Reply #34: It's not Robertson's only bond with terrorism, either.

[Judi Lynn]

Here's info. on Robertson's close ties to a raving right-wing lunatic monster dictator, Efraín Ríos Montt:

According to one of Robertson's biographers, "during the months he worked with the Grace company he viewed Latin America as the 'land of opportunity' where he would find some way to enrich himself. Though Robertson left the company after only about nine months, he later achieved his dream by extending Christian televangelism to Central America. By the 1980s, Pat Robertson's program "The 700 Club," reached 3.1 million viewers in Guatemala. Robertson took a personal interest in the strife torn Central American nation, developing warm ties to General Efrain Rios Montt, a born again evangelical Christian. When Rios Montt took power in a military coup d'etat in March of 1982, Robertson immediately flew to Guatemala, meeting with the incoming president a scant five days after he came to power. Later, Robertson aired an interview with Rios Montt on "The 700 Club" and extolled the new military government.

Robertson's visit came at a particularly sensitive time. Guatemala's dirt poor indigenous peoples, who made up half the country's population, were suffering greatly at the hands of the U.S. funded military. The armed forces had taken over Indian lands that seemed fertile for cattle exporting or a promising site to drill for oil. Those Indians who dared to resist were massacred. Rios Montt, a staunch anti-Communist supported by U.S. president Reagan, was determined to wipe out the Marxist URNG, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union rebels. However, according to Amnesty International, thousands of people with no connection to the armed struggle were killed by the regime. Not surprisingly, many Indians turned to armed resistance. To deal with the ever worsening situation, Rios Montt proposed a so called "guns and beans" campaign. Rios Montt explained the plan very succinctly: "If you are with us, we'll feed you, if not, we'll kill you." For Robertson, however, Rios Montt's extermination policy was of little account. Astonishingly, the televangelist wrote "I found to be a man of humilityimpeccable personal integrity, and a deep faith in Jesus Christ."

One reason that Rios Montt may have appealed to Robertson was the dictator's dislike of Catholic priests. In the 1980s, they had become an obstacle to the expansion of evangelical Protestantism. Working within indigenous communities, Catholic priests had been driven out or murdered. Protestant sects, on the other hand, allied to the Guatemalan military. They preached individual conversion, the importance of obedience to military and political authority, the merits of capitalism, and the value of inequality. Rios Montt's own Church of the Word went so far as to define priests and nuns as the enemy. According to Walter LaFeber, a historian of Central America, three priests were killed within a thirty-six month period in just one province. With the Catholic Church out of the way, Rios Montt conducted a scorched earth policy. His forces massacred as many as 15,000 Indians. Whole villages were leveled and the army set up "Civilian Self-Defense Patrols" which forced 900,000 villagers to "voluntarily" aid police in tracking down suspects. Rios Montt created "model" villages, similar to concentration camps, which housed Indian refugees. However, when 40,000 survivors sought safety in Mexico, Guatemalan helicopters machine gunned the camps. Rios Montt justified the genocidal policy by claiming that the Indians were suspected of cooperating with the URNG, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union, or "might" cooperate in future. Amnesty International noted that extra judicial killings carried out the by the military "were done in terrible ways: people of all ages were not only shot to death, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disemboweled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death."
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff09172005.html