Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter blasted George W. Bush's presidency as "the worst in history" in international relations and denounced British PM Tony Blair's relationship with Bush as "Abominable, Loyal, blind, apparently subservient," in interviews over the weekend.
Carter told NBC's "Today Show" that he had confined his remarks to the war in Iraq and what he called the lack of 'peace efforts' between Israel and the Palestinians.
Carter was quoted in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Saturday's editions as saying "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."
The Democrat said Bush had overseen an "overt reversal of America's basic values" as expressed by previous administrations, including that of his own father, former President George H.W. Bush.
The White House dismissed Carter yesterday as "increasingly irrelevant" after his harsh criticism of President George W. Bush.
But Carter said today he was responding to a question comparing this administration's foreign policy with that of Richard Nixon. He says Nixon had what Carter calls a "good and productive foreign policy."
Asked about the White House's comments about relevancy, Carter said "I don't claim to have any relevancy. I have a completely unofficial capacity. The only thing I lead is the Carter Center."
But Carter went on to say that he always writes a report when he visits other countries, including monitoring Palestinian elections, and always shares it with whichever president is in office. As he puts it "I have not been timid about sharing my opinion with those leaders, but obviously I don't have any authority."
The former president was speaking from Louisiana, where Habitat for Humanity is beginning construction of its one-thousandth house along the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina.
Thousands Of U.S. Troops Search For 3 Missing Soldiers
Thousands of U.S. troops are continuing to search for three soldiers believed to have been captured by al Qaeda in Iraq, they have made several arrests and questioned hundreds of people.
A group claiming allegiance to al Qaeda said at the weekend it had the men.
The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, posted a message on a website saying it was holding "crusader" soldiers.
It warned the U.S. military to stop searching for the trio and said the men were taken in revenge for the alleged rape and murder of a teenage girl by American troops a year ago.
"Your soldiers are in our hands. If you want their safety, do not look for them," the 'Islamic State of Iraq' said on a militant website.
You should remember what you have done to our sister Abeer in the same area."
Troops backed by helicopters and jets are combing orchards and farms and have erected roadblocks in a massive hunt for the missing soldiers.
The soldiers went missing after an ambush killed five soldiers Saturday on their military convoy in a region south of Baghdad that has been called the Triangle of Death.
Commander are under fire for lack of military support for the small venerable convoy and taking one hour to respond to the fallen soldiers.
It was the same area where two U.S. soldiers were abducted by al Qaeda insurgents last June.
Their mutilated and booby-trapped bodies were found days later after a search by thousands of troops.
Other developments Reported By CNN
• Insurgents in Baghdad killed 10 people in two attacks on Tuesday, a bombing strike at an outdoor market and mortar fire near Sadr City, authorities in Iraq said.
• Insurgents kidnapped nine workers from Iraq's largest oil refinery on Monday amid concerns among the U.S. military about security at the facility, police in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit said Tuesday.
• Three U.S. soldiers, one Marine and one U.S. airman were killed Monday in Iraq in three incidents, the U.S. military said. The soldiers' deaths bring to 49 the number of U.S. troops killed this month in Iraq, 3,400 U.S. military personnel have been killed since the war began more than four years ago. Seven civilian contractors also have died.
• Baghdad police found 18 unidentified bodies dumped across the capital Monday, an Interior Ministry official said, adding that 293 corpses have been found across the capital so far this month.
• Coalition forces detained 11 "suspected terrorists" on Monday, including "one individual suspected of conspiring directly with al Qaeda in Iraq senior leaders." He was picked up in Baghdad, the military said. Other raids took place in Ramadi, Hit and Karmah, all west of the Iraqi capital.
The Taliban's most prominent military commander, a one-legged fighter who orchestrated an ethnic massacre and a rash of beheadings, was killed in a US-led military operation in southern Afghanistan.
Mullah Dadullah, a top lieutenant of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was killed yesterday in the southern province of Helmand, according to reports by Afghanistan's intelligence service.
A Nato statement confirmed his death, saying it had dealt the insurgency ``a serious blow''.
Dadullah is one of the highest-ranking Taliban leaders killed since the fall of the hard-line regime following the US-led invasion in 2001.
His death represents a major victory for the Afghan government and the international coalition that has struggled to contain a Taliban-led insurgency wracking the south and east of the country.
Dadullah's body was shown to reporters at a news conference in the governor's compound.
But Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, denied that the Taliban commander had been killed. ``Mullah Dadullah is alive,'' Ahmadi insisted.
In December, a US airstrike near the Pakistan border killed another top Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani. Dadullah, Osmani and policy-maker Mullah Obaidullah had been considered to be Omar's top three leaders.
Dadullah, who comes from the southern province of Uruzgan, lost a leg fighting against the Soviet army that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s. He emerged as a Taliban commander during its fight against the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan during the 1990s, helping the hard-line militia to capture the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
An ethnic Pashtun, the group that makes up the core of the Taliban and is prominent in eastern and southern Afghanistan, Dadullah led a Taliban massacre of ethnic Hazaras in 1999 in the province of Bamiyan, where the Taliban in 2000 destroyed two large, ancient Buddha statues carved into a hillside cliff.
Since the Taliban's ouster in late 2001, Dadullah emerged as the group's most prominent and feared commander. He often appeared in videos and media interviews, and earlier this year predicted a massive militant spring offensive that has failed to materialise.
FBI Arrest 6 Men In Plot To Attack U.S. Army Base Fort Dix
The FBI has arrested six foreign born Muslim men in connection with an alleged plot to attack an army base in the United States.
Prosecutors claim the men, who are from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, planned to use automatic weapons to kill as many soldiers as possible at the Fort Dix base in New Jersey.
The men are being described as "Islamic militants", but officials say there is no evidence of any links to international terrorism.
The video shop clerk called the Mount Laurel Police Department, after he had been asked to copy footage of the men firing guns and chanting onto a DVD, who in turn contacted the FBI.
The FBI says it infiltrated their group after a video shop clerk told local police.
And thus began the downfall of one of the most thoroughly infiltrated and documented group of terrorism suspects in recent history.
Six men from Yugoslavia and the Middle East who were charged Tuesday with plotting to slaughter scores of American soldiers at Fort Dix and perhaps other military installations in the Northeast.
The suspects' images and words were captured on more than 50 audio and video recordings. Their comings and goings were recorded by law enforcement agents who monitored the alleged plot for 15 months, hoping more terror ties would become apparent.
The defendants, all men in their 20s, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out Fort Dix. Their goal was "to kill as many American soldiers as possible" in attacks with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and guns, prosecutors said.
The arrests brought renewed worry among New Jersey's Muslim community. Hundreds of Muslim men from New Jersey were rounded up and detained in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, but none were connected to that plot.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter blasted George W. Bush's presidency as "the worst in history" in international relations and denounced British PM Tony Blair's relationship with Bush as "Abominable, Loyal, blind, apparently subservient," in interviews over the weekend.
