McCain calls Carter a 'lousy president'

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: CNN

(CNN) — John McCain directed his trademark straight talk toward a former president, flatly calling Jimmy Carter a "lousy" commander in chief.

The Arizona senator has long attempted to portray Barack Obama's policies as in the mold of Carter's, though the Republican has previously held back criticizing Carter so directly.

But in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun published Friday, McCain was decidedly more blunt than he has been in the past. McCain, who is a proponent of nuclear reprocessing, was asked why he thought Carter was against the process when he was president.

"Yes, because Carter was a lousy president," McCain quipped. "This is the same guy who kissed Brezhnev."

Read more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/27/mccain-calls-carter-a-lousy-president/

---

[BeyondGeography]

1. Time for Jimmy to call McCain a lousy candidate

[baldguy]

4. Lousy plebe, lousy aviator, lousy naval officer, lousy Congressman and lousy Senator, too.

[bitchkitty]

51. You forgot lousy husband. n/t

[olddad56]

65. not to mention lousy human being.

[anakie]

76. he won't

he has far too much class.


Peace

[Bush_MUST_Go]

2. Nowhere NEAR as bad as his BFF Dubya though. But then NOBODY is.

[NYC Liberal]

3. Whatever you think of his presidency,

Carter is an INFINITELY better human being than McSame is.

Carter may have had one term, but at least he didn't sell his soul just to get power. I can't say the same about McSame!!

[defendandprotect]

15. And, the swiftboating he got by the right-wing went little noticed . . .

I've always been particularly concerned with the three rescue missions that failed --

I think there were three/?

And supposedly because the helicopters that went down -- and/or crashed into each other ---

did so because they didn't have the gear which keeps SAND out of the engines ....

and they just happened to be in the desert!!

Also . . . "The October Surprise" ---

not to mention the Ted Koppel show every night slamming away at the hostage situation/

Nightline until the public was yelling every day for us to bomb Iran!!

[kristopher]

22. There was only one US rescue mission.

There were C130s and helicopters gathered at a staging area outside of Tehran. An sandstorm that weather didn't predict hit just before they landed and continued as they unloaded and prepared the helicopters to go in and bring the hostages out to the waiting 103s. However the visibility in the storm was nil and there was a collision on the ground that resulted in I-forget-how-many-lost-aircraft-and-lives. And worse, they had to abort the rescue.

There was an aircraft lost due to sand in the engine, but that didn't scrub the mission.

[defendandprotect]

27. No . . . there were at the least two rescue missions started . . .

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


HOWEVER . . . as I recall this it was also CIA led?

And, they were in the desert and didn't have helicopters properly equipped . . . !!!

It looks to me like they sabotaged the missions ---

And then we had "The October Surprise" . . .

[kristopher]

32. No. There was only the one.

Your wiki link doesn't even support your assertion. It is as I described. I got to know Col. Beckwith in year after the mission failed. There was no sabotage and your posts are insulting to the men who lost their lives attempting a difficult and dangerous rescue.

[defendandprotect]

37. No -- two --- here it is . . .

From the Wiki link . . .

A second rescue mission was planned under the name Operation Credible Sport (a.k.a. Operation Honey Badger), but was never put into action. This second rescue attempt was planned using highly modified YMC-130H Hercules aircraft. Outfitted with rocket thrusters fore and aft to allow an extremely short landing and take-off in a soccer stadium, three aircraft were modified under a rushed secret program. One aircraft crashed during a demonstration at Duke Field, Fl, at Eglin Air Force Base Auxiliary Field 3 on October 29, 1980, when its landing braking rockets were fired too soon. The misfire caused a hard touchdown that tore off the starboard wing and started a fire. All on board survived. The impending change in the White House led to the abandonment of this project.

and re your comments here . . .
Your wiki link doesn't even support your assertion. It is as I described. I got to know Col. Beckwith in year after the mission failed. There was no sabotage and your posts are insulting to the men who lost their lives attempting a difficult and dangerous rescue.

Strange way to think about things . . .
Many of us understand 9/11 as an "inside job" --- we don't blame it on the victims!

Sabotage happens from above. Presumably you might be familiar with the Gary Powers
U-2 incident? You should also be familiar with Gary Sick's later understanding of
how the "October Surpise" was being pulled off.

