11 October 2007

Jimmy! Take me on a genocide tour.


An admission: Jimmy Carter has been conspicuously absent from this here blog. And I admit it: I have a certain fancy that stays with me for Carter, despite his Bono-esque Liberalism. It may have something to do with a certain speech he once gave, but I digress.

So what has Jimmy Carter done this time? Published a book with a provocative title that is completely unjustified by its text? Taken me on a genocide tour? No. Worse. CNN is reporting that, in an interview with the 15-time softball Cy Young Award winning Wolf Blitzer (yay newsvertising), Jimmy Carter said:

"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights...We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused."

Now let's think about this. Jimmy Carter was born in 1924, in the great state of Georgia. Think about it. Even in the most generous reading, in which the human rights he is discussing are specifically those of the Geneva Conventions, it is still somewhat, err, problematic.

Jimmy, take some advice from NewsBlues. Stick to what you are good at: building homes and winning Nobel Peace Prizes.

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