Christian televangelist and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson’s televised cavalier comments on August 22, 2005 on his 700 Club show ? “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 $200bn 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?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 is a dangerous enemy to our south controlling a huge pool of oil.” ? were irresponsible, sophomoric, and detrimental to US foreign policy. His flippant comments at a time of bilateral discord have been morphed into a veiled assassination threat that President Hugo Chavez is sure to latch onto full boar. This is precisely the commentary that the US diplomatic and business communities had wanted to avoid because it energizes and validates the firebrand leader’s proclamations that the US is out to get him.

This enforces his contention in late July 2005 that so-called US Operation Balboa (WAR Report) is an attempt to invade Venezuela and overthrow him. He regularly proselytizes about the US CIA’s efforts to unseat him forcefully, about the US-backed failed coup in 2002, about US funding opposition parties to incite civil discord, and about the US harboring terrorists wanted in Venezuela (WAR Report). Chavez has said, for example, “We have a lot of evidence, not just rumors, that there are people [reference: US] who think the only solution is to kill Hugo Chavez?We’ve increased our security and intelligence a lot. If that madness happens, they will regret it.” The US has consistently discounted his accusations. Chavez has gone so far as to say publicly in February 2005: “If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States.”