Houston Democrats

But, you may be thinking, Pat Robertson has only made a terroristic threat against the sovereign government of Venezuela by advocating the murder of Hugo Chavez--he didn't actually carry out those threats. Here's the evidence Colin Powell would start off with:

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson caused heartburn in Washington and consternation in Latin America on Tuesday in calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

"I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war," Robertson said during Monday evening's broadcast of "The 700 Club," his Christian news-talk television show. "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."

But why should Venezuela sit around and wait to respond after the terrorists have struck? That would be madness. Any sane application of President Bush's doctrine of preventive wars against states that harbor potential terrorists would thoroughly justify Venezuela attacking Virginia.

I mean, shoot, for all we know, Robertson could be harboring weapons of mass destruction right now. You can be damn sure he's not gonna allow any UN weapons inspectors onto his 700 Club compound. And just because there's no evidence that Robertson has an active WMD program, doesn't mean you can prove he hasn't got them. Her certainly has a history both of consorting with brutal dictators (such as Liberia's Charles Taylor) and of threatening to bring massive destruction on his neighbors with secret weapons--like that time he tried to pray a hurricane into destroying Massachusetts.

Robertson represents a truly unique and dangerous threat to world peace. If Venezuela's allies will not stand by her in this darkest hour, she has every right still to go it alone and secure its democracy from this threat.

Someone please prove me wrong in this. I personally don't have a lot of regard for Mr Chavez--he's a screwloose egomaniac tanking his country's economy in the guise of social reform. He actively undermines his own country's democratic traditions while playing economic footsie with the Saudis. Hmmm, why does this all sound so familiar?

Still, like him or not, Chavez is a duly elected president of a sovereign country. When you issue threats against his life, you've got to be breaking some law. At the very least, Chavez would be fully justified in dispatching his armed forces to take this religious extremist, terror-mongering, dictator-coddling bandit out of the picture. Mr Bush provided the precedent for this in 2003. And now freedom's on the march.