Two points for admitting that he got tooled by genocidal lunatics. But several thousand points off for pretending that it could have worked out any differently. And then an additional loss of a point for shamelessly lying about how the State Department may or may not have agreed with him:

Rice said Tuesday the Bush administration explicitly warned former President Jimmy Carter against meeting with members of Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip and which is regarded by the U.S. as a terror group... "I just don't want there to be any confusion," Rice said. "The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help" further a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians...

Carter won no specific concessions from Hamas. He defended his trip during remarks Monday in Jerusalem. He said he failed to convince the top Hamas boss, Khaled Mashaal, that he could gain international goodwill if he stopped rocket fire on Israel for one month. "I did the best I could," Carter said. "They turned me down, and I think they're wrong." In an interview with NPR, Carter said the State Department did not warn him off the trip. A State Department spokesman in Washington took issue with that on Monday, and Rice was more blunt in her account Tuesday.

According to the previous AP report on Carter's quest to bolster the world's most intransigent lunatics, "Hamas has repeatedly confounded observers with its conflicting messages." Yes, it's very confusing how Hamas declares that they're going to eradicate Israel and then they try to kill Israelis. You need years of academic Middle East Studies training and an internship in a top foreign policy think tank to crack that nut.

References:
* Rice says Carter was warned against meeting with Hamas [AP]
* Carter says Hamas willing to be Israel's neighbor [AP]

Previously:
* Jimmy Carter: Hamas Made Up of "So-Called Terrorists"
* Peres Notifies Carter: Actually You're Kind Of A Vicious Tool
* Is Jimmy Carter Just An Old-Fashioned Christian Fundamentalist, Anti-Semitic Bigot?