Bush sees himself as God's tool (MUST READ!)

mogster

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Thu Aug-03-06 05:55 AM
Original message

Bush sees himself as God's tool (MUST READ!)

Edited on Thu Aug-03-06 05:57 AM by mogster

I have collected some info, mostly from a page I found some years ago (I don't leave the link, it tries to self-install software. PM me if you want it.), about Bush' fundie ties and how he thinks he's being God's tool on earth. But here are some of the articles collected at that page, and some from other sources.

"Abbas said that at Aqaba, Bush promised to speak with Sharon about the siege on Arafat. He said nobody can speak to or pressure Sharon except the Americans.

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.""
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

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"Bush says God chose him to lead his nation
Paul Harris in New York
Sunday November 2, 2003
Book reveals how President's religious and political beliefs are entwined - and claims he did pray with Blair.
(...)
Behind Bush were two banners. 'King of Kings', proclaimed one. 'Lord of Lords', said the other. The symbolism of how fervent Christianity has become deeply entwined with the most powerful man on the planet could not have been stronger.

Few US Presidents have been as openly religious as Bush. Now a new book has lifted the lid on how deep those Christian convictions run. It will stir up controversy at a time when the administration is keen to portray its 'war on terror' as non-religious.

The book, which depicts a President who prays each day and believes he is on a direct mission from God, will give ammunition to critics who claim Bush's administration is heavily influenced by extremist Christians.
(...)
The book also shows that in the lead-up to announcing his candidacy for the presidency, Bush told a Texan evangelist that he had had a premonition of some form of national disaster happening."
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1075950,00.html

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"Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 20, 2004
US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy.
To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.
The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7,000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and near fist fights" began.
(...)
In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.

The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1195568,00.html

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"The Pentagon Unleashes a Holy Warrior
Oct. 16, 2003, LA Times

The top soldier assigned to track down Bin Laden and Hussein is an evangelical Christian who speaks publicly of 'the army of God.' A Christian extremist in a high Defense post can only set back the U.S. approach to the Muslim world.
by William M. Arkin

"...(Army Lt. General William G. "Jerry") Boykin is also an intolerant extremist who has spoken openly about how his belief in Christianity has trumped Muslims and other non-Christians in battle. He has described himself as a warrior in the kingdom of God and invited others to join with him in fighting for the United States through repentance, prayer and the exercise of faith in God. He has praised the leadership of President Bush, whom he extolled as 'a man who prays in the Oval Office.' 'George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States,' Boykin told an Oregon congregation. 'He was appointed by God.'"

In this newly created position, Boykin is not just another Pentagon apparatchik or bureaucratic warrior. He has been charged with reinvigorating Rumsfeld's 'High Value Target Plan' to track down Bin Laden, Hussein, Mullah Omar and other leaders in the terrorism world.

All Americans, including those in uniform, are entitled to their views. But when Boykin publicly spews this intolerant message while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, he strongly suggests that this is an official and sanctioned view - and that the U.S. Army is indeed a Christian army.

But that's only part of the problem. Boykin is also in a senior Pentagon policymaking position, and it's a serious mistake to allow a man who believes in a Christian "jihad" to hold such a job.

For one thing, Boykin has made it clear that he takes his orders not from his Army superiors but from God - which is a worrisome line of command. For another, it is both imprudent and dangerous to have a senior officer guiding the war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan who believes that Islam is an idolatrous, sacrilegious religion against which we are waging a holy war."
(Article original gone)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-arkin16oct16,1,6820671.story

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"A Very Mixed Marriage
Evangelical Christians lining up to fight for Israel maybe an unmovable obstacle to Bush’s ‘Roadmap’

By Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper
NEWSWEEK

June 2 issue — It’s a landmark in the history of strange bedfellows: Tom DeLay says kaddish. It happened last February, the day the space shuttle Columbia fell apart. Among the dead astronauts was an Israeli, Ilan Ramon. In Florida, at the Boca Raton Resort, some big machers had gathered to hear a speech by House Republican leader DeLay, an evangelical Christian from Sugar Land, Texas. Mixing Churchill and the Bible, DeLay talked of a destiny shared by America and Israel. He asked for “divine assistance” in protecting both. In closing, to the astonishment of his audience, he recited—in Hebrew—the last lines of the Jewish prayer for the dead. The crowd, many in tears, joined in. (DeLay had been coached by a Jewish former staffer.) “It was quite a moment,” said Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who was there.
Indeed, these bedfellows aren’t strangers anymore, which presents George W. Bush with a new opportunity - and a new risk. Opening another front in his war on terror, the president has launched an effort to coax Israelis and Palestinians toward peace. As Bush prepares for his trip to the G8 summit in France, there is talk he’ll tack on a trip to the Middle East. But the "Roadmap" he wants to pursue there runs not only through the Byzantine byways of the Levant, but along the political freeways of America. If he is at all serious, Bush eventually will hit a potentially impenetrable roadblock at home: the deepening alliance between Jewish supporters of Israel and the growing ranks of Christian Zionists.

Simply put, the administration won’t be able to lean hard on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon without being attacked by two blocs it cares very much about as the 2004 election approaches. Eager to capitalize on Bush’s standing as a war commander and a friend of Israel’s, White House strategists hope to double the size of Bush’s Jewish vote. Still, the numbers there, however pivotal in places such as Florida, are small. Much more is at stake among the nation’s 50 million evangelicals. Pressuring the Israelis also risks incurring the wrath - perhaps expressed in thundering, Biblical terms- of activists who claim to speak for that constituency, which the White House hopes will turn out in record numbers next year. "We are going to watch the Road-map very carefully," Jerry Falwell told NEWSWEEK"
(No link)

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"Evangelical crusaders prepare to fight Islam with aid and a Bible
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
22 April 2003

Evangelical charities with an overt hostility to Islam are preparing to distribute food, water, medicine and building materials in Iraq, all in the name of Jesus.

