http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/polit ... f=login&th

Robertson Says Bush Predicted No Iraq Toll
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: October 21, 2004

The evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has set off a partisan fight by telling a television interviewer that President Bush serenely assured him just before the invasion of Iraq, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

Mr. Robertson, offering that account in an interview televised Tuesday night on CNN, said Mr. Bush made the comment when they met in Nashville in early 2003. At that meeting, he said, he warned the president to prepare the public for casualties.

Mr. Robertson, a former marine who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, said that he had had "deep misgivings" about the war. But, he said, closely paraphrasing Mark Twain, the president looked "like a contented Christian with four aces.''

"I mean, he was just sitting there like 'I am on top of the world,' " Mr. Robertson said.

"The Lord told me it was going to be a), a disaster, and b), messy," he continued, adding that he wished Mr. Bush would acknowledge his mistake.

As the White House disputed Mr. Robertson's recollection, Democrats pounced yesterday on the chance to make Mr. Bush contradict a prominent supporter.

"Is Pat Robertson telling the truth when he said you didn't think there'd be any casualties, or is Pat Robertson lying?" Mike McCurry, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry, asked at a campaign stop in Waterloo, Iowa.

"I think given the prominence of Reverend Robertson's remarks today, it would be important for the president to indicate whether in fact he told Pat Robertson that he didn't believe there'd be casualties in Iraq," Mr. McCurry said.

White House officials denied that Mr. Bush had ever uttered the remark. Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and Scott McClellan all told reporters in Eau Claire, Wis., that Mr. Robertson was mistaken.

"Of course the president never made such a comment," said Mr. McClellan, the White House press secretary. "The president both publicly and privately was preparing the American people for the possibility of a military conflict and the possibility that sacrifices may be necessary."

Mr. Rove, the president's chief political adviser, said he had attended the Nashville meeting and had not heard such a remark. "I was right there," Mr. Rove said.

Sometime political and theological allies of Mr. Robertson quickly dismissed his account.

"I think he speaks for an ever diminishing group of evangelicals on most issues," said Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Mr. Robertson, who has frequently recounted what he says God has told him on matters of public interest, is out of step with most evangelicals in his doubts about the war, Dr. Land said.

In the CNN interview, Mr. Robertson reversed himself on one prophecy. On his "700 Club" television program in January, he declared that Mr. Bush would win re-election "in a walk," and added, "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be a blowout election in 2004."

On Tuesday, however, he conceded, "I thought it was going to be a blowout, but I think it's razor thin now."

Still, he said, he believes that Mr. Bush will win in the Electoral College.

Pollsters say Mr. Robertson's views of the war are a mirror of a growing skepticism among evangelical Protestants about the invasion of Iraq, though they still support both the invasion and the president much more strongly than do other groups.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in mid-September - after the conventions but before the debates - a majority of evangelical Protestants said they thought Mr. Bush was not being entirely honest about the way things were going in Iraq: 48 percent said Mr. Bush was mostly telling the truth but hiding something, and an additional 15 percent said he was lying. Only 34 percent said he was telling the entire truth.

Still, in a Pew Research poll released yesterday, 67 percent of white evangelicals said the United States had made the right decision in using force in Iraq, as against only 24 percent who said the decision had been wrong and 10 percent who did not know or declined to answer. Seventy percent said they planned to vote for Mr. Bush, and 22 percent for Mr. Kerry.

oh yeah ... let's start believing Pat Robertson now ...

Why exactly would he lie? He's an ardent Bush supporter.

What a whack-job.

because he's certifiably insane ... do you really think Bush though there would be 0 casualties in Iraq? Really?

There were more than 0 casualties in the FIRST Iraq War ... it's just a silly thing to believe Bush said that.

Good thing .000000001% of the people who heard this story actually believed it. Even the Democrats are blowing it off.

why can't you post all your opinions in one thread please? I just HATE having to click on more than one ...

and, speaking of links to articles by Joe Schmoes ... hello pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

seriously.

This article was posted on every well-known newspaper and news website. Apparently some people think it is.. oh, i don't know.. news.

Hail Mary!

"Bush predicted"
I didn't need to read further.

Think he's going the Nostradamus angle. He'll say a lot of things, many of which will be wrong, but on the balance of probabilities he will have to get something right.

Sounds to me like you're the one going all Nostradamus on us now, my fiance!
This being one of the many things you get right.

Thing is, it is not entirely implausible given:

1. Bush's clear lack of intellect. The guy is, for lack of a better word, stupid.

2. It isn't inconsistent with the neo-con claims pre war that American troops will be welcomed with open arms, garlands of flowers and 4 virgins.

