Reuters – 2007-10-15 23:15:21

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1026419120071010

WASHINGTON (October 10, 2007) — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney as a “disaster” for the country and a “militant” who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.

Cheney has been on the wrong side of the debate on many issues, including an internal White House discussion over Syria in which the vice president is thought to be pushing a tough approach, Carter said.

“He’s a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world,” Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.

“You know he’s been a disaster for our country,” Carter said. “I think he’s been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he’s prevailed.”

Asked to comment on Carter’s remarks, Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the Republican vice president, said, “We’re not going to engage in this type of rhetoric.”

Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981 and won the 2002 Nobel Peace prize for his charitable work, is a strong critic of the Iraq war and has often been outspoken in his criticism of President George W. Bush.

In a newspaper interview in May, Carter called the Bush administration the “worst in history” in international relations.

Carter did have kind words in the BBC interview for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“I’m filled with admiration for Condoleezza Rice in standing up to (Cheney) which she did even when she was in the White House under President George W. Bush,” Carter said, referring to Rice’s former role as White House national security adviser.

“Now secretary of state, her influence is obviously greater than it was then and I hope she prevails,” Carter added.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President George W. Bush’s administration tortures detainees in defiance of international law, former US president Jimmy Carter charged Wednesday.

“I don’t think it, I know it, certainly,” Carter told CNN television when asked if he believed the US administration allowed the use of torture.

Carter rejected Bush’s statement last week that the United States does not torture terror suspects.

“That’s not an accurate statement, if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored, certainly in the last 60 years, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated,” Carter said in the interview.

“But you can make your own definition of human rights and say, ‘we don’t violate them.’ And … you can make your own definition of torture and say ‘we don’t violate it,'” said the former Democratic president and Nobel laureate.

Asked if Bush was lying, Carter said: “The president is self-defining what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners, yes.”
Those who commit torture were violating international law, Carter said.

The White House rejected Carter’s comments and reiterated that the administration does not condone torture.

“The United States does not torture,” spokeswoman Dana Perino told AFP in an e-mail.

“The president has not authorized it, nor will he. Our interrogation methods are tough, safe, necessary and legal. And our country is being protected,” Perino said.

On Sunday, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the United States appears to be torturing terror suspects.

Interviewed on Fox News Sunday, Pelosi said reported interrogation tactics such as simulated drowning, head slapping and exposure to extreme temperatures all amounted to banned torture.

The New York Times reported last week on a 2005 memo by the Justice Department that allegedly authorized harsh techniques in interrogations of “war on terror” suspects — in the same year that Congress explicitly banned the use of torture.