One of the charities, Samaritan's Purse, is run by Franklin Graham the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, who declared after the 11 September attacks that Islam was "a very evil and wicked religion". Another is the Southern Baptist Convention, whose former president once described the Prophet Mohamed as "a demon-possessed paedophile". About 800 of SBC's volunteers are reported to be on their way to Iraq to deliver food packages labelled with a verse from St John's Gospel, in Arabic, saying that "grace and truth were realised through Jesus Christ".

Such insensitivity is viewed by some as playing into the hands of those to whom the "war on terrorism" is a religious crusade. But what really riles Muslim groups all over the world is that these activities are overtly supported by the Bush administration. Franklin Graham, a long-standing friend of the President, was invited to participate in this year's Good Friday prayer service at the Pentagon, angering many in the Defence Department. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the invitation "sends entirely the wrong message to the Muslim and Arab world ... This kind of incident can undo any kind of bridges built by a hundred public affairs officers at the Pentagon."

Franklin Graham has a record of hostility to Islam and unabashed proselytising, even where it is illegal. After the 1991 Gulf War, he infuriated Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of Operation Desert Storm, by shipping tens of thousands of Arabic-language New Testaments to Saudi Arabia in defiance of Saudi law and the US-Saudi military alliance.

In his most recent book, he says that Christianity and Islam are "as different as lightness and darkness" and that the two religions are destined to fight each other until the second coming of Christ, which he says is imminent. During a book tour last year, he said Islam posed "a greater threat than anyone's willing to speak". He has toned down the rhetoric recently to pacify his critics but few believe him when he says "we don't have to preach to be a Christian relief organisation".

Samaritan's Purse has worked in many countries, including Rwanda, Somalia, southern Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Mr Graham flies in his some of his relief planes, especially when they are in danger. Such gusto has won him many friends in the Republican Party, including Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, who has joined him on missions in Sudan. And he is a popular figure on the fundamentalist right - an important Bush constituency that loves the idea of good versus evil and a president ordained by God to lead America in tough times.

That is also why the Iraqis are likely to oppose his presence. As Michelle Cottle writes in this week's New Republic magazine: "At this point, Graham's ugly disquisitions on the nature of Islam have made him so radioactive that, even if he doesn't utter one word about Jesus while in Iraq, his mere presence in the region could be considered a provocation.""
(Original article gone)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=399347

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"On the eve of war, military brass listened intently as Michael Drosnin expounded the Bible code

Decoding Bible's 'cryptogram'
Will Saddam Hussein be overthrown? Where is Osama bin Laden hiding? For answers, see the Good Book

Among the hundreds of meetings and briefings that took place in the Pentagons bowels in the months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, one earned the fleeting disdain of The New York Times, whose columnist, Bill Keller, sniffed that "several man-hours of valuable intelligence-crunching time" had been "consumed who claims -- I am not making this up -- that messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament provide clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

"Maybe were all a little too desperate these days for a simple formula to explain how our safe world came unhinged," Keller said.

The gathering, which reportedly took place Feb. 21, was said to have been convened by Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defence, and attended by 10 top military intelligence officials, including Vice Admiral Lowell "Jake" Jacoby, director of the massive Defense Intelligence Agency, and Wolfowitz's deputy, Linton Wells, who is in charge of the Pentagon's nerve centre, known as 3CI (Command, Control, Communications).

On the eve of war, the military brass listened intently for a full hour as Michael Drosnin expounded on his two brisk-selling volumes on the Bible code.

Drosnin argues the Hebrew Torah -- the first five books of the Old Testament -- were intentionally encrypted, by a higher power, with prophetic warnings that have accurately predicted the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Kennedy assassinations, the moon landing, Watergate, and 9/11 -- and foretell the fall of Saddam Hussein and the precise location of bin Laden.

The Americans "took it very seriously," Drosnin says. "They're practical people and I wanted to give them something of practical use."

As a result of the meeting, Drosnin says U.S. and Israeli intelligence forces are hot on bin Laden's trail in that very place the Bible mentions, "right as we speak." Of course, he would not divulge where that place is.

As for Saddam Hussein, the Bible's embedded code ponders, "Who is destroyed?" and then, in the same matrix, answers, "Hussein," with the following number crossing his name: 5763, the Jewish year that corresponds to 2003. "That foretells the outcome of this conflict," Drosnin says confidently. "It might be obvious now, but it wasn't when I told them."

It could be that the U.S. defence establishment is grasping at straws, or that more and more people in Washington are motivated by a White House that frequently invokes God and religious imagery. Drosnin discounts the religious angle.

"This is not based on faith. This is based on experience. The code keeps coming true."

Drosnin is a secular Jew, a former police reporter for the Washington Post and former writer for The Wall Street Journal. To be sure, his books, The Bible Code (1997) and last year's sequel, Bible Code II: The Countdown have been used by various fundamentalists, prophets of doom and supermarket tabloids as sure signs the Good Book knows all and that the end is nigh. Detractors point out the code violates the Bible's own ban on soothsaying."
(Link leads to dynamic page, org. article gone)
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story4.htm

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"Bush puts God on his side
By Tom Carver, Sunday April 6, 2003
BBC Washington correspondent
Before September 11, President George W Bush kept his evangelical Christian beliefs largely to himself.
He had turned to God at the age of 40 as a way of kicking alcoholism, and his faith had kept him on the straight and narrow ever since, giving him the drive to reach the White House.
But all that changed on the day of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

Those close to Mr Bush say that day he discovered his life's mission.

