Apologies if this was posted elsewhere - I didn't see it. http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret Rummy you little rascal... what will you get up to next?
Why are all you people say "wow"? What the hell is so shocking here? Was it not obvious to you from the start that George Bush equated the "war on terror" with that specifically Christian form of religious warfare called a "crusade"? [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br_70Kbdpow"]YouTube - BushCult's "Crusade" statement[/ame] You have to be incredibly naive to think that the manipulative goons with which he surrounded himself wouldn't take advantage of that sort of thinking.
I always assumed he was completely oblivious to how the word crusade would be perceived in the Muslim world, and that someone threw it into his speech without him really having any idea of the true meaning behind it. Not that I'm really surprised at these Bible quotes or anything - it just makes me shake my head to see Rummy using them to pull his strings and make him dance like a puppet.
Exactly. Since this guy was one of the top officials responsible for these briefings, it should have been assumed.
That's not even what it's about: it's the idea that this was all some sort of religiously sanctioned warfare, that God wasn't just on our side, but that we were effectively doing God's work. Never mind the crusade quote, look at this: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world. Freedom is God's gift to everybody in the world". I always thought it was a profound mistake on the part of the left to act and talk as if George Bush was anything less than sincere about stuff like that. They wanted to make it out into some sort of big Halliburton, oil-scheme. And, sure, for some it was. But for Bush I never thought it was that; it was rather for him always an expression of religious conviction, maybe not always doctrinal conviction (though that slipped through sometimes), but clearly religious conviction. That's why he was so dangerous.
I don't doubt that for Bush it was all about doing God's will either... but I always perceived the guy to be too feeble-minded to really be in charge of this whole thing. If it hadn't been for the Neo-Cons pulling his strings - whether driven by a Halliburton oil scheme or by a misguided effort to spread Democracy to the Middle East - we wouldn't have invaded in the first place. In other words his motivation for the war wasn't the relevant part, because all he was doing was rubber-stamping Cheney's and Rumsfeld's decisions anyway, like any good figurehead. The whole religious rhetoric and imagery just made the job more difficult because it created so much ill will in the region - I think that was the biggest impact of Bush's view of the war.
I gotta give credit to the Pentagon for this. They knew how to get the deciderer's attention. I know hindsight is 20/20, but I wish the CIA/NSA was as smart. If back in 2000/2001 somebody put a snappy biblical cover sheet on the "terrorists are looking to fly planes into american skyscrapers" presidential intelligence briefing, I bet the twin towers would still be standing.