Statement of Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez
The following is the statement released on Tuesday from the Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Alvarez, concerning Pat Robertson's comments:
"We would like to thank the people of the United States for the support they have offered us after the Reverend Pat Robertson openly called for the assassination of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. All day today at the Embassy we have received hundreds of messages of support and solidarity from Americans.
We feel extremely disappointed by Pat Robertson's comments on the television Christian Broadcast Network. Reverend Pat Robertson is no ordinary citizen. Robertson ran for president of the United States. The Christian Coalition, whose leader is Reverend Robertson, has close to 2 million members and receives millions of dollars every year. In 2000, his support was key in giving George W. Bush the primary election win in South Carolina, which clinched his nomination for the Republican Party for the office of president. Mr. Robertson has been one of President Bush's strongest allies. His statement should be strongly condemned by the White House.
Mr. Robertson's call for the government of the United States to secretly assassinate President Hugo Chavez is a clear incitement to terrorism. The request that he made to President Bush to violently enforce the antiquated Monroe Doctrine in Venezuela is a clear request for the American government to intervene in the sovreign matters of our democratic nation.
The United States cannot permit its citizens to use its territory to incite terrorism and the assassination of a president of another country who was democratically elected. Venezuela calls on the United States to respect domestic and international laws concerning our country and our president.
Pat Robertson's statements should be condemned by the Bush administration in the strongest possible terms because we are worried about the security of our president. It is essential for us that the government of the United States guarantees the safety of President Chavez in the future, including when he travels to address the United Nations in New York.
The messages we have received from many American citizens clearly demonstrates that when Pat Robertson called for the assassination of President Chavez he was not speaking for Christians in the United States nor in the name of the "Christian Coalition"
Check!
Meanwhile you might've heard about Chavez' offer for millions of impoverished American citizens so the following article comes from the Venezuelan daily El Universal:
Chavez Offers Reduced Price Gasoline to Poor Americans
After assuring that the American evangelical pastor Pat Robertson's call for the White House to assassinate him is "so much blather", President Hugo Chavez set forth a plan to sell reduced price gasoline and petroleum products directly to the poorest areas of the United States, without the use of intermediaries [middle men]. "We are very worried about the rising levels of poverty that have occurred in the United States".
Moments before boarding the plane which was taking him from Cuba to Jamaica, Chavez declined to speak about the grandiloquent statements by the American cleric, saying he he hadn't heard them and had no idea who Robertson was.
However Cuban Fidel Castro, who was seeing off the president [Chavez] at the international airport Jose Marti in Havana, spoke: "Only God can punish crimes of such magnitude... I always say that God helps Chavez and his friends".
"We are looking over the books on a number of operations, on how many barrels of petroleum [we produce] and how to lower energy costs. "It's time to talk about these things", said Chavez, who recommended that the preacher "talk about life" instead.
The president did not just repeat his offer of a few weeks ago for Americans to participate in "Miracle Mission", a plan to offer surgery to people affected by eye disorders and his plan to train 200,000 doctors in the next ten years but also his proposition to sell "cheap" gasoline to the most impoverished.
"A barrel of Venezuelan gasoline is at 80 (dollars). If we sell this fuel in New York or San Francisco it'll cost double that... because there are intermediaries [middle men] who speculate, which increases the prices and exploits the consumers. We are prepared to sell fuel [directly] to impoverished communities," he said.
I should mention that "Miracle Mission" has now conducted 50,000 eye surgeries on Latin American patients. Most of those were done for free (to the patient). This is part of Chavez' "oil for doctors" swap in which Cuba gets extremely cheap gasoline in exchange for sending thousands of doctors to Venezuela and participating in plans like "Miracle Mission" to restore people's eyesight.
You think Chavez is going to be re-elected in 2006? His poll numbers look a heck of a lot better than Bush's, that's for sure.
Checking the White House website, I see zero references to Pat Robertson's remarks. Well, at least not this week. Let's look at them shall we?
From a Press Briefing on February 26, 2002:
Q Ari, on Thursday on the 700 Club, Pat Robertson said -- and I quote him directly here -- "I have taken issue with our esteemed President in regard to his stand in saying Islam is a peaceful religion. It's just not, and the Koran makes it very clear." Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham -- both of whom are not, incidentally, known here at the White House -- have said more or less the same thing.
So I wonder if you could offer the President's reaction to their assessment that Islam in its totality is not exactly a peaceful religion, and how it conflicts with what the President has tried to say, both publicly and worldwide about Islam?
MR. FLEISCHER: Major, I haven't talked to the President directly about what Pat Robertson has said. But I would refer you to the visit the President took to a mosque on September -- I think it was the 17th. Within one week of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania, the President visited a mosque here in the Washington community to send a signal that Islam is a peace-loving religion. And throughout the various meetings that the President had with members of Congress, even in the week prior to that, right after the attack, the President urged members of Congress to remind Americans that Arab Americans love our flag just as much as anybody else and that Islam is a religion of peace.
