WorldNetDaily: Robertson: Time to assassinate Chavez

WorldNetDaily quotes Robertson: "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination. But if he [Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it."

Five years ago, I would have said that Pat Robertson was crazy to talk that way. But that was before the Manhattan Incident of 2001. Indeed, also from WorldNetDaily, we now learn that Hugo Chavez gave the Muslim terrorist organization known as "The Base" a cool million US dollars after that Incident. We have that on the word of a former officer in the Venezuelan Air Force.

Robertson is still wrong on one count: you don't send a sniper in to kill the leader of a foreign power unless you first declare war against that power--or that power has first declared war against you, or worse, sneak-attacked you. This hasn't happened yet--or has it? A million dollars in cash to an organization at war with this country is arguably an act of war.

But the biggest argument against Robertson's plan is that Chavez might have created a successor already, and no viable opposition would be prepared to sweep Chavez' hangers-on out of power. If Chavez has a ready-picked successor, then killing him will do no good, and war would be inevitable.

That said, the US ought to do something about a man who gives a million dollars to a terrorist organization and starts building a Communist bloc in Latin America, after we thought that Communism in the Americas was limited to Castro's Cuba.