[Peace-discuss] A curious report

[C. G. Estabrook]

The Iraq invasion depended very little on whatever Bush thought -- or said he 
did.  It was consistent with the long-term (and continuing) US policy of 
controlling Mideast energy resources. The invasion of Iraq, like the invasion of 
Afghanistan, was a specific move within that policy. Essentially the same group 
  (including Cheney and Rumsfeld) who decided to do it in 2003 had decided not 
to in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War. But the policy goals remained the same 
-- as they continue to do in the current administration, whose propaganda cover 
is also that it is confronting theological evil.  Nato commanders, e.g., who 
slip and mention oil are quickly corrected.  --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 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 
> <http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=index> /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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> 
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