[Peace-discuss] A curious report

[Morton K. Brussel]

It's hard to know what to make of this; it is truly bizarre. Perhaps  
it simply adds to the other motives the U.S. had in invading Iraq— 
geostrategic importance, oil, …

James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West  
Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.
--mkb

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

JAMES A. HAUGHT

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques  
Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and  
Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a  
top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French  
troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from  
God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed  
to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog  
are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being  
fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this  
conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its  
“coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says  
he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so  
superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with  
Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at  
the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer  
explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters  
(38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and  
mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them  
savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and  
slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of  
Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and  
fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne  
University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper,  
Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President  
George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.”  
France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small  
Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media  
missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long  
interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the  
tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat  
it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that  
Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own  
paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S.  
newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the  
story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests  
that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the  
White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the  
news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s  
renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his  
phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The  
Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told  
him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the  
White House called this claim “absurd.”

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald  
Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war  
reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full  
armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to  
stand your ground.”

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a  
religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He  
never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the  
unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless.  
Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in  
league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his  
asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the  
invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or  
to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam  
Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that  
abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a  
factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has  
killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers  
perhaps $1 trillion.



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