Alternet just added more insight to the mentality of those who led us into war in Iraq.  Turns out that Rumsfeld’s juicy little Biblical quotes juxtaposed with American firepower in his memos to Bush were part of a bigger pattern.  Apparently while George Bush was telling the American people he was hoping for a peaceful end to the crisis, he was telling others that the forth coming war with Iraq would fulfill a Biblical prophesy about the “end times.”   I quote from the Alternet piece by Clive Anderson: 

“In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

“In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

    “”And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.’

“Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

    “‘This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins’.

“The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush’s words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university’s review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.

“The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice.”

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans are dead because of stupid Fundamentalist twisting of the scriptures to fit their depraved political and Sauronic religious agendas.

On Memorial Day we honor those who have given their lives in defense of our country, whether they actually did so or were manipulated into only thinking they did so.  As we should. Their intentions were of the best and their sacrifices were as much as a person can give.

But we should not confuse these brave men and women with those whose ambitions, lies, and pride so often led others to give their lives thinking it was for their country.

This country has a long history of mixing the two up.