Carter pans Bush’s first six months

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, July 24, 2001

Associated Press

PLAINS, Ga. — In a rare instance of one former president criticizing a current one, Jimmy Carter is taking issue with just about everything George W. Bush has done in office.

Carter criticizes Bush for not pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, for threatening to abandon the anti-ballistic missile treaty and for not supporting human rights more strongly.

He says Bush has ignored moderates in both parties and calls Bush’s proposed missile defense shield a "technologically ridiculous" idea that will "re-escalate the nuclear arms race."

"I have been disappointed in almost everything he has done," Carter told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in an interview last week from his home in Plains.

Carter noted that he had volunteered to be one of the few Democrats at Bush’s inauguration because he was optimistic about the administration.

"I hoped that coming out of an uncertain election he would reach out to people of diverse views, not just Democrats and Republicans but others who had different points of view," Carter said. "I thought he would be a moderate leader, but he has been very strictly conforming to some of the more conservative members of his administration, his vice president and his secretary of defense in particular. More moderate people like Colin Powell have been frozen out of the basic decision-making in dealing with international affairs."

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