What on earth ...?
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he warned President Bush before U.S. troops invaded Iraq that the United States would sustain casualties but that Bush responded, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
White House and campaign advisers denied Bush made the comment, with adviser Karen Hughes saying, "I don't believe that happened. He must have misunderstood or misheard it."
Robertson's comments came to light on a day when Bush portrayed himself as an aggressive leader who understands the costs of the war on terrorism, while depicting opponent John Kerry as out of touch about the risks.
"The next commander in chief must lead us to victory in this war and you cannot win a war when you don't believe you're fighting one," Bush told hundreds of supporters in a farming community in Iowa, where he and Kerry are in a close race.
Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville, Tenn., before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.
"He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,' and I warned him about this war," Robertson said.
"I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.' 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be.' And so, it was messy. The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy."
Traveling with Bush in the Midwest, Hughes said political adviser Karl Rove was in the Feb. 10, 2003, meeting with the president and Robertson in Nashville, but Bush never said there wouldn't be casualties in Iraq.
"Obviously, we already had casualties in Afghanistan at the time. If you look at that, that (the comment) was not consistent with what was going on," she said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "Of course, the president never made such a comment."
Robertson released a statement about Bush late Wednesday in which he said, "I emphatically stated that I believe 'the blessing of heaven is upon him' and I am persuaded that he will win this election and prevail on the war against terror in order to keep America safe from her avowed enemies."
... That sequence of things doesn't even vaguely make sense. Clearly, Bush lied, and lied lavishly, to the people about the Iraq war. But even he wouldn't be so brain damaged as to say that there wouldn't be any casualties, surely.
And if Robertson was going to come out and say something that apparently damaging to Bush, why would he then turn around and say that "the blessing of heaven is upon him and I am persuaded that he will win this election..."
One must wonder if perhaps there's something biologically wrong with dear Pat, or if he's just now going right round the bend. (Well ... more than he normally is, anyway.) This is not the sort of statement -- or sequence of statements -- calculated to get his deeply conservative followers into the booth to vote for Bush. At best, he's just said that the blessings of heaven are on a man who declines to follow God's advice, which can't be terribly encouraging.
Posted by iain at October 21, 2004 02:29 PM
