George W. Bush is having private conversations with an invisible friend. Back in 2003 he met with the Palestinians and told them all about it.
Nabil Shaath says: “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.'”
Let’s get George to sit down and lead us through every step of these conversations—I’m sure his fundamentalist base would love it. Although I think there is a serious problem here that the literalists will point out to him. Notice that God did not say, “send other men to fight terrorists.” He said, “George, go.”
Those words are so clear and unambiguous, I suggest that we immediately give George a rifle and a uniform and ship him off to the Middle East. The fact that we are failing in Iraq is a sign of God’s displeasure that his servant has failed to heed his commands.
Just to be on the safe side, let’s send Cheney and Rice, too.
And Gonzales. And Gates. And Bolton. And for good measure, send that EPA guy – Johnson – over. He’s useless on the environment. Guns for all of them.
I’ll go instead of Cheney. He’s got other priorities.
And of course, this flat denial of any such conversation by the White House is not to be trusted, because it emanated from a damnstupidchimpbrainedidiotlyingBusHitlerlackey.
PZ, sometimes your pavlovian need to believe anything and everything anybody says bad about Republicans and religion leads you into saying, doing, and posting some unbelievably stupid things. Didn’t it ever occur to you to actually try to investigate this claim?
For some reason, I’m reminded of the Parable of the Talents.
Could someone please remind me what was expected of the man who was given no Talents at all?
Another fundamentalist Christian who can’t interpret God’s word correctly. Never would have seen that one coming.
Just making sure, though, once George gets there – the rest of them stand back and let him do his thing, right? Wouldn’t want God to get even more angry…
I think it’s odd that Hillary and Edwards can be talking to the same God as George Bush and get completely different answers.
And WolfWalker, when it comes to ruling through the guidance of prayer, it is all apocryphal.
You mean W. didn’t actually have a conversation with God? I’m surprised — I’m usually so willing to believe.
To the “PZ hates Republicans Guy”
The quote is from a BBC press release and I think it reasonable of PZ to every now and then trust the MSM to quote people accuratley.
I know most of you hate journalists but often they do report what people tell them.
Even Fox.
Mystic (oh so very mystic) Olly.
Even if I can’t spell “accurately”.
Duh! Speling iss difakult,
Oli
PS I call Godwin on WolfWalker.
This has been said a thousand times before, but I still find it more than a little scary that a man in command of a nuclear capacity which could easily wipe out the entire human population of the earth heeds to voices in his head which he thinks are the same voices that inspired the racist, genocidal diatribes of the Old Testament. I’m quite surprised that there are any non-jews, let alone atheist jews, left alive on this planet…
Open Quote,”
Q Are you aware of the — there’s a BBC broadcast tonight that’s quoting the Palestinian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister as saying that they were in a meeting with the President in June of ’03, and there are some very detailed quotes here, saying that the President said to them, “God told me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan,’ and I did,” and then “God told me, ‘George go and end the tyranny in the Iraq'” and so forth and so on?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, that’s absurd. He’s never made such comments.
Q Were you in the meeting when that took place?
MR. McCLELLAN: I’ve been in meetings with him with President Abbas; I didn’t travel on that trip, if you’re talking about to Jordan. But I’ve been in many meetings with the President with world leaders where he’s talked about this.
Q So you don’t know about the June ’03 meeting?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I checked into that report and I stand by what I just said.
Q Can you recall him ever making a longer speech than this 40-minute”.
End Quote
So his outright denial was that he wasn’t there.
Sounds pretty definitive to me.
Mystic (oh, so very mystic) Olly
PS How do I quote stuff with the funky indentation that looks like I might be partially computer literate??
MO
Old, completely debunked b.s. I’m not the least bit surprised you fell for it, PZ.
Where has this been debunked?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I checked into that report and I stand by what I just said.
I suppose that we must believe the words of a perpetual liar, after all he sounded sincere and even stands by his comment.