You should also understand that our MIIC betrayed Eisenhower and JFK in many ways
re operations, their directions; overall goals of the administration.

NOW . . . as I originally said . . . I believe there was a third event ---
I haven't found any info on that . . . so it's just my memory. Might not have
been as high profile as these two.

[kristopher]

48. You're being screwy...

There was ONE rescue attempt. Planning isn't doing.
You wrote:"I've always been particularly concerned with the three rescue missions that failed -- I think there were three/?
For "mission" to fail, there has to BE "mission".


"...And supposedly because the helicopters that went down -- and/or crashed into each other --- did so because they didn't have the gear which keeps SAND out of the engines ....and they just happened to be in the desert!!..."

You might want to let go of that paranoia a bit and check into the reality based community. You are throwing out half-baked crackpot theories that don''t stand up to even the most casual scrutiny. We had one helo that was abandoned due to mechanical malfunction unrelated to sand. In the middle of a dust storm, another helo had an electrical problem and had to return to the carrier. As the helos landed at the mustering site, another developed a hydraulic system failure. This led to the decision to abort the mission as 6 helos were considered the minimum essential number.

In preparing to depart a helo clipped a refueling C130 and started a fire that destroyed several aircraft and killed 8 men.

It was a clusterfuck, but to claim it was some sort of sabotage is idiocy.

http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/cadre/aspj/apjinternational/apj-s/2006/3tri06/kampseng.html

[defendandprotect]

63. Nice of you to say . . . !

Notice that the non-existant "mission" suffered another accident ---

Quite some performance for our Cold War army . . . and secret missions.

While I don't have info on it now, as I recall this there were three incidents.

Lovely discussing this with you --- !!!

[defendandprotect]

66. Secord, Hakim, North -- central figures in the Carter rescue missions ---

At least three central figures in the Iran-Contra Scandal were involved with the Iranian hostage rescue mission: Secord, Hakim, and North.

General Richard Secord helped to organize the abortive rescue mission. After the first mission failed, he was the head of the planning group that eventually decided against another rescue attempt. Because the whereabouts of the hostages were unknown, the second rescue attempt (the October Surprise that the Reagan-Bush campaign was so worried about) never happened.

Secord was later suspended from his Pentagon post because of the EATSCO probe. EATSCO is a company that belongs to Edwin Wilson, the CIA operative who is currently serving time in a federal maximum-security prison for, among other things, secretly supplying 43,000 pounds of plastic explosives to Kadaffi. <21>

In 1981, he became Chief Middle East arms-sales adviser to Secretary of Defense Casper W. Weinberger. <21>

Albert Hakim is a wealthy arms merchant, an Iranian exile, and CIA informant, who had a "sensitive intelligence" role in 1980 hostage rescue. He worked for the CIA near the Turkish boarder, handling the logistics of the rescue mission in Tehran. Hakim purchased trucks and vans, and rented a warehouse on the edge of Tehran to hide them in until they were needed for the operation. Unexpectedly however, he skipped town the day before the rescue mission. <2> <13> <25> Later on, in July, 1981, Hakim approached the CIA, with a plan to gain favor with the Iranian government by selling it arms. <22>

Oliver North led a secret detachment to eastern Turkey. He was in the mother ship on the Turkish border awaiting the cue from Secord to fly into Teheran and rescue the hostages. <2> <25> After the first aborted rescue mission, he worked with Secord on a second rescue plan.

According to the October Surprise theory, Secord, North and Hakim did not intend Desert One to carry through. The miserable failure of Carter's Desert One rescue attempt may have been deliberate.SE


In the Shah days . . .
Albert Hakim, an Iranian-born arms merchant, was selling millions of dollars worth of arms to the Shah in the 70's. In 1983 testimony, he boasted of arranging Iran arms deals, setting up swiss bank accounts, and paying off Iranian officials. <20>

General Richard Secord worked at the time in Air Force Military Advisory Group. His job was to represent US arms merchants before the Shah. Hakim and Secord were in cahoots, and ran a company called Stanford Technologies Trading Group International. They eventually became deeply involved in the events of the Iran-Contra Scandal.

http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/104



Just a PS on this . . .

