17 kidnapped in Haiti ...

[T2C]

Carter was what he was, nicest guy who never should have been POTUS, but I'm not clear how the Iranian event could be put on his shoulders, assuming that was the reference. Beckwith spoke well of him in his book, and Beckwith didn't speak well of anyone! You may be privy to info I'm not, but for me, I'd give credit where credit due to Carter for green lighting that, knowing it was the make/brake his entire career dependent on the outcome. It was an audacious plan and risky, and it didn't end well and Carter told Beckwith to his face all responsibility as Commander In Chief was on him, and I respect Carter for that. That's leadership when it's not going your way, and it cost him bigly.

Personally, on that score, I don't see a parallel to Clinton, who turned his back on his duty as POTUS repeatedly for fear of losing an election and hurting feelings by not having OBL shot in the face.

Then there's Reagan, who then showed the US does negotiate with terrorists, set a terrible precedent there, and that seems to be ignored and overlooked.

Jimmy Carter failed to take action for months. Carter thought he could negotiate with the terrorists holding the hostages in Iran.

President Reagan did negotiate with key terrorists during the early to mid 1980's by having the military kill them. President Reagan was not perfect and he spent a great deal of time trying to unfoul what Jimmy Carter did during his failed presidency.

[Averageman]

My Brother was on Haiti with an Green Beret team many years ago.
These guys were acting in a LEO capacity until LEOs could be trained.
My Brother said there was a murder an hours for two and a half days.
The favorite weapon was a machete.

[SteyrAUG]

The thing is though, they live for this stuff. They'll love nothing more than to send a message about what happens when you screw with our citizens.

I understand that part, but if we lose "one f'ing guy" on a Haiti op, I'm gonna be livid. It's a risk / reward thing. If we want to let JSOC play, they can conduct training ops on our southern border.

[Pappabear]

They need to pull one out of the Russian playbook and slay them all.

We just play too nice too often and it puts Americans in danger. DEVGRU op and call it. We want to buy the terrorist lunch and talk.

PB

[jbjh]

Jimmy Carter failed to take action for months. Carter thought he could negotiate with the terrorists holding the hostages in Iran.

President Reagan did negotiate with key terrorists during the early to mid 1980's by having the military kill them. President Reagan was not perfect and he spent a great deal of time trying to unfoul what Jimmy Carter did during his failed presidency.

Not to give Carter too much slack, but no one in Iran had forgotten Operation Ajax in 1952, which brought the Shah into power. And we backed his B.S. the whole time. He gave Central American governments a run for their money.

So once we allowed the Shah into the US for medical treatment after the Iranian Revolution, the Ayatollah refused to deal with Carter. Kind of a personal F.U.

Also, once the true hard-liners had taken over completely, the Iranians wouldn’t deal directly with American negotiators. Negotiations had to go thru the French-speaking Algerians, who didn’t speak Persian. And of course the Iranians didn’t speak French. It’s amongst the most cocked-up diplomatic episodes I’ve read about.

And don’t forget that Iraq invaded Iran in Sept 1980. That took up a bit of bandwidth.


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[SteyrAUG]

Not to give Carter too much slack, but no one in Iran had forgotten Operation Ajax in 1952, which brought the Shah into power. And we backed his B.S. the whole time. He gave Central American governments a run for their money.

So once we allowed the Shah into the US for medical treatment after the Iranian Revolution, the Ayatollah refused to deal with Carter. Kind of a personal F.U.

Also, once the true hard-liners had taken over completely, the Iranians wouldn’t deal directly with American negotiators. Negotiations had to go thru the French-speaking Algerians, who didn’t speak Persian. And of course the Iranians didn’t speak French. It’s amongst the most cocked-up diplomatic episodes I’ve read about.

And don’t forget that Iraq invaded Iran in Sept 1980. That took up a bit of bandwidth.


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So we picked a side and went with the least radical Pahlavi dynasty. If I'm not mistaken the UK and the US built most of that oil drilling infrastructure so why hand it over to the crazy bunch?

As an aside, Carter was actually the person who DID finalize the negotiations for the release of US hostages in exchange for unfreezing Iranian bank accounts. They just waited for Reagan to be sworn in before finalizing the deal so Reagan usually is given credit. Not a huge fan of Carter, the President, but he did spend his last hours securing their release. Whatever he did wrong prior to that he spent his last days trying to fix it rather than get reelected so at least he did that right.

The whole thing was generally a fiasco that we should have seen in advance. The Shah wasn't exactly a nice guy and the only good thing you could really say about him was he wasn't as brutal as his father, but he still had more than a few human rights abuse problems.

But that is pretty much the way of the world over there, you either get an ayatollah or an assahola. If you don't have a strong grip on power you will soon be out of power. Only smart play we ever did was back Saddam and we even managed to f that one up in the end. Not saying Saddam was a nice guy but he did preside over a mostly secular arab state which ain't easy. Once he went to war with Iran we picked our side again and went with the least crazy guy.

[jbjh]

For sure Carter stuck that out until he got word the plane had left the ground.

If the Iranians had followed the lead of the Saudis, it might have gone better. But fears of Iran aligning with the Soviets probably added weight to the decision to go ahead with rigging the election.

All-in-all, another CIA dumpster fire.


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[SteyrAUG]

For sure Carter stuck that out until he got word the plane had left the ground.

If the Iranians had followed the lead of the Saudis, it might have gone better. But fears of Iran aligning with the Soviets probably added weight to the decision to go ahead with rigging the election.

All-in-all, another CIA dumpster fire.


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The problem with the CIA is they got away with it ONE TIME in Guatemalan back in 1954 and thought they could use it as a standard play anywhere and any time they wanted. And from that point on it was one failed "QB sneak" attempt after another.

Iran wasn't really a coup so much as a partnering up with the lesser of two evils. And all we really did was fund the people we wanted in power, we didn't overthrow anything by force. We provided financial assistance, intelligence and military training, it was far less than we did in Vietnam in the early days with advisors.

[T2C]

For sure Carter stuck that out until he got word the plane had left the ground.

If the Iranians had followed the lead of the Saudis, it might have gone better. But fears of Iran aligning with the Soviets probably added weight to the decision to go ahead with rigging the election.

All-in-all, another CIA dumpster fire.


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Jimmy Carter did not want blood on his hands from the war that was coming with Iran, due to his incompetence, after he left office.