Agog over Bush's comments on Gog and  Magog
  
 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 -- seemingly  deranged -- episode happened 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. As far as we can  learn, our Charleston Gazette 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 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 old vendetta against the late dictator Saddam  Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.
  
 Now, added to the other  suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that arcane, supernatural Bible  prophecies were a factor. 
  
   
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