Q Does he believe these comments from someone who is as well-known and as widely watched as Reverend Robertson undermined that attempt by the President to send this message?
MR. FLEISCHER: I think all Americans, virtually all Americans, agree with the President on that position. Anybody who doesn't is stating an unfortunate view.
So that's Pat Robertson saying Islam isn't a peaceful religion. Of course it isn't. Neither is Christianity. I mean if you're going to judge things like invasions and wars by the religion of the country's leaders, then neither is.
Another press briefing, this time October 9, 2002:
Q Ari, a Washington Post editorial on Sunday strongly criticized the President for what they termed "averting his gaze from the defaming of Islam and the gross distortions which they attributed to the Reverend Franklin Graham, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, and to Pat Robertson. And my question is, does the President agree with the Washington Post's claim that these three are, "defaming with great distortions," so that the Washington Post editors are better informed on comparative religion than these three Baptist Church leaders?
MR. FLEISCHER: Les, I'm not familiar with the specific quotes you cited, so --
Q You didn't read the Washington Post on Sunday?
MR. FLEISCHER: I was, as you know, not in Washington on Sunday, I was traveling with the President. So forgive me if I missed an editorial.
Q You'll take it. All right. (Laughter.)
Q Falwell called Mohammed a terrorist, the prophet Mohammed.
MR. FLEISCHER: Assuming, of course, that that's an accurate quote -- I haven't read it, myself -- the President's views on Islam are well-known. The President has said many times in his visits to mosques and his visits with Muslim leaders and his invitations for Muslim leaders to come here, as an important signal of America's openness and welcoming of Muslims, that Islam is a religion of peace.
Q And so he will disagree publicly with these three church leaders?
MR. FLEISCHER: You know the President's position, it is exactly as I stated --
Q Why can't you say whether he repudiates their remarks or not?
MR. FLEISCHER: Simply because I'm not aware of specifically what they've said, David. But there should be no --
Q The remarks have been out there for some time and are pretty well documented.
MR. FLEISCHER: Again, I don't -- I have a long pattern, as you know, if I haven't seen the remarks, I always want to make certain that everything I'm hearing is accurate. But there should be no misunderstanding, you've all seen it with your own eyes, you've traveled on the trips the President has taken to these mosques and to these visits. It's a very important part of America's openness and tradition of tolerance.
So even though Robertson, Falwell and Graham's statements on Islam are well-known, Bush refuses to denounce them.
Another briefing, December 10, 2002:
Q Follow on Islam, just for a moment. Has the President broken with his friends, Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson because of this situation? Has he spoken to them directly?
MR. FLEISCHER: Connie, I can only describe to you what the President feels in his heart and what he speaks and what he is proud to say. I don't say it in reference to what anybody else may or may not say. My job is to characterize to you accurately, and I hope with a little feeling today, about what the President thinks, because I think it's really important that you understand the depth to which the President, as a man of faith himself, believes in what he says when he talks about Islam being a religion of peace.
Still no denouncement.
Another briefing, October 14, 2003:
Q Scott, a couple things. Pat Robertson said this weekend that he wanted to nuke the State Department. The direct quote is, "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer. You've got to blow that thing up." Does the President have any reaction to that?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes. I think that, one, he has since said that he should not have said that and changed what he said. But I do not view those as helpful comments. And it was wrong for him to say that.
This time a denouncement. But notice Robertson is once again making clearly terroristic comments. He is clearly inciting terrorism and yet he was never punished. Just mildly rebuked for making "unhelpful comments".
This time a gaggle, from October 21, 2004:
Q Pat Robertson is sticking by his story. I know you spoke on this yesterday, but --
MR. McCLELLAN: I think what I -- what I said yesterday still stands. You know, the -- what I said yesterday still stands.
I'm not sure what he is referring to since the October 20 briefing doesn't mention Pat Robertson at all. I don't know if it's been wiped off the White House website or what becaue it's referring to a CNN interview with Robertson:
In a remarkable interview with CNN, well-known conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has told of a meeting he had with President G.W. Bush shortly before the ongoing Iraq War.
Robertson noted that Bush seemed supremely confident of himself, and that Bush inexplicably insisted that there would be no casualties in the upcoming war in Iraq -- a statement with which Robertson strongly disagreed.
The White House has confirmed that the meeting took place, but says that Robertson's characterization of Bush's comments is false.
More on this from CBS. Need I mention that Karl Rove sat in on the meeting between Bush and Robertson? Meanwhile the White House never denied what Robertson said was true, only that his "mischaracterized" Bush's remarks.
And now of course more silence...
Meanwhile a search for the word "poverty" that isn't related to foreign countries last came on April 28, 2005 and was in the middle of Bush making a pitch for his Social Security plan.
Sigh...
This has been cross-posted from Flogging the Simian, where you are humbly invited to visit
Peace
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