Major General James B. Vaught (US Army) was appointed Joint Task Force commander, and a team of officers was assembled to lead the various components, including: Colonel Charles A. Beckwith (founder of the Army’s new Delta Force counter-terrorist group) to be the ground assault commander; Colonel James H. Kyle (long-time USAF MC-130 special operator) to command the fixed wing contingent; and Marine Lieutenant Colonel Edward Seiffert (an experienced night-vision flyer) to lead the helicopter force. From the beginning the idea that all the services should have a “piece of the action” plagued the operation and led to bad decisions. This was the first major mistake.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/apjinternational/apj-s/2006/3tri06/kampseng.html



Planning
In the realm of military planning there are plans that might work and plans that won’t work. In the cold light of history it is evident that the plan for Eagle Claw was in the second category, but since the planning process was deliberately kept compartmented and secretive, no outside group could review the finished plan for a “reality check.” This was the second major mistake.



The failure of the various services to work together with cohesion forced the establishment of a new multi-service organization.

The lack of highly trained Army helicopter pilots that were capable of the low-level night flying needed for modern special forces missions prompted the creation of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) (Night Stalkers).

And THIS was our Cold War army; the days when NORAD actually responded.

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


The assets in place were a Tehran CIA team led by noted special forces legend Richard Meadows, who were there for two purposes: (1) to obtain information about the hostages and the embassy grounds, and (2) to transport the rescuers from Desert Two to the embassy grounds with pre-staged vehicles. (In reality, the most important information came from an embassy cook who was released by the Iranians and discovered on a flight from Tehran at the last minute by another CIA officer, and who confirmed that the hostages were centrally located in the embassy compound - this was a key piece of information long sought after by the planners.)

Hard to know if this was from the movie version or from an E. Howard Hunt script ---

[defendandprotect]

69. Barbara Honegger/Reagan campaign . . . on sabotage of the rescue mission ---

Honegger: ... and then of course we have Richard Secord, Oliver North and Albert
Hakim. Richard Secord was one of the chief planners for the so- called failed
Desert 1 rescue attempt, North was involved in that rescue attempt, in the
mother ship, which was on the Turkish border awaiting the cue from Secord to fly
discussing the "sabotage" . . .


in and rescue the hostages, and Albert Hakim was in charge of the ground
operations of the rescue attempt, in particular, obtaining the trucks and other
vehicles which were going to be needed. Hakim skipped town, left Tehran 24 hours
before the rescue was to take place, and the reason for that, as detailed in my
research documentation, was that Secord, North and Hakim had no intention of
seeing Desert 1 carry through, and so sabotaged the operation. Narrator: The
hostage rescue team consisted of 8 helicopters, 6 C130 transport planes and 93
delta force commandos. But delta force never made it to Tehran. Only 5 of the 8
helicopters reached the site of Desert 1 in operable condition. According to
General Samuel Wilson, who investigated the many failures of the rescue mission,
the pentagon's review panel found negligence on a level surprising even to those
hardened to military incompetence. This is only one of many strange facts
surrounding the rescue mission. Honegger takes us back to Tehran during the
rescue attempt:

Honegger: There were a number of interesting incidences which occurred in Tehran
that night. The 53'rd hostage, Cynthia Dwyer, who was in Iran and who had not
yet been taken hostage, told Reverend Moore, an american minister who was there
and interviewing her at the time by phone, that the CIA had sabotaged the rescue
attempt. She told him that immediately after the so-called aborted failure.

Narrator: The failed rescue mission left 8 men dead and 3 helicopters in the
desert filled with classified documents which fell into the Iranian's hands.

