According to the Religious Reich, if you are a one-day old blastocyst, your life is absolutely sacred. If you are a 53-year-old democratically-elected president of a large South American country that is the 5th-largest producer of petroleum in the world, then perhaps your life isn’t so sacred. And if you criticize US policies and leaders, calling them out on attempts to replace you by coup or assassination, and work to keep your national oil industry under close watch of the government to control corruption, well, then, your democratically-elected ass ain’t worth two-tenths of a tick’s turd in a Texas tornado*
At least not to Christian Mullah Pat Robertson:
Robertson accused the United States of failing to act when Chavez was briefly overthrown in 2002.
“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Robertson said.
“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.”
“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.”
Oh, well, as long as we keep getting our oil, what’s a little murder between democratically-elected governments?
You know, I am A Positive Christian Atheist, but I’m still flipping through Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John looking for that passage on justifiable assassination. Maybe the more devout readers out there can point me in the right direction.
* Ever since Dan Rather retired, I’ve been infected with his home-spun aphorisms…
** “Strong-arm dictator?” That’s what we call democratically elected leaders that we don’t like.
