Bush, Gog and Magog

I guess I'm a bit rusty on the Old Testament and Ezekiel in particular. I had no idea who Gog and Magog were (will be?). Too bad Dubya knew.

If this is true he was nuttier and more dangerous than I ever thought. No denials from the Bushies yet. Even if there was a denial who would you believe Dubya or Chirac?

From Secular Humanism...

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 episode occurred 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.

Update: An interview with a theologian at the University of Lausanne who was contacted in 2003 by Chirac's advisers for an explanation about Gog and Magog, is here.