 JAIL JIMMY CARTER
I couldn't have been more pleased when Gerald Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon was vindicated in his lifetime. Even the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, doubted that Nixon would have received a fair trail in a reasonable time in the District of Columbia. Furthermore, all a trial would have accomplished was to drag out the freakshow of Watergate for years to come. In fact, it would have been much better if Nixon had pardoned himself before resigning.
While I supported the impeachment, conviction and removal from office of Bill Clinton, I also thought that his successor, whether it was Al Gore or George Bush, should have pardoned him. As a general rule, I believe that impeachment or resignation is punishment enough for a president of the United States for abuses that take place during his term of office. Regardless of how polarized American politics has become, few Americans have any desire to see a former president in prison.
Is that presidential immunity? Probably. But there's a significant difference a president and even the worst of criminal defendants. Someday no one will remember who Charles Manson was, but Richard Nixon's disgrace will live forever in history. Furthermore, if presidents face the prospect of prison, the quality of presidents will only go further downward. Frankly, the quality of presidents is bad enough as it is.
However, once presidents leave office, they resume being ordinary citizens and that immunity should cease, particularly in matters of national security and foreign affairs. It's enough of a nightmare that President Bush is allowed to continue making American foreign policy a bad fucking joke. He certainly doesn't need any help from former president Jimmy Carter.
Carter's actions over the last 27 years, while not always criminal (such as writing the individual members of the UN Security Council and asking them to vote against the the 1990 use of force against Iraq resolution), have been extremely distasteful and unbecoming of a former president. What has his conduct gotten him? Well, a Nobel Peace Prize for starters.
President Carter actually seems to believe one of two things, either that he wasn't actually voted out of office in a fucking landslide or that none of his successors have had the moral right to the presidency. Those are the only two things that can explain his almost thirty years of freelance diplomacy.
The problem with such diplomacy - other than it being a giant pain in the ass to his successors - is that it is a felony. James Earl Carter of Plains, Georgia, is in repeated violation of the Logan Act. Each such violation carries with it a penalty of three years imprisonment.
There is little doubt what Carter was doing in North Korea in 1994. He was negotiating a peaceful resolution to the dispute over that country's nuclear program. He wasn't shy about saying so and the Clinton administration was very forthright in saying that Carter was not an authorized representative of the United States government. Why the Justice Department didn't convene a grand jury is beyond me.
Since he was awarded the Peace Prize, Carter has grown even more insufferable. That culminated last weekend, when the former president publicly stated the precise extent of Israel's nuclear program.
Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.
His remark, made at the Hay-on-Wye festival which promotes current affairs books and literature, is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence. Nor do US officials deviate in public from that Israeli line. Carter, who has immersed himself since his presidency in Israeli-Palestinian relations, was highly critical of Israeli settlers on the West Bank, and of Israel's refusal to talk to elected officials of the Islamic party Hamas, although he said that Israel's security was his prime concern. Not only is Israel's nuclear program not a secret, neither is its proliferation activities. Isreal is widely suspected of having collaborated with the Apartheid-era South Africa's nuclear weapons program.
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert accidentally (and idiotically) confirmed the existence of his countries weapons stockpile. However, Olmert is accountable to the Israeli people who elected him and Jimmy Carter isn't accountable to anyone.
Carter is the first person to be in a position to know - and he is in such a position - to confirm the extrent of the Israeli arsenal.
How is Carter in such a position? As a former president, Carter receives regular CIA briefings and maintains a high-level security clearance. If the American government knows something, there's a better than even chance that Jimmy Carter knows it as well.
That has never posed a serious problem before, but it appears to now. If the Israelis, or any foreign government, has to be concerned about senstive intelligence being made public by the likes of Carter, said governments aren't likely to long share their secrets with the United States.
Not that Jimmy Carter gives a shit. He's the third fucking Blues Brother and is on a mission from God. If American foreign policy is crippled as a consequence of that mission, all the better. For a guy who keeps harping about the joys of electoral democracy, he seemingly forgets that no one has elected him to anything in over three decades.
As we all learned from the Scooter Libby - Valarie Plame debacle, knowingly revealing classified intelligence is a felony. This is a whole lot more serious than even Plamegate was. This is a matter of international relations regarding nuclear war. It also endangers continued intelligence cooperation between the United States and its allies.
For that reason, Jimmy Carter's CIA briefings should be immediately halted and his security clearence revoked. Furthermore, the Justice Department should seriously start consider investigating Carter's continued private diplomacy.
Get the son of a bitch once and for all.
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