Ohiocore

You know those murky pronouncements made by extremist religious figures that call for such-and-such to be killed? They always seemed kind of strange and far away to me. Like what did Salman Rushdie ever do to you, jackass.

But did you ever wonder what it would sound like if instead of addressing throngs of bearded Iranians, the pronouncement was made in English, stateside, by somebody more familiar? Well, it might sound exactly like Pat Robertson.

Transcript at MediaMatters:

From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

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. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. 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.

Impressive, isn't it? I wonder if we will express as much forgiveness and love of free speech (the Administration struggled to even call his remarks "inappropriate") when in some other country, some other prominent figure of some other religion is calling for the assassination of some other foreign heads of state. Like Muqtada al Sadr advocating a suicide bombing of Tony Blair, or Bin Laden calling for snipers to go after W.

Try Pat Robertson brand FatWA: "We put the FAT White Anglo in FATWA."

From the Miami Herald: "Soldiers regained control of a number of oil wells in Ecuador's northeastern Amazon region on Friday after six days of protests brought oil production to a halt and prompted the government to declare." The recovery represents 20 of the 80 wells in the Libertador oil field. Although 25%, these are apparently the lesser wells, representing less than 15% (30,000 of 201,000 barrels) of previous daily output.

The basic shakedown that the local people and elected officials want wider distribution of the oil wealth. That is, they'd like to see some of the benefits. Predictably, the soldiers and "Petroecuador" have other ideas.

Well, we got Election Workers Kidnapped and Publicly Killed... Is that ok?

Read to the end of the NYTimes article to get to punch line:
"Your American ambassador is giving an Islamic character to the state," the Kurdish leader said. "You spent all this money and all this blood to bring an Islamic republic here. We are very worried."

From NYTimes:

A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the FBI in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the FBI Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the FBI's Washington field office to share the information.

...

The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001

BUT:

Colonel Shaffer said that he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving.

Steven Vincent, wrote for the (July 31) New York Times: "An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations - mostly of former Baath Party members - that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment."

Vincent himself was killed less than a week later by the same police force: www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/international/middleeast/03cnd-iraq.html

Try John Hopkins: "Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Since War"