The Iraq War: Now we know

Why did the United States invade Iraq, really? A large, populous Arab country, stitched together from three provinces of the old Ottoman empire, with fractious Kurds, Sunnis, Shi'ites, Chaldeans and a third-rate military and bumbling intelligence service, it seemed like both a bad place to get involved in, and not much of a threat to us to boot.

So what was it? Was it those WMDs? Nope, they didn't exist. Was it the ties to al Qaida? Ditto. Was it the oil? Spreading democracy through the Middle East? Because he tried to kill Bush's daddy? Was it the neocons? Ahmed Chalabi? An elaborate Iranian con game? No, no, no, no. no and no.

As The Church Lady (aka SNL's Dana Carvey) would say, "Who was it? Who could it possibly be? Was it, oh I don't know, SATAN???"

Satan? Now we're getting somewhere.

According to former French President Jacques Chirac, President George Bush called him in early 2003 and urged the French leader to join the United States in invading Iraq. The Leader of the Free World, the 43rd president of these United States, the Decider himself, said the following:

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.

That's the account Chirac gave to French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, as published in a book released earlier this year, Si Vous Le Repetez, Je Dementirai (If You Repeat It, I Will Deny).

Gog? Magog? Gog and Magog? Huh?

That's exactly what Chirac said, more or less, and as the tale goes (and we're not vouching for every last bit of it here), the befuddled and mystified Gaul asked a theologian by the name of Thomas Romer at Switzerland's University of Lausanne to do some biblical investigation.

Biblical scholars we are not here at Nukes and Spooks, but a quick check confirms that Gog and Magog appear both in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 38-39) and the New Testament (Revelation 20:8). In both citations, they seem to be bad dudes, maybe the chief bad dude.

"Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Ma'gog, the chief prince of Me'shech and Tu'bal, and prophesy against him ... And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws," says Ezekiel. We're not precisely sure what that means, but we like the "hooks into ... jaws" bit.

Maybe more to the point, Revelation talks about a final battle between good and evil, involving G and M: "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 Ma'gog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea."

Skeptical, right?. We were, too, when we first received word of Bush, Chirac, the G-man and the M-guy, figuring it was just one more viral Internet conspiracy tale. We're journalists, so we did a little bit of investigating. While we haven't talked to Bush or Chirac firsthand, there is a Thomas Romer who teaches theology at the University of Lausanne and he did write an article about the Chirac-Bush conversation for the University of Lausanne's magazine, Allez Savoir! (Title: "George W. Bush et le Code Ezechiel.")

And this isn't the first time religion has reared its head in the Bush administration's handling of national security affairs. Remember Bush letting slip about "a crusade" a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks? And then there were those Pentagon PowerPoint ™ briefings that began with war-like phrases from the Bible.

What really nailed it for us, though, was the revelation that Bush's father, who like the son was a member of Yale's secretive Skull & Bones society, was assigned a certain nickname. What was it? "Magog."

We're shocked, shocked, that the mainstream media has by and large ignored this blockbuster - nay, apocalyptic - story, with the exception of a handful, like The Toronto Star and The Charleston (W. Va.) Gazette.

So, as they say, there you have it - mystery solved, after 6 1/2 years. It was about good and evil, Gog and Magog, Apocalypse and Salvation.

In a way, it makes more sense than WMDs and al Qaida links. Now there's a fantasy.

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