He became convinced that God was calling him to engage the forces of evil in battle, and this one time baseball-team owner from Texas did not shrink from the task.
(...)
One in three American Christians call themselves evangelicals and many evangelicals believe the second coming of Christ will occur in the Middle East after a titanic battle with the anti-Christ.

Does the president believe he is playing a part in the final events of Armageddon?"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2921345.stm

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"US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush

They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush.

Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called "A Christian's Duty," a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush.

"I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God's peace be your guide," says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces.

The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches.

Sunday's is "Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding".

Monday's reads "Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics"."
(Org. article gone)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s819685.htm

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"Plans Under Way for Christianizing the Enemy
Newhouse News Service

Two leading evangelical Christian missionary organizations said Tuesday, March 25 that they have teams of workers poised to enter Iraq to address the physical and spiritual needs of a large Muslim population.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, and the Rev. Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse said workers are near the Iraq border in Jordan and are ready to go in as soon as it is safe. The relief and missionary work is certain to be closely watched because both Graham and the Southern Baptist Convention have been at the heart of controversial evangelical denunciations of Islam, the world's second largest religion.

Graham, the son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham, has been less diplomatic about Islam than his father has been. Two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Franklin Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion" during an interview on NBC, the television network. In his book published last year, "The Name," Graham wrote that "The God of Islam is not the God of the Christian faith." He went on to say that "the two are different as lightness and darkness."

On the eve of the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis last year, the Rev. Jerry Vines, a former denomination president, told several thousand delegates that Islam's Allah is not the same as the God worshipped by Christians. "And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah's not going to turn you into a terrorist," Vines said.

(President) Bush, an evangelical Christian himself, has close ties to both Franklin Graham, who gave a prayer at his inauguration, and Southern Baptists, who are among his most loyal political supporters. "
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/okeefe032603.html

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Bush Links Faith and Agenda In Speech to Broadcast Group

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 11, 2003; Page A02

NASHVILLE, Feb. 10 -- President Bush has addressed countless audiences as commander in chief. Today, he was introduced as "our friend and brother in Christ."

Appearing at the National Religious Broadcasters convention, before a backdrop that read "Advancing Christian Communications," the president was hailed as a man who "unapologetically proclaims his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." Bush, in a strikingly religious address even for a president long comfortable with such speech, cast the full range of his agenda -- foreign, domestic and economic -- in spiritual terms.

"I welcome faith," Bush said after he was greeted with rock star adulation. "I welcome faith to help solve the nation's deepest problems." Attendees called out "amen" as Bush spoke, and some waved rhythmically as they did during the hymns that preceded his speech.

About the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush said: "We're being challenged. We're meeting those challenges because of our faith. . . . We carried our grief to the Lord Almighty in prayer." Bush assigned religion a role in the economy ("There are some needs that prosperity can never meet"), in a possible attack on Iraq ("Liberty is God's gift to every human being in the world"), and in coping with the Columbia space shuttle accident ("Faith assures us that death and suffering are not the final word").(

(...)
In 1995, the group announced that President Bill Clinton was not invited to its meetings because of his views on abortion and homosexuality. By contrast, many attendees today said Bush was divinely chosen to lead the country during its trials. "At certain times and at certain hours in our country, God has had a certain man to hear his testimony," said Steve Clark, of Faith Baptist Tabernacle in Jamestown, Tenn.

Bush noted that the Christian pianist who performed for the broadcasters, Michael W. Smith, had played at the White House days earlier. During the program, which began with a Bush speech blending into Christian hymns, Karl Rove, Bush's top political aide, worked the crowd.

In recent speeches, Bush has read passages from Isaiah and from the hymn "How Great Thou Art." At last week's prayer breakfast, he said that when he is told by citizens that they are praying for him, he tells them "it is the greatest gift you can give anybody, is to pray on their behalf." Today, Bush thanked his listeners for their prayers, suggesting he would need them in the days ahead. "Let us pray for strength equal to our tasks," he said.

J. Mark Horst, who has a radio ministry in Breezewood, Pa., said faith is what makes Bush propose seemingly unreachable goals and defy odds to reach them. "As Christians, we're commanded to be of strong courage," Horst said. "He's taking what he reads in the Word and saying, 'This is what I believe, and I'm going to go for it.'"
(No link)

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"Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
Bush's Armageddon Obsession, Revisited
by MICHAEL ORTIZ HILL

"We are lived by forces we scarcely understand," wrote W.H. Auden. What forces live us now as America again torques toward war?

George W. Bush is certainly the plaything of such forces as the geopolitics of oil but it seems that he is susceptible to other even darker archetypal concerns. Let me be blunt. The man is delusional and the shape of his delusion is specifically apocalyptic in belief and intent. That Bush would attack so many vital systems on so many fronts from foreign policy to the environment may seem confusing from the point of view of realpolitik but becomes transparent in terms of the apocalyptic worldview to which he subscribes. All systems are supposed to go down so the Messiah can come and Bush, seemingly, has taken on the role of the one who brings this to pass.

The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush to live in anticipation of the Second Coming but it was his friendship with Dr. Tony Evans that shaped Bush's political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr. Evans, the pastor of a large Dallas church and a founder of the Promise Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint," according to Dr. Martin Hawkins, Evans assistant pastor.

S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes, "Most of the leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine of 'end time' (eschatology), known as 'dominionim.' Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the 'people of God' as the only means through which the world can be rescued.... It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control', a 'chosen vessel', so to speak, to bring in the Restoration of All Thingss." Shearer calls this delusion, "Messianic leadership"-- that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah.

In Bush at War Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp."

