Well I certainly look forward to seeing how this one pans out. My prediction is that old weasel eyes in the White House breaks out his teflon suit and busts out some break dancing moves to avoid ever condemning Robinson's call for assassination of Chavez.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I once said it would have been a whole lot cheaper to put a price tag of a few billion on Saddam's head (or Osama's for that matter) than getting into the quagmire we now have in Iraq. But that assumed Bush ever really cared about whether Saddam was dead or alive - as a matter of fact at various times he completely blew off the importance of finding either Saddam or bin Laden alive. Which belies a much dark purpose to the invasion of Iraq, only no one seemed to have been listening at the time or paying attention to the significance of such a major flip-flop by Mister "no U-turn" (but watch me take a right and a right and make a wrong anyway).

It also pre-supposed that America was actually capable of pulling off such an intervention overseas. To date they seem to have a piss-poor record of succeeding - how many atempts on Castro have they made? For all we know they continue to make them and still fail. In fact so miserable has the record been that the usual modus-operandi for US foreign intervention is funding insurgents, or creating guerilla armies out of slush funds - something that also would have been a whole lot cheaper in Iraq. However although such things have a better rate of success they also seem to end up in installation of even worse people than the ones they are designed to remove.

Anyway, when an armchair proletariat politician like me broaches assassination its hardly a serious threat or even a serious suggestion. When a bona-fide wing-nut like Robertson with a million plus people watching his TV channel starts preaching it (pun intended) that's a whole different ball game, one that requires a comment from the very top. So far the only official response was from Rumsfeld who's basic message was that the US would do something like that because it was illegal. Well hello, when was pre-premptive invasion of another country legal? When was torturing prisoners legal? Even detaining "enemy combatants" indefinitely at Guantanamo has been ruled to be illegal, but that never stopped the USA doing whatever it wanted to before, and certainly wont again. Hell no, if the USA isn't answering Robertson's call to assassinate Chavez you can bet its not because of a question of legality.

In fact Robertson has probably just done the US government a huge disservice - because if they were working on an act of "extreme prejudice" against Chavez, the bar for doing so without causing the finger of blame to point towards the USA has just been raised very significantly. More to the point Robertson has now put Bush in the awkward place of either condemning what he said and getting roasted by the religious extremists following Robertson, or ignoring him and being roasted by the media both at home and world wide. For my part I certainly hope that other world leaders are quick to condemn Robertson's comments and hence put Bush in an even hotter seat that he is already in.

But my faith in Bush's ability to dodge bullets and don his teflon suit (and probably asbestos underpants) is rarely dented. The only significant change in his defensive dressing since been elected is he now has to hide his earpiece receiver well and truly up where the sun don't shine.

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