PZ, (tongue in cheek) how could you think that Bush would say something like that, even though TBN reports that he prays for guidance every day and has prayer meetings all the fricken time and people walk around the White House with Bibles under their arms on a constant basis.
Face it people, the Republican party has been co-opted by a bunch of religious nut jobs, (or at least a few pandering to the nutjobs) so it would be in the best interest of you Republicans to stop defending this twit and take your party back if you can.
Meanwhile, I just hope God shuts the f up and stops takling to this turd. For the sake of us all.
Whether it’s accurate or not, I still love the quote from Sam Harris:
Just type whatever you need quoting between “
” (without the quotation marks).
As for Bushy-boy, I don’t know if this is true, but this White House’s press secretaries have no credibility whatsoever. If it has been “debunked”, then please quote a credible source. In any case, it doesn’t matter that much. How is this worse than Dubya saying he’s buddies himself with god in so many other speeches?
Mercifully, God did not tell him to nuke Russia, or kill all the gays.
It’s this very “God told me to… [whatever]” that frightens the rest of the world.
Really? Since when does a press spokesman’s denial “completely debunk” anything? Even the “good guys” use spokespeople to hide embarrassing truths; this administration has used the White House press room as its primary channel for disinformation and obfuscation. As far as I can tell, McClellan having denied the story comes closer to confirming the story than debunking it.
But it really doesn’t matter whether this precise conversation took place exactly as reported; what matters is that it’s such a credible story. We have so many other reasons to believe W’s foreign misadventures (not to mention his domestic policies) are driven by just this sort of messianic delusion. He’s invoked God-as-policy-advisor so often, in so many contexts, that whether this particular conversation is real is no more than a footnote to the argument. Even if he didn’t say this, it’s pretty clear this is how he feels. And that’s terrifying.
And it’s important to add that it doesn’t matter whether or not he actually said those things – there is a pretty widespread perception that the President of the United States does believe he gets messages from God.
Perhaps that’s not fair, but that’s the way it seems to be.
Oops, sorry. I meant to say just use [blockquote] and [/blockquote] tags at the beginning and end of your quote, replacing the brackets with “less than” and “more than” signs.
The White House Spin Doctor is not the final arbiter of truth. We’re talking about the same George W. Bush who said, “I believe that God wants me to be President.”
The Sacred OracleGoogle is unable to direct me to a site that clearly (or even questionably) debunks this.It seems, actually, that subsequent comments by the Palestinians (in response to White House “outrage”) do not even attempt to retract or modify the original quotations. Rather, they focus on the assurance that Bush hadn’t been taken literally: “We understood that he was illustrating his strong faith and his belief that this is what God wanted.”
The achievement of world peace is one of the high-minded goals of George W. Bush. Bush believes that he is an instrument of God’s will, even when waging war in pursuit of this peace. Anyone who isn’t aware of that just isn’t paying attention.
Oh? How do you know? How can you state that with utter certainly? What is your evidence? Who is lying – the Palestinian who was there, or the White House Press Secretary who wasn’t?
Indeed. McClellan wasn’t even there. What’s more anectodal than his opinion? Perhaps McClellan is right – but how can we know?
Round the time this first came up (and I’m agnostic about whether that actual conversation took place) someone commented that if you tell people god speaks to you through your toaster you could be locked up. Keep quiet about the toaster and you could be President.
Well, if most of the posters here ever want to seriously try to understand the determined refusal to accept obvious scientific and mathematical facts on the part of fanatics, religious or otherwise, they could not do better than to examine their own insistence that Pres. Bush said this clearly fabricated quote. A further consequence is that it undercuts your credibility with anyone that is not already convinced of your other positions, but is persuadable; they would come to this post and think, “Just another bunch of internet nutjobs,” and move on.
So.. this god he is listening to…
One moment he wants Bush to wreck havoc on a nation, the next he’s all sweetness and light.
That’s one conflicted deity.
All I can say is, you have to be pretty cynical to spew that b.s for public comsumption with a straight face. Bush should be ashamed of himself (yes, I know, shame is not part of his cognitive-emotional skill set).
