[Mb-civic] Jimmy Carter blasts Iraq War

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0731-04.htm
Published on Sunday, July 31, 2005 by the Associated Press
Carter Criticizes Iraq War, Detentions at Guantanamo
'Unnecessary and Unjust'
by Cassandra Vinograd
 

BIRMINGHAM, England -- Former President Carter said Saturday the 
detention of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base was 
an embarrassment and had given extremists an excuse to attack the 
United States.

Carter also criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq as "unnecessary and 
unjust."

"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a 
disgrace to the U.S.A.," he told a news conference at the Baptist World 
Alliance's centenary conference in Birmingham, England. "I wouldn't 
say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to 
potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable 
acts."

Carter said, however, that terrorist acts could not be justified, and that 
while Guantanamo "may be an aggravating factor ... it's not the basis 
of terrorism."

Critics of President Bush's administration have long accused the U.S. 
government of unjustly detaining terror suspects at the Guantanamo 
Bay Naval Base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. Hundreds of men 
have been held indefinitely at the prison, without charge or access to 
lawyers.

"What has happened at Guantanamo Bay ... does not represent the 
will of the American people," Carter said Saturday. "I'm embarrassed 
about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted 
excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people."

Earlier this month, Carter called for the Guantanamo prison to be shut 
down, saying reports of abuses there were an embarassment to the 
United States. He also said that the United States needs to make sure 
no detainees are held incommunicado and that all are told the charges 
against them.

Carter, who won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, has been an outspoken 
critic of the Iraq war.

"I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was 
unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was 
launched were false," he said Saturday.

The Baptist World Alliance, comprising more than 200 Baptist unions 
around the world, was formed in London in 1905. The headquarters of 
the alliance, which meets in a different location every five years, 
moved to the United States in 1947.

An estimated 12,700 delegates gathered in the city of Birmingham in 
central England for the conference. Carter, a Sunday school teacher in 
his hometown of Plains, Ga., was due to lead a Bible study lesson 
during the conference.

He praised British police and intelligence services for the swift arrests 
in connection with the July 21 failed bombing attempts on London's 
transit system.

"I'm very proud to be in a nation that stands so stalwart against 
terrorism with us," he said. "The people of my country have united our 
hearts and sympathy for the tragedy that you have suffered from 
terrorism."

© 2005 The Associated Press

###

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