Narrator: The possibility of Carter's success in bringing the 52 hostages home
sent tremors through the Reagan/Bush campaign headquarters. Honegger was working
for the campaign at the time:

Honegger: Richard Wirthland, who was the campaign's pollster, had determined
that an 'october surprise', which was a successful attempt by Carter to release
the hostages and bring them home before the election, would be the death knell
to a Reagan/Bush presidency. That was determined by Reagan and Bush's pollster
in march of 1980, which, not coincidentally, was one month before the sabotaged
Desert 1 rescue mission. Marshall: The Reagan people were extremely concerned
about what they termed 'The October Surprise', and Reagan's campaign manager,
William Casey, later to become the head of the CIA, was running what he termed
an 'intelligence operation' against the Carter camp. This first came out when
David Stockman revealed that Reagan had prepared for his TV debates with Carter
using a stolen briefing book. We know now that the espionage operation was much
broader than just stealing briefing books. It included former military officers,
CIA people, FBI agents and the like, who tapped into the Carter camp, into the
intelligence bureaucracy, to find out whether this october surprise would
actually happen, because if it did, it would have cost Reagan the election.


http://history.eserver.org/the-october-surprise.txt

[Bette Noir]

34. As near as I can tell,

Carter is the most recent Christian US President. Obama will be the next.

Just my opinion, but I don't see anyone else on the Washington scene with a scrap of decency.

[PittPoliSci]

71. exactly.

i don't really think carter was an effective president, but...WHO CARES?!?!!? He's a great humanitarian, and he's been doing much for the world since he left office.

McCain is a piece of shit, and needs to throw in the towel NOW.

[rwheeler31]

5. This is despicable. The big oily money love to blame Carter.

[defendandprotect]

16. Reflect on how much the MIIC might have hated Carter . . . the peacemaker . . .

Any peacemaker interferring with the warprofiteering going on was a danger to them!

[Ian David]

6. "This is the same guy who kissed Brezhnev." Oh, REALLY??? Did Carter hug Fidel Castro?

(Okay, actually that's cosmonaut Uri Gagarian)

But it DOES look like McCain (seen here with his first wife, who he cheated on with his current wife):



But THESE are real...

[asjr]

12. I know we have put up with Shrub and his

personality for 7-1/2 years and I have certainly poked fun at him. And, sighed a lot, but I have a feeling that McCain would be even worse. Shrub knows he has been playing a part all these years. I am afraid McCain would actually believe he was invincible if he won the presidency. To be such a small man his ego is monstrous.

[tblue37]

40. It's the bantam rooster syndrome. n/t

[defendandprotect]

18. After the first Jeff Gannon photo . . . it's Bush . .. and ?????

[Stardust]

31. He's Jim-Jeff Gannon-Guckert givin some luuuuuv....

[defendandprotect]

38. Is it him in those two photos? Come on . . . ???

[Ian David]

42. Tony Blair. n/t

[ashling]

7. If we had kept Carter's incentives for solar and conservation

we would be well on our way toward energy independence as well as cleaner energy.

McCain is not worthy to clean the mud from Jimmy's work boots.

[defendandprotect]

19. Carter put solar panels in the White House - Reagan ripped them out --- !!!

[truthisfreedom]

8. Oooh, let him talk, let him talk!

We need more of this, McFoot-in-mouth. More juicy things you'll have to take back.

[cstanleytech]

9. Hey now, we should all respect McCain for this,

after all if anyone knows lousy it should be McCain seeing as he graduated near the bottom of his class, right?

[Beausoleil]

82. Fifth from the bottom - 894th out of 899 - yeah, LOUSY!

Carter finished 59th out of his Naval Academy class of 820.

McCain started as an opportunist, his Naval career reflects this, his marriage reflects this, his congressional career reflects this and he continues as one as he tries to demean a fellow Naval Academy graduate who worked much harder to get where he got than McCain ever had to, in order to stroke his own ego.

[foxer]

10. Carter has a degree in Nuclear Engineering

[undeterred]

11. And he's the guy who smooches Bush,

who snuggles up with Evil.

[whistle]

13. That photo of John McCain looks like he is on death's doorstep

[salguine]

14. I've got something McCain can kiss, right here.

[kaye45]

17. What a classy guy

that's so junior high bully behavior - name calling, ad hominem attacks. what next, McCain puts vaseline on his front door knob?

[defendandprotect]

20. What do we think McCain's reaction would be if we called Reagan . . . "a lousy president" . .. ????

[last_texas_dem]

21. Loved the comment on the link from a reader

"And McCain is a lousy non-President... let's keep it that way!" :thumbsup:

[BlueStater]

23. And McCain is a lousy human being

So there.

[Larkspur]

24. Carter was a better President than Dubya and history is proving that Jimmy

had a better vision of the future than St. Ronny.

