The Unsurprising Jimmy Carter & Yasser Arafat

Beneath the headline “Carter: McCain 'milking' POW time,” - USA Today reports:

Former president Jimmy Carter called Republican presidential candidate John McCain a "distinguished Naval officer," but said the Arizona senator has been "milking every possible drop of advantage" from his time served as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Carter spoke Thursday with USA TODAY ahead of Barack Obama's acceptance speech to cap off the Democratic National Convention.. …

The rest of the story’s here.

Comments:

There’s nothing selfish, smug, or downright mean spirited former President Jimmy Carter does that's surprising.

His "milking every possible drop of advantage" cheap-shot, bad as it is, is nothing near as revolting as was his wrath-laying tribute to Yesser Arafat this past April.

From an April 20 JinC post: Carter pays respects to a Monster.

Almost all of America’s MSM has ignored former President Jimmy Carter’s tribute to “the father of terrorism,” Yasser Arafat.

From Cybercast News Service:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter laid a wreath of red roses at the grave of Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat during a visit to the West Bank City of Ramallah on Tuesday.

"He and Mrs. Carter and his son Jeff wanted to pay their respects to President Arafat," Carter's trip director Rick Jasculca told Cybercast News Service. …

The entire CNS story’s here.

Now this from the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby’s Nov. 11, 2004 column:

Yasser Arafat died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg.

In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster.

In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."

God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea!

Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich?

Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity. …

Jacoby’s entire column’s here.

A person with reasonable judgment and a bit of moral fiber wouldn’t lay a wreath at Afafat’s tomb.

But Jimmy Carter did.

And now he criticizes McCain.