← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Jack Cassidy
Thread ID: 15409 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2004-10-22
2004-10-22 16:59 | User Profile
[url="http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/21/news/robertson.html"]http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/21/news/robertson.html[/url]
Evangelist says Bush ought to admit error
By David D. Kirkpatrick The New York Times
October 22, 2004
The evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson set off a partisan firefight after telling a television interviewer that President George W. Bush had serenely assured him that, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties" in the invasion of Iraq.
In an interview on CNN broadcast Tuesday night, Robertson said Bush's comment was made during a meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, in February 2003, at which he warned the president before the invasion to prepare the public for casualties.
Robertson, a former marine who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, said that he had had "deep misgivings" about the war but that the president looked "like a contented Christian with four aces," as Robertson put it, using a quotation from Mark Twain.
"I mean, he was just sitting there like, 'I am on top of the world,"' Robertson said.
"The Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy," Robertson continued, adding that he wished Bush would acknowledge his mistake.
The White House disputed Robertson's recollections and Democrats pounced on the chance to make Bush contradict the televangelist, a prominent supporter.
"Is Pat Robertson telling the truth when he said you didn't think there'd be any casualties, or is Pat Robertson lying?" Mike McCurry, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, asked on the campaign trail in Waterloo, Iowa.
"I think given the prominence of Reverend Robertson's remarks today, it would be important for the president to indicate whether in fact he told Pat Robertson that he did believe there'd be casualties in Iraq," McCurry said.
A chorus of White House officials denied that Bush had ever uttered the remark. Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and Scott McClellan all told reporters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on Wednesday that Robertson had been mistaken.
"Of course the president never made such a comment," said McClellan, the White House press secretary.
"The president both publicly and privately was preparing the American people for the possibility of a military conflict and the possibility that sacrifices may be necessary."
Rove, the president's chief political adviser, said that he attended Bush's meeting with Robertson in Nashville in February 2003 and that he had not heard those remarks. "I was right there," Rove said.
Some political and theological allies quickly dismissed Robertson's account. "I think he speaks for an ever-diminishing group of evangelicals on most issues," said Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Robertson had developed a habit of recounting what he says God has told him on matters of public interest, and Land said he was out of step with most evangelicals in his doubts about the war.
In the same interview on CNN, Robertson reversed himself on a previous prophecy. On a broadcast of his "700 Club" television show in January, Robertson declared that Bush would win the election "in a walk," adding, "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be a blowout election in 2004."
On CNN on Tuesday, however, Robertson conceded, "I thought it was going to be a blowout, but I think it's razor-thin now." Still, he said, he believed Bush would win an Electoral College victory.
Pollsters say that Robertson's views of the war reflect a growing skepticism among evangelical Protestants about the invasion of Iraq, but they still support both the invasion and the president much more strongly than other groups.
In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in mid-September - after the conventions but before the debates - a majority of evangelical Protestants said they think that Bush is not being honest about the way things are going in Iraq. Forty-eight percent said Bush was mostly telling the truth but hiding something about the way things are going in Iraq, and another 15 percent said he was lying. Thirty-four percent said he was telling the entire truth.
Still, in a Pew Research Poll released Wednesday, 67 percent of white evangelicals said the United States had made the right decision in invading Iraq.
Twenty-four percent said the decision was wrong. Ten percent did not know or refused to answer. Seventy percent said they plan to vote for Bush and 22 percent for Kerry.
In contrast, 46 percent of the general public thought the invasion had been the right decision, while 42 percent thought it was wrong.
The support for each of the two candidates was roughly even.
Jodi Wilgoren reported from Waterloo, Iowa, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
2004-10-22 17:05 | User Profile
I'm glad this came from Robertson. His reputation is perhaps the best among all prominent evangelists (save for his prayers to divert hurricanes away from VA Beach). I know I believe him 100%, and I certainly believe him over the White House.
2004-10-22 19:35 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]I'm glad this came from Robertson. His reputation is perhaps the best among all prominent evangelists
That's a fearsome thought! :lol:
(save for his prayers to divert hurricanes away from VA Beach) Never heard this story > I know I believe him 100%, :huh: > and I certainly believe him over the White House.[/QUOTE]That takes more like 1% :lol:
I just think weasily Pat is trying to cover his rear-end now that the war is turning South and the Bush campaign may go down. I hear the sound of the rats jumping off a sinking ship.
2004-10-22 20:55 | User Profile
[B]and I certainly believe him over the White House. [/B]
I believe Bozo the Clown over this White House.