I don’t know why everyone seems so surprised and outraged about what Pat Robertson said about “taking out” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Sure, it’s crazy, foolish, possibly illegal and certainly not what Jesus would have said (but Robertson is way far from Jesus’ life).

And it certainly makes sense to try to hold Robertson accountable or at least get the holier-than-thou religious movement to condemn what I think might violate that dusty thing called the Ten Commandments (you know, thou shalt not kill); so far, as I can tell, the evangelicals are running for cover (On CNN, Ted Haggard, of the National Association of Evangelicals, tried to politely dismiss Robertson’s comments as (a) having been said in the “political commentary” part of his show and, therefore, not really connected to the religious part of his show and, when that didn’t fly, arguing (b) that Robertson really doesn’t speak for the evangelical movement.

But, hello, this is essentially been close to U.S. policy for the past two years–if not to kill Chavez directly, getting others to do so or certainly taking him out of power. Who do you think has been supporting the rebels there who wanted to overthrow a guy who was elected by the people, whether you like that or not? Our friendly folks from the CIA.

Here’s Robertson’s quote: “You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United … This is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, 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.”

Media Matters is following this and has called for ABC to drop Robertson’s programs.