The Iraq Invasion And The Burning Bush

I don't know why hearing stuff like this still surprises me:

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.”

Shades of Elwood Blues. This hasn't really been covered much here in the States but keep in mind that this isn't some sleazy British tabloid just making up shit, it's the president of France. He was there. My question is: Was Bush just so incurious about the rest of the world and their beliefs that he thought that talking to the leader of a country where a significant percentage of the population is atheistic as if he were a Southern evangelical would actually work? We don't all think that Jesus is coming back, guy. The more I hear about the impetus for this war and the way it was carried out the more it continues to stink.

(via)