"To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," says Bush. And again, "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation." Grandiose visions. Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan.""
Michael Ortiz Hill is the author of Dreaming the End of the World (Spring 1994) and, (with Augustine Kandemwa) Gathering in the Names (Spring Journal books, 2002). The companion to this essay, The Looking Glass War, is posted at http://www.gatheringin.com/.
(No link)

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"Religious leaders uneasy with Bush's rhetoric

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Is President Bush using inappropriately religious language as he talks daily about the possibility of war with Iraq?

Some religious leaders say they are becoming uncomfortable with the strongly religious tone of Bush's rhetoric, worried that he is usurping the role of preacher or possibly inciting Islamic fundamentalists with his good-versus-evil references.

In two recent speeches, at the annual convention Monday of the National Religious Broadcasters and at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Bush said he welcomed faith to solve the nations' deepest problems and was greeted on both occasions with "amens." To some, however, he sounded more like an evangelical Christian minister than an elected political leader.

In discussing a likely war in Iraq with Australian Prime Minister John Howard this week, Bush said freedom for the Iraqi people is not a gift the United States can provide, but instead "liberty is God's gift to every human being in the world." To some, his word's implied that a war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would be a divinely endorsed act of liberation."
http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20030212bushreligious0212p6.asp

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"Tony Blair's crusade
By Dr. W. Andy Knight

January 31, 2003 – British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been the most articulate spokesperson for the American administration on the issue of the need to disarm Iraq. His high moralizing tone and tough talk on the issue at times give the impression that he has become the lapdog of the U.S. President George W. Bush. For his loyal support Bush has laid out the red carpet for him whenever he visits the U.S.

However, this siding with Bush has begun to cost Blair loss of popular support at home. In recent United Kingdom opinion polls, the majority of the British public (around 65 to 68 per cent) appears to be questioning Blair's apparent subservience to the U.S. There is now an impression that the U.K. Prime Minister is so distracted by the war on terrorism and the pending attack on Iraq that he has been ignoring the domestic economy and social conditions in Britain.

When one listens to Blair these days, one gets the distinct impression that he is on a crusade to save the world from the 'bad' forces of extremism. He seems genuine in his belief that the U.S. and the U.K. share trans-Atlantic 'Christian' values and are being a force for good in this fight against terrorism and the autocratic Saddam. Blair is too smart to be simply written off as Bush's 'obedient lapdog', as some in the media have pronounced. If anything, Blair has presented the case against Saddam in more rational and articulate terms than has George Bush. It would appear that there is a genuine meeting of hearts between these two leaders that is linked to strongly held Christian religious beliefs. In other words, both Blair and Bush appear to be on a righteous campaign that pits fundamentalist Christianity and so-called western civilization against extremist Islam.

More than anything else, this unites the two leaders. And one should not be too surprised if this 'like-minded' crusading spirit causes both Bush and Blair to suffer the same fate at the hands of their respective electorates, should things go badly in Iraq.

Dr. W. Andy Knight is professor of International Relations at the University of Alberta and editor of Global Governance journal. This article originally appeared in the Nov. 21 edition of the Vancouver Province."
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/print.cfm?id=3819

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"Is the President Nuts?
Diagnosing Dubya
by CAROL WOLMAN, M.D. October 2, 2002.

Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path. As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it's my duty to share my understanding of his psychopathology. He's a complicated man, under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at large. So the following is offered with humility and questioning, in the form of a differential diagnosis.

From the Freudian point of view:

Dubya may be acting out a classical Oedipal drama--overcome Daddy to get Mommy. By deposing Saddam, when his father did not, he may want to prove himself more worthy of his mother's love. His rationale that he is avenging the assassination attempt on George, Sr., may be a reaction formation- his way of hiding the true motive from himself.

From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition:

Antisocial Personality Disorder--301.7

There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others since age 15 years as indicated by at least three of the following: 1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; 2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; 5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others; 7) lack of remorse by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from others."
http://www.counterpunch.org/wolman1002.html

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"Onward, Christian Soldiers 2003
Louise Witt, Salon, January 3, 2003

One can't blame Jerry Falwell for feeling invincible these days. Religious conservatives fasted and prayed that antiabortion candidates would win in November; Falwell believes their prayers were answered when the Republicans won control of the 108th Congress.

Christian conservatives believe they tipped the close Senate elections to the GOP in Georgia, Minnesota and Missouri (though they lost a heated run-off in Louisiana). And Falwell gives much of the credit to fierce campaigning by President Bush, himself a born-again Christian, in the final days before the election. "His work brought out the religious conservative vote, which elected the people we want to have in office," Falwell says. "No one in the world would deny that the religious conservatives certainly played a major role in regaining Republican control of the Senate. It's encouraging to think that if we get people out, we can make a difference every time, just like in the election of Ronald Reagan."

Former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats may blame voters' preoccupation with terrorism and the impending war with Iraq for their party's midterm loss, but the Christian fundamentalists weren't distracted. With messianic zeal, they focused on a plan to control the nation's political agenda by securing the Senate. Many give credit to political strategist Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition who is now chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. Now, as the 108th Congress readies to begin its work, it's clear that the religious right will press the most conservative agenda in recent American history -- and it's clear, too, that Falwell and other conservatives have faith they will achieve their goals.

The agenda is so controversial that it has created deep divisions even in Bush's White House. Though such internal dissent is usually hidden, it flared into the open late last year when John DiIulio, a top policy adviser who departed in frustration, ripped the influence of the religious right on Bush. Thus far, however, the president has done little to discourage the troops of the religious right from their radical mission to make the government and judiciary agents for the moral cleansing of America. In their vision, churches would be given government funds to carry out social services. Prayer would be allowed -- and encouraged -- in public schools. Israel would be backed virtually without question in its conflict with the Palestinians because that would fulfill a prophecy portending the second coming of Christ. Foreign countries would have to pass a moral litmus test to receive U.S. aid."
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/01/03/christian/print.html

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"Falwell Remarks Prompt India Riots
Friday Oct 11, 2002
By RAMOLA TALWAR, Associated Press Writer

BOMBAY, India (AP) - Five people were killed Friday in Hindu-Muslim rioting and police gunfire after riots broke out during a general strike to protest the Rev. Jerry Falwell calling the founder of Islam a terrorist.

