Pat Robertson's Crazy Claim: Chavez Has Links To Osama How does a televangelist obtain so-called top secret intelligence that our own FBI/ CIA doesn't have?
Pat Robertson's obsession with Hugo Chavez gets funnier and funnier.
Now, he's saying that after 9/11 Chavez gave a million dollars to Osama
bin Laden and that Chavez is trying to buy nuclear materials from Iran:
(from here)
"The
truth is, this man is setting up a Marxist-type dictatorship in
Venezuela, he's trying to spread Marxism throughout South America, he's
negotiating with the Iranians to get nuclear material and he also sent
1.2 million dollars in cash to Osama bin Laden right after 9/11,"
Robertson said.
"I apologized [for, I assume, calling for
Chavez's head] and I said I will be praying for him, but one day we
will be staring nuclear weapons and it won't be (Hurricane) Katrina
facing New Orleans, it's going to be a Venezuelan nuke," Robertson
said.
"So my suggestion was, isn't it a lot cheaper sometimes
to deal with these problems before you have to have a big war," he
added. Asked how he had obtained information on Chavez giving money to
bin Laden, Robertson said: "Sources that came to me. That's what I was
told."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has a new best friend: television evangelist Pat Robertson.
I love "Sources that came to me." -- you
know, Pat Robertson's extensive sources in the intelligence community
that told him and no one else ... pure gold.
But Mr. Robertson's slide from the mountain peak of evangelical
pontification was not because of his politics but because of his mouth.
When his words were not ill-advised, they were moronic; when not
callow, downright loopy, as in: predicting God would curse Orlando with
a hurricane if gay-pride events were celebrated at Disney World;
wishing a nuclear bomb would be dropped on the State Department; and
suggesting that America had it coming on Sept. 11 because God had been
insulted "at the highest level of our government."
Anyway, on the
subject of Robertson's apparent disdain for all forms of government to
the left of the Libertarian Party, I wish just once someone would ask
him something like, "Hey Pat, you know how you hate socialism and all,
did you ever notice that that guy who founded the religion you're
supposed to represent, was kind of, you know, a big fucking socialist?"
I'm
not even just talking about the obvious stuff that everyone brings up
like the time the rich guy asked Jesus what he should do the get
eternal life and Jesus told him, "Give all your money to the poor and
follow me.":
19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit
adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud
not, honor thy father and mother. 20 And he answered and said unto him,
Master, all these have I observed from my youth. 21 Then Jesus
beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go
thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow
me.
The
above is often commented on ... it immediately precedes Christ's
well-known dictum "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Less
well known, however, is that in the later books of the New Testament
there are direct descriptions of the organization of the early
Christian community that sound pretty damn socialistic. Take for
instance this quote from Acts:
There
was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses
sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at
the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles
gave the name Barnabas (which means "son of encouragement"). He sold a
field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the
apostles' feet. (Acts 4:34-37)
"It was distributed to each as any had need"-- Someone should ask Pat Robertson if that reminds him of another famous quotation...
I've
never understood why Christians of Robertson's ilk are hell-bent on
using every little line of every weird old myth in the Old Testament
literally, but when it comes to the actual words of the founder of their
religion and the material dealing with the structure of early Christian
society, it's, "Well, you know, Jesus liked to talk in parables..."
