth in these insane times. The people of America are hurting and many may not be able to recognize why. You plainly stated the reasons behind our national pain:
*We went into Iraq on false pretenses and we are not leaving
*The Bush administration illegally spied on Americans.
*Americans should be concerned about Alito's disdain for the equality of the branches of the federal government and his favor for the executive branch.
*Abortion should be kept legal and society should work to mitigate the circumstances that may compel a woman to seek one.
*The current treatment of Katrina victims is a national disgrace and Americans want Katrina recovery to be a national priority.
ON IRAQ
KING: Do you support the 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.
ON WIRETAPPING
KING: We're back with the 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter, who is coming to us from the Wilderness Room at Club Med in Crested Butte, Colorado and he looks like Colorado tonight.
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.
KING: But how do you react to an imminent threat?
CARTER: I think with an imminent threat the president or his representatives can go to the special court set up and tell the judges there's an imminent threat and immediately without delay the judges can give a warrant, an authorization for a wiretap. That's the way it's always been done. That's the way it ought to be done. There's no delay involved.
ON KATRINA
KING: All right, let's turn a little domestic. 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.
ON ALITO AND ABORTION
KING: We're hopping all over the place; your thoughts on the newest Justice Samuel Alito?
CARTER: I hope he'll be better than the indications are. He's caused me a great deal of concern with some of his -- some of the questions that he did not answer but he's confirmed now. We have to live with that.
And, I think there's one saving grace about it all and that is that there was never any doubt when American people went to the polls in 2004 when the Republicans did win the election and there was no doubt that President Bush was intending to appoint as conservative members of the Supreme Court and the other courts as he could possibly get confirmed by the Senate. And, I think that the new Justice Alito will be just as conservative as maybe Scalia and Thomas.
KING: And therefore that concerns you.
CARTER: It does concern me but one of the things that concerns me most, I'm not all that concerned about abortion for instance. That doesn't bother me. But I am concerned about not protecting American civil liberties and giving excessive power to the executive branch of government at the expense of the Congress and the court system.
And, that's the kind of answers that Justice Alito refused to answer to give when he was questioned at the hearings and based on his previous judgments and his public statements and the writings that he's done, I think he's not committed to a reasonable balance of power and authority between the three branches of government that have sustained the American democracy since the founding fathers had the visions.
KING: It would not bother you if they overturned Roe v. Wade?
CARTER: When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don't think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.
And so, I made sure that our young people had adequate instruction on how to avoid pregnancy if they should choose to have sex before marriage and before they wanted a baby, abstinence is the best approach of course, I made sure that women and infant children, the WIC Program, Women and Infant Children gave prospective mothers the assurance that they could have their child and that they would be adequately cared for economically.
And I also improved the quality or ease of adoptions by a mother who didn't want to raise her child to get matched up in a convenient way with couples who couldn't have children of their own and could delightfully raise those children. So, I did everything I could to minimize the need for abortions.
I can't express more emphatically my respect for Carter and his plain spoken truths in this interview. I hope this diary brings them to a wider audience.