We're on a "mission from God"

If only it was still just Akroyd and Belushi...

The Raw Story BBC will report Bush told Palestinian leaders that God told him to end tyranny in Iraq

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday Oct. 10, Monday Oct. 17 and Monday Oct. 24 British time), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003 to BBC reporters.

Foreign Minister Shaath declares: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Prime Minister Mazen recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

Samuel Johnson was the guy who famously said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. He was wrong -- religion is.

I'll put up with the Jimmy Carters of the world -- earnest men who talk to God. But I am deathly afraid of the ones who are convinced God talks back. And when they have the means and opportunity to act on their megalomaniacal messianism as our own Shrub has had, the results are, well, the messes that we have. It makes me wonder how many times he has given the order to go "nucular," and be thankful that there must still be a few brave, sane souls willing and able to stop him.