This president would be more to Dwayne's liking:
Stranger still are new accounts emerging from France describing how former president Jacques Chirac was utterly baffled by a 2003 telephone conversation in which Bush reportedly invoked fanatical Old Testament prophecy -- including the Earth-ending battle with forces of evil, Gog and Magog -- in his arguments to enlist France in the Coalition of the Willing.
"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins," Bush said to Chirac, according to Thomas Romer, a University of Lausanne theology professor who was later approached by French officials anxious to understand the biblical reference. Romer first revealed his account in a 2007 article for the university review, Allez savoir, which passed largely unnoticed.
Chirac, in a new book by French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, is quoted as confirming the surreal conversation, saying he was stupefied by Bush's reference to biblical prophecy and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."
... in the absence of comment from Bush himself, disturbing questions about the extent to which his administration blurred the lines of religion and war loom large.
"Speculating on what goes on inside George Bush's head is always a bold endeavour. But the sense one gets from this is that biblical prophecy somehow factored in the thinking," said Clive Hamilton, a visiting scholar at Yale University in a recent article for counterpunch.org.
"The most striking thing for me is in the real world, trying to get France to go to war on that basis is crazy. It is hard to imagine a better way to scare off a potential friend."
Indeed, parts of these disclosures don't square with previous reports of Bush's religious motivations. In 2003, Bush reportedly told Palestinian delegates he felt the hand of God pushing him to establish a Palestinian state ? an outcome opposed by hardcore U.S. evangelicals who support Israel, and campaign against Palestinian statehood on the basis of biblical prophecy.
But for many, including officials from America's Muslim communities, one need not go deep into biblical verse to be troubled.
"Just the fact that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon would overlay briefings to the president with biblical verses confirms eight years of suspicions," said Salam al-Marayati, of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council.
"What is so disturbing is that it is similar to the way Al Qaeda uses sacred text to support their ambitions. As a Muslim who loves America, who wants my children and my grandchildren to feel this is their home, it is the last thing we want to see in a president."
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/642352
