Translated material
Best of the worst
Jimmy Carter is misunderstood
A scandal is breaking out in Washington over the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's "misquoting" of former US President Jimmy Carter's critical remarks about the George W. Bush administration. Jimmy Carter said yesterday on NBC that he was “misunderstood.” America's 39th president clarified that he did not call President Bush's administration "the worst in history." “In response to a question from the newspaper, I compared the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration to that of Richard Nixon, whose administration was even worse.” According to the newspaper publication, the ex-president said that, in his opinion, “in terms of creating a negative image of the American nation in the world, the current administration has become the worst in history.”The White House reacted sharply to the publication in the newspaper. The official representative of the US President, Tony Fratto, said on Sunday that with such “reckless” statements, Mr. Carter “showed his inadequacy” and distance from reality. Meanwhile, 82-year-old Jimmy Carter is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he received in 2002 for his participation in charity and peacekeeping activities. In particular, for his role in concluding the 1978 Camp David peace agreement, which provided for the return of the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the provision of limited autonomy to Palestine.
Democrat Carter criticized the George W. Bush administration for its "blatant departure from the fundamental values of America" espoused by his predecessors, including Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. The ex-president sees this departure in the policy of preventive wars adopted by the White House: “We have now approved the concept of preventive war, according to which we enter into an armed conflict with another country even in a situation where our security is not directly threatened, but we want change the regime or we are afraid that sometime in the future our security will be threatened.” Jimmy Carter criticizes George W. Bush for Washington's "zero" participation in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, neglect of nuclear arms control agreements, and insufficient efforts to protect the environment. The British allies also suffered. Jimmy Carter called outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair's "blind" support for the military operation in Iraq "disgusting."