TV preacher Pat Robertson’s appearance on CNN last night has been generating plenty of attention, but I think there’s more to this than meets the eye.
The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, “We’re not going to have any casualties.”
Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion. He described Bush in the meeting as “the most self-assured man I’ve ever met in my life.”
[…]
“And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, ‘Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.’ ”
Robertson said the president then told him, “Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.”
Robertson said on CNN that he received a “word of knowledge” from God, who told him that Iraq would be a “disaster” and “messy.” The TV preacher then warned the president, the story goes, but Bush discounted the threat because he thought we wouldn’t have any casualties.
This makes so little sense, it’s hard to know where to start. But I think many of my friends on the left are looking at this incorrectly. The phrase “according to Pat Robertson…” are four words that should never precede anything trustworthy.
First of all, CNN has treated this as a pretty significant development, but the truth is, this story is months old. Robertson was on Hardball in June and said largely the same thing.
“I warned the president. I only met with him once. I said, ‘You better prepare the American people for some serious casualties.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no, our troops are, you know, so well protected, we don’t have to worry about that.'”
That’s a little different than “we’re not going to have any casualties,” but let’s not quibble. There’s a larger point here.
As regular readers know, I’m certainly inclined to believe the worst about Bush, so it’s easy to accept the notion that the president foolishly underestimated the likelihood of casualties in Iraq. But in this particular case, the source is the most important detail. Anyone who believes Pat Robertson is credible is making a mistake.
He said the alleged meeting happened in Nashville, before the invasion took place. Bush was in Nashville for the Religious Broadcasters’ Convention on February 10, 2003, where he could have very well have met up with Brother Pat. Fine.
But we’re talking about a radical televangelist who hates everyone not like him, who blamed liberals for 9/11, and has called for nuclear bombs to fall on the U.S. State Department. He has bizarre and incomprehensible ideas about natural disasters; he believes Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists are the “spirit of the anti-Christ“; and once wrote a book asserting that George H. W. Bush may be “unknowingly and unwittingly carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the dominion of Lucifer and his followers.”
Robertson is — how do I put this gently? — a loon. Just because he says Bush said something doesn’t make it true.
That said, it would be fun to see how Scott McClellan responded to a couple of very simple questions:
1. Did the president meet with a crazed TV preacher shortly before the war and seek his advice? If so, why?
2. Did the president really tell this TV preacher that “we’re not going to have any casualties” in Iraq?
If the White House confirms that Bush and Robertson chatted about the upcoming war in Iraq in February 2003, it would point to a disturbing relationship between the president and a hate-filled televangelist. If McClellan says the meeting never took place, the White House would effectively be calling one of Bush’s most reliable religious right allies a liar.
Any White House press corps members willing to give this a shot?