Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Elder statesman and loose lips

The Times Online has quoted former US President Jimmy Carter saying this:
Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

All of which is rather disturbing and not because he deviated from the Israeli line of nuclear ambiguity. The international community saw the Israeli Prime Minister do that approximately year ago, although to be fair to Olmert, unlike Carter, he did not specific the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

What is disturbing is having a former president casually remarking in public security information which he was privy to only because of his role as a President about a current US ally. Jimmy Carter is an old man, who in recent years has been acting rather imprudently in public and cavorting with a whole host of rather unsavory international characters so it begs the question - just what information has he been sharing and with who.

I am not suggesting, no matter how odious I find Mr. Carter’s beliefs, that he is not a US patriot, but Mr. Carter has very definite ideas so would it be so outrageous to suggest Mr. Carter would act in accordance to what he judges is in the best interest of US foreign policy rather than leaving foreign policy decisions to any given duly elected US administration?

The Americans have never before been faced with an elder statesman who might being going senile in a very public way – perhaps its time to ground him by pulling his passport and monitoring his communications.

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