If you haven’t heard it already, conservative religious rightwinger – Pat Robertson – said on his “700 Club” show that we should assassinate Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela.
Now, minus all of the boring details, this is what Pat Robertson said originally:
“If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. 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 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.”
Amid much public backlash here in America, from Venezuela, and from around the world, Robertson apologized today, 48 hours after he made the statement. In the “apology” (which was more of a clarification), he said he was misinterpreted.
“Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement,” he said in a written statement. I didn’t say ‘assassination.’ I said our special forces should ‘take him out.’ And ‘take him out’ can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time,”
Now, “take him out” to me means assassination.
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Tuesday that Robertson has the right of any private citizen to say whatever he wants but added that the broadcaster’s remarks “do not represent the views of the United States.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also dismissed Robertson’s comments Tuesday, saying “our department doesn’t do that kind of thing.”
Alvarez said the Christian Coalition, which Robertson started but no longer leads, claims some 2 million members and helped jump-start President Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign after his New Hampshire primary loss to Sen. John McCain.
He has suggested in the past that a meteor could strike Florida because of unofficial “Gay Days” at Disney World and that feminism caused women to kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians.
And that, my friends, is insanity.