Falwell's remarks had triggered street protests in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday.

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The key leaders of the fundamentalist religious right in America are counted among President Bush's closest political allies. Their reactionary views are a noxious mix of religious bigotry, intolerance, and anti-Muslim demagoguery,

Fundamentalist religious conservative leaders count Mr. Bush as one of their own. There is the Rev. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son and successor and a participant in the president's inauguration, who has declared Islam a "very evil and wicked religion."And there is Christian Coalition founder and television evangelist Pat Robertson, who said that "to think that is a peaceful religion is fraudulent." Robertson, in full attack mode, called the prophet Muhammad "an absolute wild-eyed fanatic . . . a robber and brigand . . . a killer." And, in an appearance on the CBS program "60 Minutes", the Rev. Jerry Falwell completes the demonization of a religion by smearing the prophet of Islam as "a terrorist."

These are not just the words of a fringe movement. The speakers are leaders among the religious right in America, a movement close to a president who speaks their language. Their embrace is mutual. It therefore falls to the president to break his silence on their gross distortion and to put some distance between their rhetoric and his own professions of tolerance. To avert his gaze from their actions is to permit the Falwells, Robertsons and Grahams to legitimize their own perverse teachings through their association with the president of the United States.

Franklin Graham, playboy-turned-preacher son of the Reverend Billy Graham was quoted in an interview saying, the war on terrorism should not be limited to the battlefield. He says it needs to expand to include a war on Islam, the religion. Franklin Graham was chosen to deliver the invocation sermon at George W. Bush Inaugural Prayer Service , and selected to lead the first officially declared National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving, declared by Dubya.

Graham's comments, coming on the first day of Ramadan, caused quite a stir, especially among American Muslims

"We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us," Graham said. "The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the Son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

Graham says his beliefs are based on what he has read in the Kur'an, the Islamic holy book, and suggests that America's war on terrorism is also a war on Islam.

"I think we better take a hard look, though, at Islam. I don't believe this is this wonderful, peaceful religion."

The addled clerics' remarks were broadcast all across America on NBC TV on Friday, Nov. 16, 2001."
(No link)

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"Bill Moyers on Election 2002
Way back in the 1950's when I first tasted politics and journalism, Republicans briefly controlled the White House and Congress. With the exception of Joseph McCarthy and his vicious ilk, they were a reasonable lot, presided over by that giant war hero, Dwight Eisenhower, who was conservative by temperament and moderate in the use of power.

That brand of Republican is gone. And for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government - the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary - is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate.

That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives.

It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich.

It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable.

And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming.

And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don't even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote 'a Biblical worldview' in American politics?

So it is a heady time in Washington - a heady time for piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money.

Don't forget the money. It came pouring into this election, to both parties, from corporate America and others who expect the payback. Republicans outraised Democrats by $184 million dollars. And came up with the big prize - monopoly control of the American government, and the power of the state to turn their ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price."
http://www.pbs.org/now/commentary/moyers15.html

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Having received the green light from “above,” Christian George is about to unleash a holiness that just might Armageddon all of us.
By Rick Friedman & Stewart Nusbaumer

Gather ‘round us, brothers and sisters, saints and sinners. Rick and Stewart feel a heavy sermon comin’ on.

All of us know that Osama bin Laden is a Muslim religious fanatic hell-bent on implementing his demented version of Armageddon in the Middle East. What we’re not sure about, however, is whether or not George Bush is a Christian religious fanatic hell-bent on his demented version of Armageddon in the Middle East. It’s this scary thought planted in the air of public consciousness that our timid mainstream media has begun to explore, lightly explore, delicately dancing around the edges to avoid setting off the land mine of religion.

Two weeks ago in the Christian Science Monitor, Francine Kiefer wrote that "Bush’s religious beliefs are emerging as a central influence to his policies and politics -- inextricably linked to everything from the war on terrorism to the November elections.” “For Bush,” Kiefer continued, “who reads his Bible every morning, faith extends beyond the national catharsis of the moment. By his own admission, his religious views shape much of who he is and, by extension, experts say, some of his most important decision-making."

Just over a week ago, Time published an article by Michael Duffy, who had interviewed more than a dozen senior Republican Party operatives, people who advise and support the president and talk regularly to him and his inner circle. "Bush has always preferred his poison straight up or down, good vs. bad, dead or alive, you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” Duffy wrote. "In one horrifying two-hour period , the world shuddered and conformed to his way of thinking: there was good and there was evil, and it wasn’t hard to tell the difference.” Then Duffy added: “Privately, Bush even talked of being chosen by the grace of God to lead at that moment."
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=190&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

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"Today Christians ... stand at the head of Germany ... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... (few) years." - Adolph Hitler - The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872.
"The mission of the Christian Coalition is simple. It is to mobilize Christians -- one precinct at a time, one community at a time -- until once again we are the head and not the tail, and at the top rather than the bottom of our political system." The Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political force in America by the end of this decade. We have enough votes to run this country...and when the people say, 'We've had enough,' we're going to take over!" -Pat Robertson

"It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into (our) institutions (today) are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have.... The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation." - Pat Robertson, New York Magazine, August 18, 1986

"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them." --Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991

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"Christian Evangelicals financing Israeli settlements
Danielle Haas, San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 10, 2002 -

Tel Aviv -- The largest contingent of American Jewish immigrants in years stepped off the El Al charter flight at Ben Gurion International Airport on Tuesday, overjoyed at the chance to begin their new lives in Israel.

