Rush Takes on 'Disastrous' Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter has called the recent Palestinian voting "a beautiful election" and said "there's a good chance" that Hamas will reject violence.

Those comments raised the dander of radio's No. 1 talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who said they were "no surprise, coming from a man who has never missed a chance at appeasement."

Rush went further, blasting Carter for his frequent criticism of the Bush administration's handling of various problems.

"The irony is that President Bush wouldn't have to deal with these problems if Carter hadn't created them," Rush writes in the Limbaugh Letter.

Rush makes these points:
There would be no flap over domestic wiretapping if Carter hadn't signed the "patently unconstitutional" 1978 law requiring the president to get a warrant to conduct surveillance within the U.S.

"According to the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief; no sitting president has the authority to surrender those powers," Limbaugh stated. "But Jimmy Carter did."
Until the Carter administration, the CIA had been paying off the mullahs in Iran who opposed the shah, an American ally. Carter ordered these payments stopped.

"You remember the rest: The storming of the embassy, the botched rescue attempt, and murder on a scale that made the shah look like Mr. Rogers," Rush reports.

Limbaugh quotes Charles Scott, an Army attaché at the American embassy in Iran, who said: "Iran walked away with no cost in blood or treasure. It was a green light to terrorists worldwide - a sign that the U.S. will let you off scot-free. That's the reason for the birth of organizations like al-Qaida."
Carter's perceived weakness emboldened the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan - "the end result of which was the Taliban," Rush noted.

"Another consequence of the shah's fall was the Iran-Iraq war. Thanks to that, Saddam invaded Kuwait. Which brought us Desert Storm, which was a catalyst for Osama bin Laden."

What's more, Iran - "now being led by one of the thugs who held our people hostage - is about to go nuclear."

Rush concludes: "In short, Jimmy Carter was a disaster, and after one term the American people chucked him back to the peanut farm."