"He is the quintessential fool."

Fool? Well, Carter never expected politics in the US to descend to the point that it did - He never expected a well financed private intelligence operation to be mounted against him. He never expected Israeli intelligence to use that private intelligence operation to their own ends - for that matter, no one in the US counter-intelligence community did - but little surprise there -

The result, of course, was the complete frustration of the Camp David accords, and the placement of large numbers of settlers on the West Bank by Begin without US opposition by Reagan.

"He booted the Shah out of Iran to give us Khomeni and his mad mullahs instead."

The intelligence communtiy failed Carter completely and gave no warning as to the Iranian popular resentment against the Shah, resentment due in part to the corruption that surrounded the Shah's circle, but mainly due to the Shah's co-operation with Israel. Do you wonder why our intelligence services so completely missed that resentment? I don't.

"His cabinet was the most corrupt and incompetent since U S Grant"

The Burt Lance "affair" was trivial to non-existent compared to Halliburton, Enron or the S&L scandals. As a matter of fact, the region Lance's banks served suffers to this day from the lack of financial institutions.

I believe that a close investigation of the Bert Lance "affair" and the principals behind the prosecution would produce quite interesting and revealing results. It certainly is a story ripe for reporting, but one which I have neither the time, resources, or background to work. If anyone happens to know of a good account online, please direct me to it.

As far the failure of the coup to seize control of Venezuelan oil goes, I am not certain on this, but I believe that Russia may have now shut off sales of oil to Israel. With the rather complete shutdown of the Iraqi pipelines due to guerilla activity, that should mean that Israel is dependent on the US for its oil supply, pursuant to Kissinger's 1974 guarantee.

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