Chavez's gift to Osama, Bush's gift to us

Pat Robertson, not wanting to be left unnoticed while the lunatic running the asylum nominates his personal fish-camp litigation lawyer for the Supreme Court, has announced that Hugo Chávez sent "either $1 million or $1.2 million in cash" to Osama bin Laden after 9/11.

How does Robertson know this? "Well, sources that came to me. That's what I was told."

Here Robertson actually manages to sound even more peculiar than he actually is. A Venezuelan spokesman had a more prosaic explanation:

Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, told state television the claim about Venezuelan funding for bin Laden stemmed from a false accusation made in a Miami lawsuit that was dismissed some time ago.

Venezuelan officials have said the lawsuit was based on a false claim by Juan Diaz Castillo, an ex-pilot of Chavez's presidential plane. Officials said the funds actually were sent to India in 2001 for humanitarian aid after a massive earthquake.

You gotta wonder if Robertson's vagueness is intended to get the kind of people who are exhorted on late night am radio to put their hands on the speaker to receive the radio pastor's special prayer blessing and then send a ten dollar love-offering in the morning mail to the radio pastor's post office box in Tulsa, to believe that the information came directly from Jesus.

If so, then maybe Robertson has failed to make a smooth transition from radio pastorship to building a politically effective organization. Or so let us hope.

On the other hand, Bush's confidence in Harriet Miers is a little unsettling in its similarity to Robertson's confidence in his sources.