Former US President Jimmy Carter blasted George W Bush's presidency as "the worst in history" in international relations and condemned Prime Minister Tony Blair for his loyal relationship with Bush in interviews released yesterday.
"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said in a telephone interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from the Carter Centre in Atlanta.
"The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me," Carter told the newspaper.In an interview on BBC radio, Carter slammed Blair for his tight relations with Bush, particularly concerning the Iraq war.
"Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient," Carter said when asked how he would characterise Blair's relationship with Bush.
"I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world," Carter said.
Carter, who was US president from 1977-1981 and won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his charitable work, was an outspoken opponent of the invasion of Iraq before it was launched in 2003.
In the newspaper interview, Carter said Bush has taken a "radical departure from all previous administration policies" with the Iraq war.
"We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered," Carter said