“…clearly fabricated…”
On what evidence do you base this assertion? You could be right, but it’s not at all obvious to me that the quote is fabricated. What do you know that I don’t know? Inquiring minds (mine, anyway) want to know.
@#22
@#26
Thanks for providing the evidence for these claims. I’d hate to be foolish and accept something on some guy on the internet’s say so.
Jeff Z and all the outraged others: Hypothesis 1: Palestinian guy is telling the truth about Bush flaunting talking to God. Hypothesis 2: White House spokesperson is telling the truth about Bush never saying such a thing. Is any of those hypotheses falsifiable?… I don’t think so… Can we speak of scientific or mathematical criteria to decide about them? Wouldn’t it be rather ridiculous to expect that?… An educacted guess would be a more appropriate a approach, don’t you think? And an educated guess, based on well known facts about the president’s behavior and own words, tips the balance on favor of believing he said he gets instructions from a deity.
You say:
I say: Prove it!
“Just another bunch of internet nutjobs,”…
The God quote fits very nicely with the countless other dumb things Bush has said, thus the tendency to believe he said it.
At one point, he was having a regular bi-weekly or weekly phone call with some fundie nut.
Never underestimate Bush’s nuttiness or nastiness.
I’m digging around on Snopes and can’t find anything on this, but my understanding is this is true, but not as true as it might be. That is, Bush probably did say that he felt his religious beliefs guided his disastrous Middle East policy, but not that God was actually whispering in his ear when he made his dumbass decisions.
The key thing is that this is a report from a Palestinian, speaking Arabic. Arabic is laden with a colorfully religious idiom, based largely on the Islamic tenet that every single thing that happens is the explicit will of God. Future-tense sentences are constantly tagged “insh’Allah” (“Allah willing”), plain statements are cranked around so that the subject becomes the object, acted upon by the Almighty — everyday Arabic invokes the deity as freely as Bob & Doug McKenzie spill “eh”s. Even a weather report would sound like Old Testament prophecy.
So what we’re getting is a statement made by Bush, delivered to a presumably religiously-minded audience, filtered through an Arabic translation and an Arabic-speaking source, then reported literally by the BBC. Bush remains guilty of being short-sighted, dogmatic, incurious, and fairly stupid, but I think the charge of schizophrenia remains unproven.
“So what we’re getting is a statement made by Bush, delivered to a presumably religiously-minded audience, filtered through an Arabic translation and an Arabic-speaking source, then reported literally by the BBC.”
Exactly. The old urban legend about translated soft-drink slogans comes to mind.
And don’t forget that it’s a source who has every reason to want to discredit Bush, reported by a “news service” that also has every reason to want to discredit Bush. The BBC’s insane hatred for Bush and his policies is well known among those folks who actually take the time to check that service’s reports against reality.
Oh, one other thing: for you BDS-victims who are sufficiently deranged as to not believe the linked White House briefing, how about this article in the San Francisco Chronicle in which Shaath himself places a different interpretation on what he told the Boobies?
The BBC’s insane hatred for Bush and his policies is well known among those folks who actually take the time to check that service’s reports against reality.
Insane hatred? It’s refreshing, much needed, intolerance of his endless bullshit!
Are you implying Nabil Shaath was trying to discredit Bush, when he said that Bush wanted to work towards a Palestinian state? When he corrected his statement later, saying Bush was only stating “his strong faith and his belief that this is what God wanted,” what was his agenda then?
As for the BBC’s willingness to believe the worst, I will say that Bush has only himself to blame that a story like this is so credible. I’m reminded of a story I read about him where he was meeting some European diplomat, who complimented him on his tie.
“Thanks,” said the President, “God told me to wear it.”
The diplomat gave him a blank, deer-in-the-headlights stare.
“I’m kidding,” said Bush.
