Monday, 21 May 2007CAIRO ÔÇö Former US president and Nobel Prize winner Jimmy Carter believes that the Bush administration is the worst ever in American history, assailing his administration for eliminating the line between church and state.
"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a phone interview excerpts of which posted on its website.
He lamented how Bush has taken a "radical" departure from all previous administration policies.
"The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me," said Carter who was president from 1977 to 1981.
"We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered."
Without a UN mandate, Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims that the regime was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction that could in the future pose a threat to the US or its allies.
The claims were later refuted by a US presidential report and Bush had admitted basing his war decision on bad intelligence.
Carter also rapped slammed Bush for his bad policies in the Middle East.
"For the first time since Israel was founded, we've had zero peace talks to try to bring a resolution of differences in the Middle East," he said.
"That's a radical departure from the past."
Religious Ideology
The ex-president accused the Bush administration of eliminating the line between church and state.
"The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said.
"As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one."
Carter offered a harsh assessment for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone.
Bill Clinton, who served as president from 1993 to 2001, has rapped the ideological policies of the Bush administration and the ruling Republican party.
He said the growing strength in recent decades of the "ideological, right-wing" elements had been realized in Bush's administration and Republican-led Congress.
An analysis by New York Times published on May 13 showed that the number of earmarks ÔÇö individual federal grants that bypass the normal appropriations and competitive-bidding procedures ÔÇö for religious organizations have increased sharply in recent years.
From 1989 to January 2007, Congress approved almost 900 earmarks for religious groups, totaling more than $318 million, with more than half of them granted in the Congressional session that included the 2004 presidential election.
Constitutional lawyers argued that because the First Amendment prohibits direct government financing of religious activities, earmarks that steer money to religious groups pose constitutional risks.
Several faith-based earmarks were successfully challenged as unconstitutional long after Congress approved them, according to the Times
May 21, 2007
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Monday, 21 May 2007
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