Gog and Magog

[andrei]

so this is what supposedly happenned:

 

- Bush is trying to convice Chirac to go to war against Iraq, he is talking about Gog and Magog

- Chirac asks his advisers "who is Gog and Magog"

- the advisers are calling professor Thomas Romer from Lausanne

- professor : "but why are you asking?"

- advisers: "you know, president Chirac just had a top secret conversation with Bush about invading Iraq, and Bush was trying to convince Jacques using the Gog and Magog hyperbole"

 

I mean no disrespect, but how naive one should be to believe all this is true?

[Phil]

I wonder if Bush thinks Obama is the....

 

Oh, never mind.

[Winstonm]

If you read the article you discover that any top secret label applied to the conversation was done so by the article's author, and Chirac apparently did not believe the conversation all that top secret else he would not have later confirmed the story in an interview.

 

I also see no benefit for the following people to collude in a common lie.

 

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

 

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

 

Perhaps those who think this story unbelievable have simply never spent much time with evangelicals - heck, Elliot Abrams of the Bush administration met with John Hagee to discuss foreign policy. It's hard to find a nutcase more outrageous than Hagee. He said Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on New Orleans for its gay pride parade the week before. And he wants war with Iran to encourage the rapture and second coming.

[y66]

In his post which refers to James Haught's story about Bush, Chirac, Gog, Magog & Co, Andrew Sullivan asks "Is this true?". 

 

That seems disingenuous at best. Pretty lame actually to post stuff like this without more to go on. Will be disappointed if my favorite blogger doesn't apologize to his readers for this. Come on!

I can't believe you are writing this. This is ALWAYS Sullivan's style - if there is information that points that something outrageous has happened, he will link to it, and demand for more investigation/clarification/proof. "He is an inquiring mind" doesn't seem to fit better on anyone but him.

The only reason it annoys you this time is because you personally cannot imagine that the story is true.

You're right, I cannot imagine that this story is true. I can imagine Andrew Sullivan having a bad day, perhaps even a moment of temporary insanity, but I cannot otherwise imagine him thinking this story might be true either.

[helene_t]

Agree with Winston. While this story may be more likely to be false, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it were true.

 

It is not difficult to imagine how it could leak, either. Chirac or one of his advisers, or the theologist, may have told a friend, a family member. And then the ball rolls.

[Roupoil]

I really hope someone from France chimes in on this. It's not just that I doubt Bush said it, I also doubt that Chirac said that he said it.

Not sure french guy (I am one) can help here since as far as I know (I am not a big news reader) the matter has not been heavily discussed here. Apparently, the only "Chirac source" is the interview by Maurice and, even if he has been the director of a rather serious newspaper, I wouldn't trust him too much. The fact that Chirac could admit having had such a conversation with Bush (and that Bush actually said that) doesn't seem too absurd to me.

 

What surprises me is that Chirac asked to a Swiss theologian to get information about Gog and Magog (not such a difficult matter to be informed on), but anyway what do I know about how a president handles this kind of stuff ? It seems the info was first revealed on the Swiss side (and later "confirmed" to Maurice) so the best way to get more precisions maybe lies there.

[kenberg]

Winston's argument has some merit, I agree. But if the author decided to label the conversation "top secret" just because he wanted to, I would say that says something about how much trust we should extend to his words. This matters. People use various references in speaking. When someone says "My Kingdom for a horse" or "like Saul on the road to Damascus" I do not usually think he wants a horse or has visions of Jesus asking "Why doth thou persecute me?". If Bush casually referred to Gog, thinking he would be understood somewhat metaphorically, I have no great problem with it except that I, and apparently Chirac, would have no idea what he was talking about. A guy who decides on his own to label a conversation top secret is a guy who can embellish a casual biblical reference to make it seem more than it is.

 

I confess that I would really like this story NOT to be true. Of course I would also have liked it not to be true that one political party hired some ex-cia losers to break into the headquarters of the other party and I would have liked Bill Clinton to have made better choices in playmates than Monica Lewinsky.

 

 

My favorite evangelical was the guy who used to preach on campus. It went something like "Before I found Jesus I used to fornicate every night. I would fornicate twice a night, Three times a night. Now I have found Jesus and I don't fornicate anymore" . I was never sure if he was bragging about his earlier life or complaining about his current life but it didn't seem to me to be a good strategy for getting converts.

[blackshoe]

Gog and Magog.

[cherdanno]

In his post which refers to James Haught's story about Bush, Chirac, Gog, Magog & Co, Andrew Sullivan asks "Is this true?". 

 

That seems disingenuous at best. Pretty lame actually to post stuff like this without more to go on. Will be disappointed if my favorite blogger doesn't apologize to his readers for this. Come on!

I can't believe you are writing this. This is ALWAYS Sullivan's style - if there is information that points that something outrageous has happened, he will link to it, and demand for more investigation/clarification/proof. "He is an inquiring mind" doesn't seem to fit better on anyone but him.

The only reason it annoys you this time is because you personally cannot imagine that the story is true.

You're right, I cannot imagine that this story is true. I can imagine Andrew Sullivan having a bad day, perhaps even a moment of temporary insanity, but I cannot otherwise imagine him thinking this story might be true either.

Well, for one I find the story here not so hard to believe. Even if you think it is unlikely, I think it compares pretty well with the fake-pregnancy rumors that Sullivan was pushing?