Carter calls Guantanamo an embarrassment, Iraq war unjust

BIRMINGHAM, England – Former President Carter said Saturday the detention of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base was an embarrassment.

Carter also criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq as “unnecessary and unjust.”

“I think what’s going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.,” he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance’s centenary conference in Birmingham, England. “I wouldn’t say it’s the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.”

Carter said, however, that terrorist acts could not be justified, and that while Guantanamo “may be an aggravating factor … it’s not the basis of terrorism.”

Carter, who won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, has been an outspoken critic of the Iraq war.

“I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false,” he said Saturday.

The Baptist World Alliance, comprising more than 200 Baptist unions around the world, was formed in London in 1905.

An estimated 12,700 delegates gathered in the city of Birmingham in central England for the conference. Carter was due to lead a Bible study lesson during the conference.