And Carter became something that McBush never will -- President of the United States.

[unblock]

25. FUCKING ASSHOLES ARE *STILL* RUNNING AGAINST CARTER!! GET OVER IT ALREADY!!

carter was president THREE DECADES AGO.

maybe we should remind everyone what a lousy president NIXON was. and what about HOOVER?

[kaye45]

26. Jeff Tubin said

for his generation Jimmy Carter might as well be James Polk

[unblock]

29. yeah. polk got us the northwest, the southwest, lowered tariffs, and established a treasury system

and, much like carter, was reviled for his contributions.

[kuratowa]

72. Napolean of the Stump

Austere, severe, he held few people dear
His oratory filled his foes with fear
The factions soon agreed
He's just the man we need
To bring about victory
Fulfill our manifest destiny
And annex the land the Mexicans command
And when the votes were cast the winner was
Mister James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump

In four short years he met his every goal
He seized the whole southwest from Mexico
Made sure the tarriffs fell
And made the English sell the Oregon territory
He built an independent treasury
Having done all this he sought no second term
But precious few have mourned the passing of
Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president
Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump

[struggle4progress]

55. Aw, give th'senile ole feller a break: ain't his fault he cain't rememba who he's running aginst

[Robb]

28. Good fuck. Carter is a goddamn statesman.

McCain sold his soul the moment he backed torture.

Carter was also prescient on energy.

I merely hope McCain lives just long enough for the public humiliation his trouncing at the polls will bring. Fuck you, McCain. Time to go write your book now.

[bronco214]

35. Carter

Although I am not a Christian, I applaud President Carter for
trying to show through example how he thinks Jesus wanted
Christians to live. He is one hell of a good man. 
How old is he and he still pounds nails for Habitat? Show me a
rich rethug politician that hits more that two nails after the
cameras go away! Show me a couple of them. No? Then show me
one. Never mind, didn't mean to waste your time. 

[Fridays Child]

39. And that book will darken my door on the day that my town runs out of toilet paper.

[orleans]

30. HA! (this coming from the piece of shit who sucks off george bush!) n/t

[daleo]

33. Carter was right about a lot of things

The environment, energy, peace rather than war...

Right-wingers hate that in a person.

[superconnected]

36. As my cube mate said a few weeks ago, to be a republican you have to be really stupid

or hate people.

Who could hate carter? Someone who hates people. Carters trademark is being peaceful and honest. It says a lot about Mccain that he hates him.

Meanwhile he likes bush - a warmongering murderer.

We really need to build mental facilities for the insanely right wing. I do believe it's a sociopathic disease.

[Divine Discontent]

41. exactly! they're against peace and those who push for it

and they're also against those who wish to make energy efficient and usable for the masses - however that will 'take' from the corporations' profits, and people like McSame are paid by them to tow the line.


One thing about McSame... he may be a lot like Shrub, but one thing he won't be if they don't enforce martial law or fake the results of the election - and that's a president!

Haha Johnny, I say... what a laughable candidate they've given us - at least Shrub was likable (not to me, but to the masses), even if he was stoopid!


New Obama Mama & McSame Items!
www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable

[Analitico]

43. Will he call Dubya the same?

Katrina, Iraq, housing slump, etc. etc.

[nwliberalkiwi]

44. President Carter And Nuclear Processing

I'd sure trust President Carter with knowledge about nuclear processing than I would, fourth to last in his class at the Naval Academy, McCain. I didn't see McCain being selected for nuclear training by the Naval Academy, but carter's training was in nuclear engineering.

[liberal N proud]

45. McSame needs to focus on today less he be reminded of the

cluster fuck bu$h is leaving us.

[poppysgal]

46. Just one question

pops into my head, who does he think was a good commander in chief?:scared:

[ryanmuegge]

47. Imagine if a Democrat had said this about a Republican ex-president.

[otohara]

49. Not As Lousy As Bush

Carter got down to 34% approval rating. Bush beats Carter on this one.

[virgdem]

50. What a sorry POS McSame is...

Carter has more stature and integrity in his pinky than McIdiot has in his entire body. And the statement about kissing Brezhnev - this from a guy that hugged Bush, the same one who slammed him in 2000. This moran really has some GD nerve slamming Carter.