3. It was clear that Saddam's Iraqi forces couldn't hold a candle to the US's military might.

Bush is a simple guy (which is what American people find endearing about him, but he's also stupid), and he is heavily influenced by Wolfowitz and Perle, prominent neo-cons. Given the above, I think he probably did believe that the American casualty count would be near negligible. He thought it would be Zero? Not outside the realm of possibility.

right here is were i see the quandry. you call the guy stupid, and in the same post you say he probably did say there would be no casualties.

no president, none, nada, will never happen, that a leader of a nation will go to war and say there will be no deaths.


hopefully somewhere bush is posting on a message board about your lack of smarts

I thought Christian evangelicals were full of shit?

Wait.

No. Only if they attack Bush are they witty and charming.

Hold on.

*head explodes*

Anyway, this has since been refuted, and Robertson has little to back the story up on.

From here.

This past Sunday morning I listened to one of my favorite shows to get angry at, "Praise Patrol" (I am not kidding) on Armed Forces Network here in Germany. Military chaplain Mark and his wife Julia mix Christian rock with comments and inteviews about various issues and Christianity. Sometimes they seem quite liberal, interviewing people from and talking about various faiths, including Islam and Judaism, or talking only vaguely of faith and God. But sometimes they are blatantly fundamentalist Protestant Christian.

That is how they came off in their discussion with this Sunday's guest, Pat Robertson. He made the following claims and points, all of which got positive response from the two hosts:

- children have been forbidden to pray in school (a lie)

- the lack of religious values in the country have led to America leading the industrialized world in "all pathologies" (teenage pregnancy, VD, alcoholism, divorce, crime). He of course failed to mention that we also lead the industrialized world in religion.

- There have been eye-witness accounts from Iraq about angels protecting our troops, deflecting the bullets from them. (He totally lacks any historical perspective. These stories come out of every war. They were especially common among Russian troops during WWI. Is God Russian Orthodox?)

- It is very prophetic that the U.S. now controls "Babylon". The end days are near.

- Don't debate with skeptics. Just tell them about the gospel. It is a simple message. (This is why monotheist, missionary religion is so devisive. It is not about dialogue and understanding, but about teaching known "truth".)

- The First Amendment was meant to protect the church from the state, not the other way around. Evidence of the Godly basis for our nation:

* chaplains in congress and the military
* prayer in government ceremonies
* the presidential oath (he hasn't actually read the oath, apparently)
* there is a provision in the Constitution that can prevent laws signed on Sunday to be void (I haven't the slightest clue what the hell he is referring to. The document has the word Sunday in it only once and does not mention the Sabbath. It has no such meaning.)

- The presidency is too great a burden for a man to carry who does not have faith. All the presidents have been men of faith. He chose Abe Lincoln as his example! What a joke!

Anyway, that is the drivel that our troops have to listen to if they can't find BBC in the morning and don't want to listen to German radio.

Strel


...Yeah, so, what did Pat Robertson say again?

Are you saying that talking to people of other faiths is liberal? That's what it sounds like and I did not resort to altering the quote , a favorite trick of yours that is not very board friendy BTW troll.
So do you believe acknowledgement of other faiths is also liberal even if you do not talk to them? Your world sounds smaller smaller with every post. sad

you do of course realise that the here he posted is a link to a site, and what followed it was taken from that site, correct?

I didn't write that. I linked the blog it came from. I wanted to expose Robertson's myth media... Jesus.

From HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE NOT ME SAYING THIS SOMEONE ELSE HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE

Your lack of analytical ability is stunning.

All I said was that Bush making that claim to a minister or priest or whatever or even actually believing it himself is not outside the realm of possibility

That's not a factual statement. Nor is it contradictory.Why? Because it leaves itself open. Capiche?

Did Bush say that in his official capacity in public fora? Well, no. Why? 'Cos we haven't heard him say it and it hasn't been debated by the media etc (duh). Secondly, his speech writers and advisers like Frum, and yes, Wolfowitz, Perle etc would never have allowed him to.

Wolfowitz and Perle aren't stupid guys, in fact quite the opposite. They know how to play their cards. I may not agree with them, and in fact I can't stand the bastards, but I do admire the fact that they have some intellectual discourse and thought behind their agenda, and that they have the balls to pursue it. Just that it scares the shit out of me, 'cos I think they're (neo-cons generally) just going to aggravate all the existing problems to disastrous results.

The intifada in Iraq I fear is just the beginning.

Anyways, how the hell did I get here?

You hope Bush is on a message board somewhere writing shit about me. Wow. You're so full of ideas on how to run the greatest nation on the face of the earth effectively. Slandering shades-are-raised at RM must rank high on a President's to-do list.

why not, it ranks pretty high on yours