Forgotten amid all the excitement was the fact that many of the 371 newcomers had been bankrolled by grants from U.S. evangelical Christians, who regard the return of Jews to the Holy Land as part of an apocalyptic prophecy foretold in the Bible.

"What I'm seeing is the Scriptures being fulfilled right before our very eyes," said Bishop Huey Harris, whose First Pentecostal Tabernacle Church in Elkton, Md., raised $2,500 from its congregation to help finance the American Jews' journey.

"What's next? I'm looking for the church to be raptured, Jesus returning for the church . . . and the Jews would receive him as their Messiah."

'BEHIND ISRAEL'

"This is the time to show we are behind Israel," Gary Bauer, former GOP presidential candidate and prominent member of the religious right, said during his first trip to Israel this month.

Fundamentalist Christian support for the Jewish people is not new, especially among an evangelical subset known as Christian Zionists, who make up an estimated 3 million of America's 98 million evangelicals. Religious experts believe that some 30 million Christians have some Zionist beliefs.

BIBLICAL PROPHECY

Doctrinally, they regard the ingathering of Jewish exiles as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy that will precede the Second Coming and end of days. Such a belief has tended to fill many Jews with suspicion and made for mutually tense relations.

While pro-Israel advocates once looked to liberal Democrats for their main support, they are increasingly warming to conservative Republicans, whose pet causes such as school prayer have long been anathema to many Jews.

Manifestations of the growing relationship are being seen increasingly on both sides of the Atlantic -- including a recent speech by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, an invitation to Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak to the Anti- Defamation League.

LETTER TO SHARON

In Israel this week, Bauer presented Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a letter signed by several leading members of the Christian right including Jerry Falwell, expressing the belief that Israel has shown "incredible restraint" toward Palestinians.

Last month, Earl G. Cox, a longtime Republican activist who served in four presidential administrations, announced that he was buying a series of commercials on Israel's Channel Two television to "announce to the people of Israel that the vast majority of American Christians recognize Israel as their friend and ally."

"Enemies of Israel must clearly understand that when they attack the Jewish state they take on millions of American Christians who passionately embrace the Jewish people," Cox told reporters.

$60 MILLION IN DONATIONS

Eckstein, who as head of the Jerusalem Friendship Fund for the past eight years claims to have collected some $60 million in donations from the evangelical community to assist Jewish immigration, has joined forces with former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, now a leading GOP consultant, as part of the effort. Their plans include an Internet site for supporters of Israel to write their congressional representatives. Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza have been among the most significant beneficiaries of the Christian support.

'ADOPT-A-SETTLEMENT'

"We've seen financial support . . . to the settlements double during the past 21 months," said Sondra Oster Baras, an Orthodox Jew and director of the Israel office of the Colorado-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, which runs an "Adopt-a-Settlement Program."

Jewish settlements benefiting from Christian contributions include Itamar and Hebron. One of the largest settlements, Ariel, has had close relations with the evangelical Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada, Colo., which "adopted" Ariel before the intifada -- one of about 40 such relationships established by the Christian Friends of Israel Communities.

American evangelicals' closer political relationship with Israel began when the conservative Likud party first came to power in 1977. Prime Minister Menachem Begin found common ground with such leaders as Falwell and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

U.S. evangelical leaders have frequently met with Likud members, including Sharon, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told an evangelical audience in Washington in 1998 that "we have no greater friends and allies than the people sitting in this room."

That is, possibly, until George W. Bush assumed the White House. His sympathy for Israel's military responses to Palestinian terror attacks is attributed by some analysts to his born-again religious convictions.

RELIGIOUS WOLVES

Other Jews are less sure, fearing that fundamentalist Christians are religious wolves in sheep's clothing, extending the hand of friendship in the present while believing in an eventual endgame of conversion or death for Jews upon Jesus' return.

In February, Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, said he had blocked settlements in Gaza from accepting bulletproof vests from evangelicals."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/07/10/MN17001.DTL

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"Tempts Jews to move to the West Bank
Norwegian Christians works to track down Jews all over the world, and make them move into the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
This year alone, they collected 40 million NOK (app. 5 mill. USD). The people who gives can get a tax redux of 12.000 NOK.

Israel's Norwegian troops are on the offensive, writes the Dagens Næringsliv (Daily Finance).

There are more than 30 organizations in Norway working with support for Israel. The biggest is the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (Ikaj), who has headquarters in Jerusalem.

Much of the money are collected in the small Christian communities at Sørlandet and Vestlandet, and despite the fact that about five million NOK of the collected money goes to the illegal setlements in the West Bank, up to 12.000 NOK are tax deductible. Several of the Israel-organizations, among them Ikaj, is on a list of accepted organizations for tax deduction by gifts to idealist organizations.

The Norwegian branch of Ikaj is the most sucessful of Ikaj's 80 departments all over the world in raising money, and the increase since last year is 17%.

It is mainly in the former Sovjet Union that Ikaj works to visit Jews and pay them to move to Israel. Also in Germany, where the Russian-Jewish community counts about 340.000, the Ikaj calls everyone with a Jewish-sounding name to implore them to go to Israel.

The Israel organizations are convinced that Israel is given to the Jews by God, and that the real Israel must cover all land «from the river of Egypt to Eufrat» in Iraq. They don't accept that the West Bank is occupied and that the occupation, the settlements and those parts of the Wall built on Palestinian territory, are in breach of international law, concluded by a long string of UN resolutions and the UN Court in Hague."
(Norwegian)
http://www.dn.no/forsiden/utenriks/article841785.ece

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"Will fundamentalist Christians and Jews ignite apocalypse?
First in a two-part series

By MARGOT PATTERSON, National Catholic Reporter, October 11, 2002

In September, thousands of Christian Zionists met in Jerusalem for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot to cheer on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and to declare their unconditional support for the state of Israel. Organized by the International Christian Embassy, the meeting appeared to be a love-in as much as a rally. “Walking here, I heard many times, and many people said, ‘We love you, we love Israel,’ ” Sharon said. “May I tell you we love you. We love all of you.”