[Zynx]

52. I want McCain to say with a straight face that Bush has been a good president.

[DailyGrind51]

53. If we had listened to Carter thirty years ago, we would not be

paying nearly $5/gallon for gasoline because our cars would go twice as far for the same money and we would already have a viable alternative to petroleum-based fuel.

[tritsofme]

54. 30%+ of the electorate probably wasn't politically cognizant during Carter's presidency.

He just looks like an angry old man.

Brezhnev who?

[minnesota_liberal]

56. Unless McCain recognizes that Chimpy is an absolute failure...

as a leader, a diplomat and commander in chief, his opinion on this matter is meaningless and his statement is worthless except as a sign that McCain is a partisan, mudslinging asshole.

[galledgoblin]

57. McCain proves his lack of historical hindsight

oh goodie, a presidential candidate who cannot learn from history!

Carter is probably the greatest-president-who-was-unappreciated-in-his-time. he was way ahead of the curve on a number of issues and the rest of the country was not ready to change with him. if we'd listened at the time, so many of the modern crisis' would have been defused before they began.

[Riddler]

58. This shit-for-brains asshole thinks chimpy is a good president, so who cares about his opinion

[minnesota_liberal]

70. Wish I'd said that

Oh. I did.

[BlueStater]

75. McCain is a total scumbag

Bush has lower approval ratings than Carter ever did but you won't see his butt buddy McCain call him a "lousy president".

[xxqqqzme]

59. mcblame hates President Carter because

1. only graduate of the Naval Academy to become President;
2. finished 59th out of his Academy class of 820; (mcclame was 894/899)
3. accepted into Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program run by Captain (later Admiral) Hyman G. Rickover;
4. Carter completed an introductory course in nuclear reactor power at Union College starting in March 1953.....This followed Carter's first-hand experience as part of a group of American and Canadian servicemen who took part in cleaning up after a nuclear meltdown at Canada's Chalk River Laboratories reactor.

Carter can kick mcshame's ass on any conversation about nuclear power.

If Carter's renewable energy projections, 30 years ago, had been followed, instead of gutted by st ronnie, we would be well on our way to being ME oil independent by today. Carter was a visionary. The people of the US didn't like hearing that they were going to have to sacrifice a little to get these huge rewards. The stupid sheeple disliked hearing such plain talk & so flocked to the wolf in sheep's clothing.

[roamer65]

60. Insane McSame is a lousy husband.

Look what he did to his first wife. Jimmy didn't do that to Rosalynn. Jimmy has more integrity in his nail filings than McSame has ever had in his whole bloated body.

[skooooo]

61. Yeah, Carter kept whining about....

....changing our energy policy, and getting off foreign oil. It was a real drag.

:sarcasm:

[Doctor_J]

62. I can't wait until the old dirt bag blows his stack at the debate

Obama might want to prompt him a little by obliquely bringing up the "cunt" incident

[ngant17]

68. Obama will never stoop to McSame's level

of ignorance. I don't think it is in his DNA at all.

[Arkana]

64. I do hope Jimmy responds.

[ngant17]

67. OK McSame, you are now officially a scumbag

in my book, you just went too far this time. I know this dumbass has a tendency to be his own worst enemy, he habitually puts his foot into his mouth, but he's just gone too far with me this time.

I have always considered Jimmy Carter as one of the great modern US presidents, on par with JFK. We actually had a chance to deal with "nuclear proliferation" during his day, a phrase which his daughter Amy was the first to use, if I recall correctly. And for a short time, it was actually legal to travel to Cuba during JC's presidency, without fear of being fined by OFAC. JC was a real peace president.

Mr. "Hundred-Year Wars" McSame, he's in the same category as the Old World monarchs, they all wanted the same thing. There was never a lasting and permanent peace, it's always a 100-year war or a thousand-year war or like Hitler, a grandiose 1000-year reich, which would really have been a permanent, never-ending war against anyone who they decide will be the enemy for any particular length of time.

McSame is coming from a time when clubbing a woman over the head and dragging her to a cave was considered both romantic and acceptable.

