[Mb-civic] Bush Foresaw No War Casualties, Robertson Recalls

[Michael Butler]

Also see below:     
Robertson Says Bush Predicted No Iraq Toll    €

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    Bush Foresaw No War Casualties, Robertson Recalls
    By Peter Wallsten and Edwin Chen
    The Los Angeles Times

     Thursday 21 October 2004
 The president was the 'most self-assured man I ever met' during a 2003
encounter, televangelist says. The White House says he's got it wrong.

    Eau Claire, Wis. - Democrats trying to portray President Bush as too
headstrong when he decided to invade Iraq got help this week from an
unlikely source: televangelist and Bush supporter Pat Robertson.

     Appearing on CNN on Tuesday night, Robertson recalled a private meeting
with Bush before the Iraq war began, at which he said the president asserted
there would be no casualties.

     "I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war,
deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, Mr. President, you better prepare
the American people for casualties," Robertson told CNN's Paula Zahn.

     But Bush said, " 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties,' "
Robertson related.

     During the meeting, Bush "was the most self-assured man I ever met in
my life," Robertson said. "You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like a
contented Christian with four aces.' He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm
on top of the world.' "

     Robertson's comments quickly became an issue in the presidential
campaign and put the White House in the awkward position of denying comments
from one of Bush's most prominent supporters.

     "I think he must have either misunderstood, misheard or been confused
about what the conversation was because I've never heard the president say
anything of the sort, and he wouldn't have," Karen Hughes, a senior Bush
advisor, told reporters. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "Of
course the president never made such a comment."

     Bush strategist Karl Rove told reporters that he was in the room for
the Feb. 10, 2003, meeting, and that Robertson was incorrect in his
recollection.

     "I was right there," Rove said.

     Robertson issued a two-paragraph statement confirming his support for
Bush, but he did not withdraw his comments.

     Robertson's remarks sparked a stern reaction Wednesday from the
campaign of Democrat John F. Kerry, which has criticized Bush for his
refusal, as recently as in the second presidential debate, to acknowledge
having made mistakes during his time in office.

     "We believe President Bush should get the benefit of the doubt here,
but he needs to come forward and answer a very simple question: Is Pat
Robertson telling the truth when he said you didn't think there'd be any
casualties, or is Pat Robertson lying?" said Kerry spokesman Mike McCurry.

     More than 1,100 U.S. servicemen and women have died in the war, and
thousands more have been injured.

     Robertson, who is founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and
host of its program "The 700 Club," talked about his 2003 meeting with Bush
as part of a larger conversation about how he believed "God's blessing is
on" the president, despite Bush's "goofs and gaffes."

     Robertson has made similar comments in the past.

     On June 22, the former GOP presidential contender said on the MSNBC
program "Hardball" that "I warned the president. I only met with him once. I
said you better prepare the American people for some serious casualties. And
he said, 'Oh, no, our troops are, you know, so well-protected, we don't have
to worry about that.' "

     Robertson declined through a spokeswoman to comment on the flap over
his remarks.

     When Zahn asked Robertson how evangelicals who might disagree with Bush
on the war and other policies could still vote for him, Robertson seemed to
stop just short of calling the president the lesser of two evils.

     "Well, you know, you don't run against perfection. It's two fallible
people," Robertson said. "So it's either the lesser of the evil or the best
of second - the best - whatever."

   

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    Robertson Says Bush Predicted No Iraq Toll
    By David D. Kirkpatrick
    The New York Times

     Thursday 21 October 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.

  

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