Who Would Jesus Assassinate ?  

Dominionist lunatic Pat Robertson says that its time to assassinate Hugo Chavez (via Seeing The Forest). Why ? Apparently because the US has some sort of right to Venezuela's oil.

The quote is almost funny in its complete inversion of reality - Orwell would have loved this sort of thing ("War is Peace", "Ignorance is Strength" etc) - socialist Venezuela is apparently a base for "Muslim extremism", the US announcing doctrines about their "sphere of influence" gives them the right to assassinate elected leaders, Chavez had been overthrown by a "popular coup" but US government inaction supposedly allowed it to be overturned (what exactly is a popular coup anyway - isn't a coup by definition anti-democratic ?).

I'm no expert on religion in general or Christianity in particular but this sort of thinking does tend to strike me as being somewhat different in approach to what Jesus taught his followers...

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.