[LeftishBrit]

73. Kissed Brezhnev?

Well, considering that St Ronnie, whom no doubt McCain considers as a hero, was extremely friendly to Pinochet and various other very nasty Latin American dictators, to Botha in South Africa, Zia in Pakistan, and helped to build up the forerunners of the Taliban, McInsane seems a bit selective!

[brooklynite]

80. Actually, this is a more significant statement...

Once again, McCain is focusing on events and people that most voters today would be hard-pressed to remember. Another indication of how out of touch he is with the current generation.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

74. McCain has finally gone nuts and thinks he's running in '80

I find his homophobic insinuations to be pathetic.

[sudopod]

77. You should honor your elders, John.

There aren't too many of them left.

[defendandprotect]

78. If you've ever wondered about Carter's bad luck with rescue . . .

Secord, Hakim, North -- central figures in the Carter rescue missions ---
Edited on Sat Jun-28-08 08:58 PM by defendandprotect
At least three central figures in the Iran-Contra Scandal were involved with the Iranian hostage rescue mission: Secord, Hakim, and North.

General Richard Secord helped to organize the abortive rescue mission. After the first mission failed, he was the head of the planning group that eventually decided against another rescue attempt. Because the whereabouts of the hostages were unknown, the second rescue attempt (the October Surprise that the Reagan-Bush campaign was so worried about) never happened.

Secord was later suspended from his Pentagon post because of the EATSCO probe. EATSCO is a company that belongs to Edwin Wilson, the CIA operative who is currently serving time in a federal maximum-security prison for, among other things, secretly supplying 43,000 pounds of plastic explosives to Kadaffi. <21>

In 1981, he became Chief Middle East arms-sales adviser to Secretary of Defense Casper W. Weinberger. <21>

Albert Hakim is a wealthy arms merchant, an Iranian exile, and CIA informant, who had a "sensitive intelligence" role in 1980 hostage rescue. He worked for the CIA near the Turkish boarder, handling the logistics of the rescue mission in Tehran. Hakim purchased trucks and vans, and rented a warehouse on the edge of Tehran to hide them in until they were needed for the operation. Unexpectedly however, he skipped town the day before the rescue mission. <2> <13> <25> Later on, in July, 1981, Hakim approached the CIA, with a plan to gain favor with the Iranian government by selling it arms. <22>

Oliver North led a secret detachment to eastern Turkey. He was in the mother ship on the Turkish border awaiting the cue from Secord to fly into Teheran and rescue the hostages. <2> <25> After the first aborted rescue mission, he worked with Secord on a second rescue plan.

According to the October Surprise theory, Secord, North and Hakim did not intend Desert One to carry through. The miserable failure of Carter's Desert One rescue attempt may have been deliberate.SE


In the Shah days . . .
Albert Hakim, an Iranian-born arms merchant, was selling millions of dollars worth of arms to the Shah in the 70's. In 1983 testimony, he boasted of arranging Iran arms deals, setting up swiss bank accounts, and paying off Iranian officials. <20>

General Richard Secord worked at the time in Air Force Military Advisory Group. His job was to represent US arms merchants before the Shah. Hakim and Secord were in cahoots, and ran a company called Stanford Technologies Trading Group International. They eventually became deeply involved in the events of the Iran-Contra Scandal.

http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/104



Just a PS on this . . .

Major General James B. Vaught (US Army) was appointed Joint Task Force commander, and a team of officers was assembled to lead the various components, including: Colonel Charles A. Beckwith (founder of the Army’s new Delta Force counter-terrorist group) to be the ground assault commander; Colonel James H. Kyle (long-time USAF MC-130 special operator) to command the fixed wing contingent; and Marine Lieutenant Colonel Edward Seiffert (an experienced night-vision flyer) to lead the helicopter force. From the beginning the idea that all the services should have a “piece of the action” plagued the operation and led to bad decisions. This was the first major mistake.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/apjinternational/apj...



Planning
In the realm of military planning there are plans that might work and plans that won’t work. In the cold light of history it is evident that the plan for Eagle Claw was in the second category, but since the planning process was deliberately kept compartmented and secretive, no outside group could review the finished plan for a “reality check.” This was the second major mistake.



The failure of the various services to work together with cohesion forced the establishment of a new multi-service organization.

