Poor Jimmy Carter . . .

The only President worse than him in recent memory is George W. Bush and he's so obsessed with erasing the disaster that was his administration, that he'll attack Bush on anythimg.

Carter's administration has now done the nearly impossible - moved up from worst Presidecny of the post-World War II period to the 2nd worst Presidential Administration since World War II. His administration was an utter disaster from start to finish (anyone else remember singing "Cause Jimmy Carter has a way of screwing up teh USA to the tune of the Oscar Mayer weiner song?)

Had Carter the courage in 1979 to have the Marines protect the US Embassy in Iran from the student rioters, there would have been no hostage crisis and it is likely that we would have avoided the series of events that eventually lead to the current War in Iraq because Middle Easterners would have known we meant business The events I refert to specifically are the US support for and arming of Iraq in its 1980-1988 war with Iran, which emboldened Iraq to invade Kuwait in 1990 in order to recoup its financial expenses from that war. However, President H.W. Bush's US Ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, played a "small" part in letting Iraq think that the US wouldn't oppose its Iraq invasion.

That of course led to one well conducted war and over ten years of no-fly zones before the 2nd Iraq War.

Getting back to the main point, had Carter any real courage during his Presidency, these later events would not have happened in the way they did and the Global position of the U.S. would be much enhanced.

All the good works in his post-Presidency can't make upfor his disastrous administration. All he can hope for is to be rated better than W. Bush. I doubt that'll be hard at this point, but he'll never get higher than W.