See what was going on? The conspirators cleverly and covertly had orchestrated the origins of the Persian Gulf crisis and then used Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait as a pretense for the first step toward a world government that would eventually obliterate Christianity and bring about all the other horrors Robertson feared.

Robertson revealed that the term "new world order," which Bush used to justify the Gulf War, has been for the past 200 years "the code phrase of those who desired to destroy the Christian faith ... They wish to replace it with an occult-inspired world socialist dictatorship."

Robertson based his unorthodox insights on his reading of the Bible. The anti-Saddam coalition, he observed, "was the first time since Babel that all of the nations of the earth acted in concert with one another." And as God showed with the Tower of Babel, he is not fond of nations toiling together.

Robertson didn't pick on President Bush alone. He accused Jimmy Carter of being in cahoots with the secret schemers. So, too, was his vice president, Walter Mondale, for, as Robertson noted with suspicion, Mondale's brother had once signed a humanist manifesto. Robertson also pointed at Henry Kissinger, Bush foreign policy aide Brent Scowcroft, and other prominent figures in the foreign-policy establishment

In his book, Robertson forged numerous creative connections. In the first chapter, he lumped President Bush in with a famous musician who asked people to "imagine" a time of no religion, no possessions, no heaven, no hell and one world. "George Bush and John Lennon," he wrote, "are not alone in championing a new world order." By the way, Robertson noted, so did Adolf Hitler. And who did Robertson peg as the primary force behind this dangerous, anti-Christian new world order? The devil himself!

According to Robertson, President Bush was, wittingly or not, "carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers."

So Robertson literally called President Bush a tool of Satan. Yet eight years later, Robertson was campaigning for the son of this tool of Satan, George W. How could Robertson be certain that W. wasn't in on this new world order conspiracy, picking up where his dad left off? After all, Father Bush has been giving W. plenty of campaign advice. And George W. is a member of the Methodist Church, which according to Robertson is in the pocket of the Antichrist.

It's foolish to expect consistency, let alone logic, from Robertson. He must have some way of explaining his alliance with W. Perhaps he took George W. Bush's inability to name foreign leaders as a sign Bush II was incapable of building the much-dreaded one-world government.

The question remains, which is more troubling -- Robertson's willingness to work for the offspring of Satan? Or George W. Bush's decision to welcome the assistance of a man who has preached intolerance and called his father a pawn of the Antichrist? What does all of this say about W.'s loyalty to his father, his family values and his commitment to tolerance?

More to the point, if any candidate accepts the open support of an outright bigot who accuses the candidate's own father of being part of a Satanic conspiracy to destroy Christianity and enslave billions of people, what won't that candidate do to win an election?

It's a good bet we'll find out between now and election day.

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