On the face of it, the love affair between conservative Christians and Israel’s hawkish head of state seems unlikely, but mutual interests notoriously make for strange bedfellows. Many fundamentalist Christians embrace the state of Israel because of its role in their own end-of-time theology. For its part, the right wing in Israel welcomes the economic and political support it receives from conservative Christians around the world and particularly in the United States.

Religion and politics. It’s an incendiary combination anywhere, and particularly in the Middle East where Christian fundamentalists, often working in tandem with Jewish Messianic settlers, promote the formation of a Greater Israel that they believe will usher in Armageddon itself. Many of this country’s most ardent Christian supporters of Israel welcome that prospect. Others who don’t subscribe to the end-of-time theology of “dispensational premillennialism” worry that the agenda pushed by the tactical alliance between Jewish and Christian fundamentalists will transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a battle between two nationalities into a war of civilizations that will engulf the world.

“It’s a very tragic situation in which Christian fundamentalists, certain groups of them that focus on Armageddon and the Rapture and the role of a war between Muslims and Jews in bringing about the Second Coming, are involved in a folie à deux with extremist Jews,” said Ian Lustick, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, a consultant on the Middle East to the last four presidential administrations and the author of the book For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel."
http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/101102/101102a.htm

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"Some Fundamentalists Ache For Armageddon

By Allan C. Brownfeld

The ties between Christian fundamentalism in the United States and Jewish fundamentalism in Israel are growing rapidly, with potentially serious consequences for U.S.-Middle East policy and for the people of that troubled region.

In 1978, Jerry Falwell traveled to Israel on a trip sponsored and paid for by the Israeli government. In 1979, the Israelis extended another free trip, during a period when Prime Minister Menachem Begin was in a rush to build Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank. The Rev. Falwell traveled the road toward the Palestinian town of Nablus and turned off the highway and stood at a cluster of prefabricated houses built by Jewish settlers. At that time, Falwell declared that God was kind to America only because "America has been kind to the Jews."

Few Americans understood the real reasons for the alliance between Christian fundamentalism and the most extreme segments of Israel political life. In an important new book, "Prophecy and Politics" by Grace Halsell (Lawrence Hill and Co.). She worked as a White House speechwriter during the administration of Lyndon Johnson and explores this growing relationship.

During two of Jerry Falwell’s Holy Land tours, the author interviewed fundamentalist members of the Moral Majority, all of whom believed that the biblical prophecy of fighting World War III must be fulfilled preparatory of the Second Coming of Christ."

Copyright, The Orange County Register, May 19, 1987 Mr. Brownfeld is Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism www.ACJNA.org , originally founded by Rabbi Elmer Berger. He is a long time reporter and columnist as well now as the correspondent for JANE'S Terrorism Review. For more of his articles please see http://www.acjna.org/article_result.asp?search=sir&type=3
http://iraqwar.org/fundamentalists.htm

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"Israeli Extremists and Christian Fundamentalists: The Alliance

By By Grace Halsell, Washington Report, December 1988, Page 31

What is the message of the Christian Zionist? Simply stated it is this: Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us.

"Never mind what Israel does," say the Christian Zionists. "God wants this to happen." This includes the invasion of Lebanon, which killed or injured an estimated 100,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians; the bombing of sovereign nations such as Iraq; the deliberate, methodical brutalizing of the Palestinians-breaking bones, shooting children, and demolishing homes; and the expulsion of Palestinian Christians and Muslims from a land they have occupied for over 2,000 years.

My premise in Prophecy and Politics is that Christian Zionism is a dangerous and growing segment of Christianity, which was popularized by the 19th-century American Cyrus Scofield when he wrote into a Bible his interpretation of events in history. These events all centered around Israel-past, present, and future. His Scofield Bible is today the most popular of the reference Bibles.

Scofield said that Christ cannot return to earth until certain events occur: The Jews must return to Palestine, gain control of Jerusalem and rebuild a temple, and then we all must engage in the final, great battle called Armageddon. Estimates vary, but most students of Armageddon theology agree that as a result of these relatively recent interpretations of Biblical scripture, 10 to 40 million Americans believe Palestine is God's chosen land for the Jews.

Christian Zionists and the Iran-Contra Scandal

Remarkably,it was this Christian cult of Israel that brought us the Iran contra scandal, perhaps the most self-destructive act in the history of the United States. Marine Col. Oliver North, the perpetrator of this misguided series of actions, is a Christian Zionist. A born-again charismatic figure, he endeared himself to the militant Israeli Zionists who plotted Iran-contra. "He is more Israeli," said one Jewish general, "than we Israelis." This is often the case. In his zealotry, the Christian Zionist can become more Zionist, more militant, than the Jewish Zionist.

In the Iran-contra hearings, Sen. James McClure (R-ID) explained to North that the US had a stated policy of neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war. That policy differed radically from Israel's policy of selling arms to Iran. Yes, agreed North, the two policies were not the same. The question, to which McClure's efforts yielded no response, then becomes: Why would the US forego its American policy to pursue Israeli policy?

The answer, unfortunately, lies in the belief system of Christian Zionists: They believe that what Israel wants is what God wants.

