Fox "News", "Pastor" John Hagee, and War with Iran

As the list of Republicans dodging the CNN/YouTube debate grows, I suspect we'll hear a good deal about how the Democratic candidates don't want to do a Fox "News" sponsored debate.

Leaving aside the aggressive bias of such Fox "News" anchors as Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson, Neil Cavuto, the Fox and Friends crew, former Iran-Contra scandaler Oliver North, former Republican Congressman John Kasich, the Beltway Boys, Sean Hannity (who has his own show, Hannity's America, by the way), and notorious Bushies like Carl Cameron faithfully scribing the dictations of administration officials direct to the Fox "News" anchors...let's leave all that aside.

Instead, let's just consider this Fox "News" story on John Hagee, the Rapture-believing pastor of a Texas Evangelical mega-church, and head pooba of a war-mongering and Iran-hysteria group called Christians United for Israel, which is in town for a Mid-East policy "summit". From the Fox "news" piece we find out that Hagee is a "quiet man of gentle disposition" who is nonetheless concerned about Iran's Holocaust-denying leader, Iran's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction related program activities, and the Persian nation's clear intentions and capability of destroying Israel, with its million-manned army standing poised at the border ready to invade the Holy Land. It's all just like Hitler, the Nazis, and 1938, after all.

But who is John Hagee and what is Christian United for Israel? Would you be surprised to learn that Independent-Democrat Joe Lieberman hearts the guy and embraces CUFI's policy aims?

The Fox "News" article plays down Hagee's eschatological beliefs and any linkage between them and his call for pre-emptive war on Iran (as if the other, current, and soon to be six year pre-emptive war was going so swimmingly).

But surely it is way past time for our media and political elites to start asking some very reasonable, even Serious, questions about people like Hagee and the real-world policy influence his fantasy-world beliefs and followers have in Washington?

Maybe this is why the Republican Party is opting out of the YouTube encounter. Who knows, some wacko from the base, like Independent Joe Lieberman, who wants to wage endless carnage in the Middle East would get through with an embarassing question or two.