You can say this more than once:
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.
How much of a crackpot? It reads like an article from the Onion.
Now out of office, [Jacques] 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.”
Now I understand those biblically-laden intelligence reports that Donald Rumsfeld gave to Bush. Remember them?
A March 31, 2003 brief cover-sheet depicted a U.S. tank roaring through the desert with a biblical quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
An April 7, 2003 cover sheet depicted an image of Saddam Hussein under a quote from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”
An April 10, 2003 brief showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down, an Iraqi child kissing an American soldier and jubilant Iraqi crowds with a quote from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him … To deliver their soul from death.”
I wonder if the warmongers knew how mentally deficient George Bush was before they recruited him to run for president. It’s a wonder we all survived. Of course, a large number of people didn’t.
