In a post today, Power Line's Paul Mirengoff suggests that Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and a former naval officer, is a traitor:
Ted Turner said the other day that he had trouble making up his mind which side he supports in the war on terror. If Turner has struggled with this, one can only imagine how fellow Georgian, Jimmy Carter, views the matter. One also wonders whose side, if any, Carter was on when, on behalf of President Clinton, he negotiated the "agreed framework" which paved the way for North Korea to go nuclear.
This kind of treason-mongering is repulsive. And remember, Power Line was Time's 2004 blog of the year!
Update 10/12 6:45 AM: Commenter Lettuce points out that Mirengoff misrepresents Turner's comment as well. As Media Matters notes, Turner was actually speaking about the war in Iraq, not the war in terror. Here is the full statement, which came in response to a question about "other people have been, when they've criticized the Iraq war, criticized the U.S. government conduct ...their patriotism has been questioned":
Well, I don't like to see -- you know, there are a lot of things about this war that disturb me. And one of them is the attitude that was well-expressed by our president. He said it very clearly. He said, "Either you're with us or you're against us."
And I had a problem with that, because I really hadn't made my mind up yet.
You know, what if you haven't made your mind up? You know, what if you're thinking about it, doing some studying, and doing some reading? Because it's an important decision to go to war, whether or not to go to war.
I mean, "You're either with us or against us" -- that's pretty black and white. And just because you disagree with me about it doesn't mean you're not a patriot, as far as I'm concerned.
(The statement is somewhat confusing, because the comment by President Bush that Turner referenced came long before the war in Iraq.)
Yeah, but Time's Person of the Year for '04 was Bush so take it with a grain of salt.
Also Carter's agreement was to advance nuclear power to preclude nuclear weapons development (under the Kim Il-sung regime). It wasn't until the Bush Administration came to power and put Bolton in charge of nuclear non-proliferation that the North kicked inspectors out (December 2002).
Posted by: Seth | October 11, 2006 at 11:50 PM
Uh, the comment about Ted Turner is also false, equivalency boy.
Posted by: Lettuce | October 12, 2006 at 12:43 AM
"equivalency boy"?
Wow, thanks for contributing to the dialogue.
Posted by: John Foley | October 12, 2006 at 04:55 PM