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rfmcdonaldWell, more precisely some segments of the American and Iranian populations.
This article featured on the front page of the Toronto Star a couple of days ago, perhaps prompted by a recent visit he made to Toronto. (I saw the solid line of Secret Service cars protecting him while he ate at the Artful Dodger.
It gets better.
I know many people of faith, and I respect their religion. That said, I think that Gore Vidal was absolutely right when he said that people who believe in the imminent apocalypse should never have access to a nuclear arsenal.
This article featured on the front page of the Toronto Star a couple of days ago, perhaps prompted by a recent visit he made to Toronto. (I saw the solid line of Secret Service cars protecting him while he ate at the Artful Dodger.
Bush, a born-again Christian since age 40, arrives for today's paid speaking engagement at Metro Toronto Convention Centre with fellow former president Bill Clinton amid a series of stranger-than-fiction disclosures, one of which suggests that apocalyptic fervour may have held sway within the walls of his White House.
Bush, who turns 63 in July and was 54 when first sworn into office in 2001, has yet to comment on the reports. They include last week's GQ magazine exposé into the hawkish use of scripture in 2003, when then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld forwarded secret intelligence memos to Bush embroidered with biblical passages.
"Therefore, put on the full armour of God," a verse from Ephesians, and "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter," from Isaiah, are among the messages that adorn reports prepared for Bush by Rumsfeld's Pentagon.
It gets better.
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."
[. . .]
"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."
I know many people of faith, and I respect their religion. That said, I think that Gore Vidal was absolutely right when he said that people who believe in the imminent apocalypse should never have access to a nuclear arsenal.