The lack of highly trained Army helicopter pilots that were capable of the low-level night flying needed for modern special forces missions prompted the creation of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) (Night Stalkers).

And THIS was our Cold War army; the days when NORAD actually responded.

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


The assets in place were a Tehran CIA team led by noted special forces legend Richard Meadows, who were there for two purposes: (1) to obtain information about the hostages and the embassy grounds, and (2) to transport the rescuers from Desert Two to the embassy grounds with pre-staged vehicles. (In reality, the most important information came from an embassy cook who was released by the Iranians and discovered on a flight from Tehran at the last minute by another CIA officer, and who confirmed that the hostages were centrally located in the embassy compound - this was a key piece of information long sought after by the planners.)

Hard to know if this was from the movie version or from an E. Howard Hunt script ---

[defendandprotect]

79. Barbara Honegger on the so-called "failed" rescue attempt ---

Barbara Honegger/Reagan campaign . . . on sabotage of the rescue mission ---
Edited on Sat Jun-28-08 11:31 PM by defendandprotect
Honegger: ... and then of course we have Richard Secord, Oliver North and Albert
Hakim. Richard Secord was one of the chief planners for the so- called failed
Desert 1 rescue attempt, North was involved in that rescue attempt, in the
mother ship, which was on the Turkish border awaiting the cue from Secord to fly
discussing the "sabotage" . . .


in and rescue the hostages, and Albert Hakim was in charge of the ground
operations of the rescue attempt, in particular, obtaining the trucks and other
vehicles which were going to be needed. Hakim skipped town, left Tehran 24 hours
before the rescue was to take place, and the reason for that, as detailed in my
research documentation, was that Secord, North and Hakim had no intention of
seeing Desert 1 carry through, and so sabotaged the operation. Narrator: The
hostage rescue team consisted of 8 helicopters, 6 C130 transport planes and 93
delta force commandos. But delta force never made it to Tehran. Only 5 of the 8
helicopters reached the site of Desert 1 in operable condition. According to
General Samuel Wilson, who investigated the many failures of the rescue mission,
the pentagon's review panel found negligence on a level surprising even to those
hardened to military incompetence. This is only one of many strange facts
surrounding the rescue mission. Honegger takes us back to Tehran during the
rescue attempt:

Honegger: There were a number of interesting incidences which occurred in Tehran
that night. The 53'rd hostage, Cynthia Dwyer, who was in Iran and who had not
yet been taken hostage, told Reverend Moore, an american minister who was there
and interviewing her at the time by phone, that the CIA had sabotaged the rescue
attempt. She told him that immediately after the so-called aborted failure.

Narrator: The failed rescue mission left 8 men dead and 3 helicopters in the
desert filled with classified documents which fell into the Iranian's hands.

Narrator: The possibility of Carter's success in bringing the 52 hostages home
sent tremors through the Reagan/Bush campaign headquarters. Honegger was working
for the campaign at the time:

Honegger: Richard Wirthland, who was the campaign's pollster, had determined
that an 'october surprise', which was a successful attempt by Carter to release
the hostages and bring them home before the election, would be the death knell
to a Reagan/Bush presidency. That was determined by Reagan and Bush's pollster
in march of 1980, which, not coincidentally, was one month before the sabotaged
Desert 1 rescue mission. Marshall: The Reagan people were extremely concerned
about what they termed 'The October Surprise', and Reagan's campaign manager,
William Casey, later to become the head of the CIA, was running what he termed
an 'intelligence operation' against the Carter camp. This first came out when
David Stockman revealed that Reagan had prepared for his TV debates with Carter
using a stolen briefing book. We know now that the espionage operation was much
broader than just stealing briefing books. It included former military officers,
CIA people, FBI agents and the like, who tapped into the Carter camp, into the
intelligence bureaucracy, to find out whether this october surprise would
actually happen, because if it did, it would have cost Reagan the election.


http://history.eserver.org/the-october-surprise.txt

[Vidar]

81. Doesn't mean much coming, as it does, from a lousy human being.

[fascisthunter]

83. Carter was an Honest President

McCain is a dishonest wannabe....

[LeftishBrit]

84. In any case...

considering that Obama was 19 when Carter's term ended, how exactly are the two connected?