[Peace-discuss] A curious report

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

Maybe – just maybe – the Iraq war and its subsequent costs was the Christian
God’s perverse way of punishing the U.S. for its crimes against humanity –
past and present -  and maybe (just maybe again) the U.S. is the satanic
agent of the Apocalypse, Gog (or is it God) and Magog (God’s mother Ma God
?) and Iraq was the true sacred representative of the universal God.  Who
knows and who really cares.  I know that I don’t know or care who is
representing who in this dance of death and destruction, the outcome appears
to be the same.

 

From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Morton K.
Brussel
Sent: Monday, August 10, 2009 10:53 AM
To: peace-discuss Discuss
Subject: [Peace-discuss] A curious report

 

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