You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life - Albert Camus

Thursday, October 06, 2005

The left-wing papers in the UK are all over this story.

President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden’s stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.

The President made the assertion during his first meeting with Palestinian leaders in June 2003, according to a BBC series which will be broadcast this month.

The revelation comes after Mr Bush launched an impassioned attack yesterday in Washington on Islamic militants, likening their ideology to that of Communism, and accusing them of seeking to “enslave whole nations” and set up a radical Islamic empire “that spans from Spain to Indonesia”. In the programmeElusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, which starts on Monday, the former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath says Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,’ and I did.”

So the source of these claims are Palestinians.  It’s not surprising that the British media would take them at their word.  After all, they believe the Palestinians when they say they just want to live in peace with Israel, and we know that Arabs never lie, do they?

Update: Good for Bush.

The White House has dismissed as “absurd” allegations made in a BBC TV series that President Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq.

“He’s never made such comments,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The comments were attributed to Mr Bush by the Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath in the upcoming TV series Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs.

Mr Shaath said that in a 2003 meeting with Mr Bush, the US president said he was “driven with a mission from God”.

While I have no doubt that Bush is a religious guy to one degree or another, I really would be surprised if he’d say something like this to another world leader, especially someone like the Palestinians.  Like I said above, I treat this with as much credibility as I do Palestinian claims that they just want peace.  They’re both bullshit, and good for Bush for standing his ground.