Pat Robertson

I'm going to preface this peice with the fact that I am not an expert on the Christian political right of this country. I won't pretend to know its real leaders from people who were formerly its leaders or consider themselves leaders yet really hold no real political weight. However, when people talk about Christian Conservatives, one of the leaders of the Christian Right that I know of who seems to get more attention than most is the very dubious Pat Robertson of the 700th Club. Far be it for me to describe why I call him dubious, I'll let his words speak for himself:

"There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

I'm not digging far to find this quote. He said it on air, tonight on the 700th Club. August 22nd will hopefully mark the beginning of the end of what little credibility he had left. If any reader considers themself a devout Christian, I hope you don't align yourself with these sorts of views. I'm no theologian, but I can safely say that Jesus did not advocate political assassinations.

Check out the video at http://mediamatters.org/items/200508220006