http://au.news.yahoo.com//050823/19/vmnz.html
Tuesday August 23, 11:13 PM
Christian figure calls on US to murder Venezuelan president
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson urged the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is a "dangerous enemy," Roberts told watchers of his "The 700 Club" television show.
"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson, 75, said in a live broadcast Monday from Christian Broadcasting Network headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Robertson's incendiary comment came at the close of a long report by his CBN news team on Chavez's anti-US rhetoric and growing links to both President Fidel Castro's communist Cuba and Arab nations.
The television preacher and former presidential candidate expressed regret that during a brief and failed civilian-military coup against Chavez in April 2002 the United States did nothing to help topple the populist leader.
Since then, Robertson said, Chavez "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," he said.
Eliminating Chavez would be "a whole lot cheaper than starting a war," said Robertson.
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," said the Christian leader.
"We don't need another 200 billion dollar 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."
The Biblical ten commandments, generally considered one of the foundation stones of Christianity, contain the instruction "Thou shalt not kill."