Grace Halsell's book, "Prophecy and Politics, The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the US Christian Right", Is available through the AET Book Club Catalog to readers of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

(This article was adapted by author Grace Halsell from her speech at the North American Regional Non-Governmental Symposium on the Question of Palestine held in June 1988 at the United Nations headquarters in New York.)"
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1288/8812031.htm

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"DOES ARMAGEDDON REALLY MEAN GENOCIDE FOR THE JEWS?
By Rayelan Allan, Publisher of Rumor Mill News

Several days ago I read an article called, THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT - HAS IT BEEN ENGINEERED BY EXTREMIST RIGHT WING CHRISTIANS AND ZIONISTS HOPING TO 'FORCE' THE RAPTURE?

When I decided to put the article on the front page of Rumor Mill News, I added a subtitle, "Does Armageddon really mean Genocide?"

With the situation in the Middle East rapidly moving to a point that it could easily pull the entire world into war, I remembered what I was doing 18 years ago! In 1984 I joined forces with Barbara Honegger, a former White House staffer, to warn the world that if Ronald Reagan was re-elected president, his Christian advisors would push him to create Armageddon in the Middle East. They believed that Jesus could only come again after Armageddon. It didn’t seem to matter that the fulfillment of their interpretation of religious prophecy meant genocide for the Jews and many other people living in the Middle East.

On Sunday, October 28, 1984, the New York times ran an article titled "Religious Debate Fueled by Politics" The subtitle was, 'Reagan’s Talk of Armageddon Focuses Attention on Split Over a ‘Day of Doom’.

The article stated,

"On a number of occasions over the years, President Reagan has referred to Armageddon, the place where, according to some religious teachings, the last, decisive battle between the forces of good and evil is to be fought before the Day of Judgement."

The New York Times quoted one of our paragraphs about Hal Lindsey, the author of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

"Mr. Lindsay holds that the Soviet Union is 'the beast' mentioned in Revelation and the force of 'the north,' the evil Gog and Magog on whom God rains destruction in the bible’s Book of Ezekiel (38-39)

"Citing the battle descriptions in Ezekiel, Revelation and Zechariah, he (Hal Lindsay) predicts Armageddon will begin with the annihilation of the Russians and their Arab allies. That, he asserts, will be followed by a war between the Western powers and the Chinese, which will culminate in the end of the world in a thermonuclear blast." (end of quote)

The San Francisco Examiner ran an article on October 25, 1984.

Right-wing religious leader Jim Robison, whom Reagan invited to deliver the opening prayer at the 1984 Republican National Convention, said on the eve of the 1980 Washington for Jesus Rally:

"Jesus said there will be wars and rumors of wars until the end, As for any attempt at man-made peace, Jesus said, "I didn’t come to being peace. I came to bring a sword."

"There’ll be no peace until Jesus comes. That’s what the Anti-Christ promises. Any teaching of peace prior to His return is heresy. It’s against the word of God! It’s anti-Christ!"

Still quoting the Examiner: "But in a recent radio documentary Falwell said, ‘There is not going to be any real peace in the Middle East until the day the Lord Jesus sits down upon the throne of David in Jerusalem. That day is coming, and, for sure, you and I are going to be a part of it.’

"In an interview published last March (1983) in the LA Times, Falwell predicted that the Soviet Union will invade the Middle East ’because it needs oil and hates Israel.’

In his famous "evil empire" speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1981, Reagan said, "There is sin and evil in the world, and we’re enjoined by scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.

In a television interview with televangelist Jim Baker during the 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan said, "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon."

Reagan told Jewish leaders in that same campaign, "Israel is the only stable democracy we can rely on in a spot where Armageddon could come."

In October 1981, the president reportedly discussed Armageddon with Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala, and said, "Russia is going to get involved in it."

Asked about his statements on Armageddon in last Sunday’s presidential debate, Reagan said he has had philosophical discussion with other interested in the subject. But he added that he has "never seriously warned and said we must plan according to Armageddon."

I firmly believed that Ronald Reagan was being advised by his close personal friends, all of whom were fundamentalist Christian Armageddonists. These men and women convinced Reagan that in order for Jesus to return again, certain things had to be fulfilled, among them, a new temple had to be built, or at least started, and a war in Israel had to be started which would lead to Armageddon. These men believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was God's way of telling them that Armageddon would happen in this century!

The men who advised Reagan believed that for Jesus to come a second time, that Armageddon would have to destroy Israel. Very few of these men ever discussed the huge number of lives that would be lost. Needless to say, most of these lives would be Israeli lives. From my point of view, it appears that what Hitler didn't finish during World War II would be finished by Christians who used their interpretation of Bliblical prophecy to start the "Final Holocaust - ARMAGEDDON!"

H. L. Wilmington, leader of Jerry Falwell's Liberty Home Bible Institute is one of the few men who laid it all out, including the fact that millions of Jews would perish in this Second Holocaust: "All hell will break loose and many of the Jews will lose their lives. In fact, there are some theologians that feel on the basis of reading Zachariah:14 that two-thirds of the Jews will be slaughtered. Wilmington put the number of Jews who would be slaughtered at 16 million. There aren’t 16 million Jews in Israel, which makes me wonder if he was talking about slaughtering all the Jews in the world!

What is very strange to me is that many loving and kind Christians eagerly look forward to the Second Coming of Jesus, all the while knowing that the Bible says he won’t come until after Armageddon. The current interpretation of Armageddon places Armageddon in Israel!

Is it any wonder that Rabbi Balfour Brickner said, "...if the president really believes in some facet of this Armageddon idea, it’s a very scary business."

© 2002 Rayelan Allan

Permission is given to copy and distribute this article as long as it is not changed, the author's name appears and a link to Rumor Mill News is included."
http://www.rumormillnews.com/ARMAGEDDON%20ARTICLE.htm

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"Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President

By Neil Mackay, 15 September 2002

A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.
The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'."
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735

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There are some more links at this page:
http://www.againstbombing.com/ArmageddonUpdates.htm