The problem is when you’ve spent your entire political career trying to convince YECs, antiabortion zealots, and people who think the Rapture is at hand that you’re one of them, you can’t really take offense when other people start believing it too.
wolfie boy
you are beginning to sound a bit like Bill O’Reilly. Anybody who questions Bush seems to be from the insane far left or is a smear organisation.
Next you’ll be claiming that Soros funds the BBC.
Honestly disagreeing with Bush is not hard and quoting the words of important people in any government in the world is what journalists do. At least the BBC had a name for the quote and not a Bill O’ special “some people think…. add the BS here”
I’m with wolfwalker. When God delivers a signed, notarised statement that He said that to Bush, I’ll believe it. Till then, no way!
Wolfwalker apparently doesn’t read other people’s comments, and has only a passing acquaintence with the concept of logic.
A “re-interpretation” of a remark is just that. What the Palestinian was saying is his follow-up was not “Oh, Bush didn’t say what we claimed he said,” it was “Oh, we didn’t think for a moment that the President literally meant what he said – we knew he was speaking figuratively.”
In other words, that “evidence” goes exactly no distance towards disproving the original quotation.
It seems the truth is this: we don’t know. In the absence of video, we have to take somebody’s word for it. He may not have said it, but it’s well within his widely documented rhetorical range. I’m with the Palestinians; I don’t think he meant it literally, either. If he said it at all, that is.
And as for Shaath trying to discredit Bush in the first place, all I can say is, “Huh?”
I’m totally with K. Signal Eingang on this. I for one am not leveling a charge of schizophrenia. However, it’s clear that Bush believes he’s trying to do God’s will. The belief rests on the presuption that he knows God’s will.
This raises the question, “How does he know?”
I think if we drill down far enough, at the bottom we find this: George W. Bush is doing what he thinks is right. Period. And even if the President doesn’t realize it, his God is just a prop, an authority figure invoked to justify his actions, actions taken on behalf of George W. Bush’s personal moral system, a system that would exist with or without God. No, I can’t prove that.
I’m going to start labelling everyone I disagree with as insane. That’s clearly the only sensible approach for someone interested in ‘reality.’
I suppose I should posit some sort of explanation for ‘why’ such a large group of people would be insane first though. Something in the water? The new ‘eXtreme lead paint’-flavoured Doritos?
Unfortunatly, there don’t seem to be any plausible sources for this mysterious epidemic of insanity.
Why does reality insanely hate me so?
When someone brings up ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’, I’m immediately clued in that said person is a fucking idiot.
(Much like the terms ‘evolutionist’ and ‘Darwinist’.)
George W. Bush is doing what he thinks is right.
Torture. Signing statements. Lying us into war. Domestic spying. Outing CIA agents. Habeas corpus revoked. Healthy Forests. Clear Skies.
If that’s what he considers right, I don’t want to know what he considers wrong.
Extramarital blowjobs, presumably.
I’ve always found intriguing (I was going to say funny, but there’s nothing funny about it) how these extremist right wing religious types are always vociferating about right and wrong, sin and doing the right thing, but, when it comes to advancing their agenda to acquire as much power as possible, and impose their views on others, they don’t hesitate for a nanosecond to do far worse things than those people they continually are declaring hell-bound. Faith is such a malignant thing! With it, you can justify just about the most atrocious behavior if “you are doing the labor of the Lord”. Not that Judeochristian religions don’t have Scriptural basis for that… as if they needed some kind of justification.
Another thing that amazes me is that people that dislike others who say the Emperor (Dubya) is naked, is that they keep repeating the same stupidities they have been saying since he usurped the Presidency in 2000. At least back then they had feigned ignorance to justify their stupid words. Now that it has become quite obvious to most that Bush criticisms were right all along, what do they have to justify being (and acting) so stupid? I guess, the way other people need the deity crutch, many, even in our atheist/free-thinking/scientific ranks, need the authority crutch. And PZ IS a well known authority in the science and blogging medium, so it isn’t so surprising that among part of his dedicated readers we can find some of this nutjobs that still defend Emperor Dubya.
