It's official: the US is too big for its breeches

From the Guardian:

Evangelist tells 7m TV viewers: US should kill Venezuela's president
Julian Borger in Washington and Duncan Campbell
Wednesday August 24, 2005

America's leading televangelist appeared to take Christian fundamentalism into uncharted territory yesterday when he called for the assassination of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez.
Speaking on his own channel, the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pat Robertson said President Chávez should be targeted because he was a "terrific danger" whose country, a big supplier of oil to the US, was "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Islamic extremism all over the country".

Furthermore, killing the Venezuelan leader would be "a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."

...In his remarks, Mr Robertson called Mr Chávez a "dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly".

He added: "This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We don't need another $200bn war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Read the rest of the article here.