Who else is on Pat Robertson’s hit list?

A day or two ago, the media watchdog organization Media Matters noted that evangelist Pat Robertson had called for the assassination of Venezuela’s elected leader, Hugo Chavez, because “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.”

On the surface, these remarks would seem to indicate that Robertson is a blood-crazed nutjob. In reality, though, America’s leading mainstream religious extremist has proved himself judicious when it comes to smoking heads of state, or even troubling them with criticism. When George W. Bush called on Liberian president and part-time war criminal Charles Taylor to step down, Robertson flipped.

How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down,’” Robertson said Monday on “The 700 Club,” broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network.

“It’s one thing to say, we will give you money if you step down and we will give you troops if you step down, but just to order him to step down? He doesn’t work for us.”

Robertson, a Bush supporter who has financial interests in Liberia, said he believes the State Department has “mismanaged the situation in nation after nation after nation” in Africa.

“So we’re undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country,” he said in the broadcast.

The $8 million investment in a joint gold mining venture was never a concern. Let’s be clear about that. Let’s not be clear about why you would offer someone troops as an inducement to get him out of office.

Of course Charles Taylor had gold, not oil. The scent of oil seems to arouse Robertson’s inner assassin.

[Guest host Campbell] BROWN:Welcome back to HARDBALL. Pat Robertson is the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network and is a strong supporter of President Bush. Earlier this year, he said God told him the war in Iraq was, quote, “going to be messy and actually a disaster.”

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.

BROWN: Well, what would you have suggested the president do? Did you support him as he made that decision to go to war?

ROBERTSON: Well, Campbell, once those forces were arrayed in the Gulf, you had this huge armada out there, and all the military preparation, at that point, he couldn‘t back down. You have to go. There‘s a no-go situation, and there was a point of no return. So at that point, of course, I supported him, as I think all patriotic Americans do. Our forces are going to war, and we support them. But if I had been doing it, I think I would have much preferred the assassination route. I think we could have gotten Saddam Hussein a lot easier than this. And there‘s just something about this war that has been really troubling, and I‘d been warned by one of my friends who‘s an ex-Iraq about what would happen, and you‘d have—the Shi‘ites and the Sunnis and the Kurds and the Christians and others would be squabbling, and that‘s sort of what‘s happening over there.

What’s really troubling about that segment isn’t the assassination riff but that Robertson obviously had a better grasp of the risks associated with invading and occupying Iraq than the administration did.

Back to the subject at hand. Anticipating Robertson’s reaction to people and events can be difficult, but there is one nation whose leader may well be in his crosshairs: Switzerland.

It seems counterintuitive — Switzerland’s great natural resources include chocolate and banks, not oil, and if they have a president he or she is probably not especially objectionable — but for a fundamentalist, there’s something peculiarly disturbing about the country: They’re neutral.

They’re neither here nor there. Nazis? Neutral. Americans? Neutral. Carthage? Neutral. Rome? Neutral. Good? Neutral. Evil? Neutral. Soccer? Neutral. Half of them speak French, half of them speak German. They are appallingly, intolerably neutral. They pose no threat to anyone, not even an invading army. They don’t have to fight; they’ll just close the tunnel. Nobody gets hurt.

What kind of country is that? How long, O Lord? How long can Pat Robertson tolerate this festering sore of neutrality?

We look forward to updates.