Holy Crap - Pat Robertson is telling the TRUTH

The White House (surprise, surprise) is claiming that Pat Robertson is lying when he says that Bush told him that there would be no casualties. Scott McClellan and Karen Hughes categorically deny that Infallible George ever said any such thing:

"The president never made such a comment," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Senior Bush campaign adviser Karen Hughes, a longtime confidant of the president, said she was "certain" Bush would not have said anything like that to Robertson. "Perhaps he misunderstood, but I've never heard the president say any such thing," Hughes said on CNN's "Inside Politics.

Unfortunately for The Gang That Couldn't Keep Its Lies Straight, there is evidence that Robertson is telling the truth. For one thing, he said the same thing back in June, and the press just didn't pick up on it:

ROBERTSON: Well, I don‘t think God‘s opposed to the war, necessarily, but it was a danger sign. I felt very uneasy about it from the very get-go. Whenever I heard about it, I knew it was going to be trouble. 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. But it has been messy. And I think we‘re going to come out of it, though. I think we‘ll have a free Iraq. But it certainly has been a mess so far. - Hardball, June 22, 2004

And even more damning, it's part of the official record that Robertson and Bush met in February of 2003, and they certainly did discuss casualties:

ROBERTSON: Connie, I have, over the last year or so, been quite concerned about entering into this war. We should have gone in after him in the Gulf War I. This thing is fraught with danger. And I think we need to understand that. I told the president that just recently, that we have got to prepare the American people for civilian casualties, for possibly of casualties, for gassing, for various chemical weapons against them. - Interview with Connie Chung, February 27, 2003

Although Robertson didn't get specific in the interview with Connie Chung, why would Robertson feel the need to tell Bush that he should prepare for casualities? Why would he go out his way to tell Chung that he told the President that he should be? The tacit assumption behind his statement is that he was informing Bush of something Bush disagreed with.

If this one gets any play in the press, look for the Bushies to start screaming about lesbians or something in an effort to distract attention.