Wednesday, August 24, 2005

liar, liar

here's text of the ap story. i admit, i have bolded some stuff. here's a link to the ap story (via the la times)

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson insisted Wednesday that he did not call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, despite comments broadcast on his program two days earlier.
"I didn't say 'assassination,'" Robertson said Wednesday on his Christian Broadcast Network show "The 700 Club" about remarks reported by The Associated Press and other media outlets.
"I said our special forces should 'take him out."Take him out' could be a number of things including kidnapping.
"There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time."
But a video of Monday's telecast shows that Robertson's exact words were: "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."
He continued: "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."


okay, you didn't say, "we should go assassinate him." you did say, "we really ought to go ahead and do it." and, "we have the ability to take him out, and i think the time has come that we exercise that ability." and finished with, "it's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

and pat, i like your defense, "take him out could mean kidnap him." good cover. the point that you're missing is this: the u.s. does not have the right to go and assassinate/kidnap/whatever foreign leaders just because they oppose us. should we have bumped off chirac because france was against our little mess in the mid east? should we bump off putin because they don't always agree with us? what about our neighbor to the north, paul martin? is he next? canada has socialized medicine, and is pretty lefty. do we "take him out?" which, of course, can happen through many ways other than assassination.

your apology rings much hollower than it already did when you added on that "defense".

4 comments:

Adam said...

He should have just kept his mouth shut if he was going to say something like this. Jeez...

Adam said...

It's also really hard to deny things and change words around when there is audio/video footage of you saying these things.

edluv said...

yeah, exactly. "the ap misquoted me which isn't surprising" except, dumas, that we have the freakin video of you saying it. now, maybe we misunderstood and you really meant some other nuance of "take him out" but most of us are going to link it with your previous sentence about assassination.

Unknown said...

Pat Robertson has embarassed a lot of people. He should be taken out. Understand that however you will.