thou shalt kill

barry made a point of telling me about this story before i left the house for work today...

pat robertson—scion of the religious right, former presidential candidate, and host of the 700 club—likes the murder. you could even say pat ♥ murder. he ♥ the murder so much that he endorses it on the tv!

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's The 700 Club.

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

"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," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

is there any doubt left that the american religious right and organizations like the christian coalition are functionally equivalent to the taliban? we have a prominent religious leader proudly promoting the murder of someone he disagrees with. in islam they call that a fatwa. and not just any old murder: he is in favor of assassinating the leader of a fellow "christian" nation that has not attacked us; he suggests this would be easier than going to war with venezuela, a war he presumably would also support.

and am i the only one who thinks this usa today poll sucks? what loaded, leading responses... there are basically two responses for "agreeing" with pat, though the second answer is technically "no" so you can say, well, i agree with everything pat says but i don't want to explicitly promote murder (though exactly what constitutes "toppling" chavez is unclear... these sorts of things usually include mass violence and terrorism as a matter of course). there's a third "we should leave them alone" answer, but no choice for "chavez is right and robertson is wrong". though that's not surprising, as the corporate media in the US isn't much more fair to chavez and his poor-folk-lovin' ways than the corporate media in venezuela is.¶