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.

Battlestar Gallactica's Occupation/Resistance Theme

Thas been the occupation/resistance theme on Battlestar Gallactica, that began with a series of webisodes over the summer to give the fans small fixes until the return of the show.

What was compelling about that storyline is that it showed how a conspiracy (the resistance) forms and how its aims are not always domination at first but distraction. During that storyline Col. Tighe gins up the resistance to harass the occupier Cylons and maintain morale until Admiral Adama can return with the Battlestar and stage the rescue.

Additionally, others have written about the above story line being a critique of the US occupation of Iraq. That may be an interesting post-modern point. I enjoy that critique, but still want our troops to succeed in their mission of pacifying Baghdad and restoring enough order for the Iraqi government to finish the job. Therefore I choose to view that storyline as fitting into the very American meme of David defeating Goliath in an epic struggle (e.g., The Revolution, Civil War and WWII) to achieve/retain freedom.

Bush Didn't Lie About WMD

Andrew Sullivan is very articulate in making a point I have tried to make repeatedly in the past: EVERYBODY was convinced that Saddam had WMD.

BUSH DIDN'T LIE: I'm sympathetic to the president's case that he was not the only one who supported war against Saddam because of the threat of WMDs. The consensus at the time - and it was shared by opponents and supporters of the war - was so overwhelming that Saddam's WMDs were a premise of everyone's case, pro and con. Maybe Scott Ritter and Baghdad Bob get a pass on this. But not many others. Nevertheless, all the rest of us were wrong. Were we lied to? I see no reason yet to believe we were - in the strong sense that deliberate untruths were consciously uttered. Was the post-9/11 atmosphere sufficient to blind many people to the possibility that they might be wrong about this premise? Certainly, that's the case for me. I wasn't skeptical enough. I followed the groupthink. I shouldn't have. It's also true, I think, that in the effort to ensure that the CIA was doing its job, some around the veep's office and elsewhere may have seized on materials of dubious, if not discredited, validity. In retrospect, they were not skeptical enough either - and they have a much higher responsibility in this respect than bloggers or even Democrats who do not have full access to the full intelligence.

One point Sullivan neglects is that it is also possible that the the US and the West were the victims of both Saddam's posturing to gain power and an aggressive disinformation program conducted by the Iranians (including Mr. Chalabi).