Posted on 10/09/2012 4:33:20 PM PDT by Starman417
On the 11th anniversary of 9/11, I blogged with the following:
Vanity Fair contributing editor and former NYTimes reporter Kurt Eichenwald is out promoting a new Bush-Derangement Syndrome book, 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars
You can read an excerpt at Vanity Fair.
To be clear, this is an anti-Bush book, putting the worst possible spin upon events described in the book. I loathe spending any money on this; but even partisan books can provide nuggets of useful information when you can cross-reference and wade through the bias filter that any actual facts had been transmuted and distorted through.
Last Friday, Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco and The Gamble ( books highly critical of the Bush decision to invade Iraq), wrote a NYTimes review of Eichenwald's new book:
A more deadly consequence of this heedlessness was the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false belief that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. An exchange from that time conveys the mind-set of the Bush administration. When Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, told Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy defense secretary, that there was no intelligence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein, “Wolfowitz tightened his lips,” Eichenwald writes. “ ‘We’ll find it,’ he said with certainty in his voice. ‘It’s got to be there.’ ” The run-up to the Iraq war also elicits one of the most pungent lines in the book. After Bush told Jacques Chirac that biblical prophecies were being fulfilled and specifically that “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East,” the French president decided, in Eichenwald’s words, that “France was not going to fight a war based on an American president’s interpretation of the Bible.”
BDSers- especially the secular militant atheistic extremist types- went stir-crazy during the Bush years over Dubbya's apparent wearing of his religion on his sleeve.
Although the former president 43 is indeed a man of faith, he was hardly a Crusadist, theocratic leader who decided to invade Iraq because God Bible-thumpingly told him to (As far as I know, the claim is unverified heresay).
Tom Ricks liked the "Gog and Magog" reference so much, he found it noteworthy enough for a blogpost.
One of Ricks' commenters, Xenophon, mentions:
Here is a passage from the "Secular Humanism" website that attributes the information on Bush's Biblical prophecy to a Dr. Thomas Romer, a French theologian at the University of Lausanne who was asked by Chirac's advisors to interpret Bush's telephone message:"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."
CounterPunch's Clive Hamilton writes:
(excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
I think it was his daddy who told him that democracy might work in Islamic lands. W is a good guy (and so is his dad)...but they are misguided when they believe that democracy can civilize people who believe in a savage religion.
Iraq did have wmds, and did have the capacity to quickly make small quantities of them quickly. They did have the recipes and they did have access to ingredients, even if in small quantities.
But, how large a quantity does a jihadist need?
I remember the gog/magog incident with Bush, and I also remember the analysis concluding that it was a metaphorical usage on his part.
Like saying so and so has met his Waterloo.
No. Lest we all forget, it was the United Nations, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John SKerry, and the rest of those F'n democrats who the MSM forgets to mention when it comes to "Bush's" war...........
How about the revelation by Syria that Hussein DID have WMD's which were trucked over to them prior to the build up for the invasion?
Or the 500 tons of yellow cake uranium that was sold by Iraq and shipped off to Canada back in 2005?
You remember the yellow cake don't you? Jack Wilson caused a 3 year investigation into the Bush administration claiming someone had disclosed that his whore, I mean wife, had been outed as a covert CIA agent in retaliation to his NY Times editorial where he says his assignment to Niger found no evidence that Hussein was attempting to purchase yellow cake uranium........
Eh, history is only as accurate as those who are reporting it.......
When meeting with CIA head George Tenet before the war, Bush said looking at the evidence “is that all you got?” Tenet told him it was a “slam dunk” that Iraq had WMDs. All the major Dems thought Hussein still had them as well. Because they did have WMDs. They managed to move or destroy most of them before our troops got there. Some “degraded” wmds were even fired at our troops. Only fools believe Hussein didn’t have wmds. The question is: how did he get rid of them? But again, wmds was not the only reason we invaded Iraq. Hussein had repeatedly violated the agreements of 1991 and a lot more. If Bush had gone into Iraq just to try and establish democracy, I’d be for arresting and prosecuting him.
I think it was his daddy who told him that democracy might work in Islamic lands. W is a good guy (and so is his dad)...but they are misguided when they believe that democracy can civilize people who believe in a savage religion.I believe you are essentially correct.
I will believe till the day I die that Iraq had, and maybe still has them. It was traitor MSM that wanted to score political points and ensure they were not found or reported. One day it will come out and people will just shrug. One question no one can answer directly is, would they rather Saddam and his Ba’ath party still around?
Yes they were trucked over to Syria. OK!
But the concept of democracy still doesn't work where Islam is the predominant religion.
I don’t believe he ever had them, but I do believe he thought he did. I have always said that if you are known to put people in wood chippers, would you want to be the scientist to tell him that for whatever reason you aren’t able to make nukes? I would tell him whatever would keep me alive and try to figure out how to get out in the event that he tried to use them.
He used these weapons on Iraqi citizens in the 1980s. Although that was well before the 2003 invasion.
No I'm not. Do you talk to your pastor the same way?
Sorry about calling you retarded. Stupid of me.
Thanks for the articles. Like I said before, that Iraq had them. People keep trying to say President Bush lied, when it was a well acknowledged throughout the 80s and 90s.
Not stupid, just maybe a little intense. I forgive you.........
You are obviously a wise and kind man...thank you for your patience and understanding.
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