Well, yeah. I purposely didn’t insert any of my own value judgements. Bush apparently told Bob Woodward that he trieds to do God’s will and that he then asks for forgiveness. I imagine he has his share of dark nights of the soul. The fact that many of us disagree with what he feels this country should be doing to combat evil (or whatever) is another topic, one that exists independent of the whole God issue.
Anyway……
I’m very much inclined to believe that people arguing over the validity of the quote missed the comedic value in PZ’s post. I recommend those of you arguing the logistics to reread PZ’s post. Just don’t let the punchline kick you in the face.
Shawn: Indeed it started being a humor post, but some people started saying that PZ and the rest of us JUST COULDN’T say those things about the Commander in Chief…
You people are really too funny for words.
Anyone who questions a vicious attempt at taking down Bush is automatically a right-wing religious zealot? PZ can use adjectives like “insane” in a metaphorical way, but if an opponent uses exactly the same word in exactly the same mode, it’s automatically a sign of stupidity? Sheesh.
Ring the dinner bell, stand back and watch the dogs drool. Defend Bush, stand back and watch the liberals attack.
Doesn’t it ever bother you that your reactions are so mechanical, so predictable, so robotic? Human beings are supposed to be able to think, reason, investigate, research. Try it sometime. You might be astounded by the results. Pleasantly so.
Or so he says.
I think comment 35 is on to something here. After all Captain Unelected hasn’t been to church as often as one might expect from his rhetoric, and he’s surrounded by people like Richard the Lying-Hearted. It looks likely that his religion is more like Scientology: “Make money. Make more money.”
But I don’t have more than circumstantial evidence either way.
Then work on your written communication skills. There wasn’t the slightest hint that you meant that metaphorically.
Or so he says.
I think comment 35 is on to something here. After all Captain Unelected hasn’t been to church as often as one might expect from his rhetoric, and he’s surrounded by people like Richard the Lying-Hearted. It looks likely that his religion is more like Scientology: “Make money. Make more money.”
But I don’t have more than circumstantial evidence either way.
Then work on your written communication skills. There wasn’t the slightest hint that you meant that metaphorically.
Did he or didn’t he? That is A question. It’s a morass out there. Presidents and politicians tend to say one thing right out in public with the recorders on and quite another at cozy “fundraisers”. I suspect that the nuances of speech vary somewhat for the occasion. Small “independent” or partizan sources make what they will of “addresses” not covered in depth. Observations of GWB suggest that he is chemically “stabilised” for the safety of the administration. I agree with the critics who claim him “stable-ized” as a pliable mouthpiece but lack anything more convincing than the serial lies that he has uttered as evidence of his medical status.
Ring the dinner bell, stand back and watch the dogs drool. Defend Bush, stand back and watch the liberals attack.
provide evidential support in favor of Bush’s decisions over the last 8 years, and see if you don’t get a different response.
come in like an idiotic knee-jerk redneck, and get exactly the response you expect.
go figure.
self-fulfilling prophecy!
problem is, Bush has done a great number of completely indefensible things since he became Gov. of Texas (and before).
so you have your work cut out for you if you really want to defend him.
of course, you could come back with the ultimate red-neck statement:
“Well, if ya all hate America so much, why don’t you just leave!”
which is about what I would expect from someone with your responses so far.
replacing the brackets with “less than” and “more than” signs.
Psssst… “angle brackets”. When it’s not math they are angle brackets.
I stand by my ‘wolfwalker seems like a fucking idiot’ stance.
mmm lead paint Doritos …
Frankly, I don’t care if the quote is genuine; there are enough stupid things from that guy anyway.
Psssst… “angle brackets”. When it’s not math they are angle brackets.
But doesn’t every kind of bracket have an angle? This one [ has two! That makes it much more deserving of the title angle bracket to me.
Then again, not only do I think of them as less than and more than signs, I also still reflexively think of the visual my class was given in whatever grade we learned them in of a little bird with its mouth open towards the larger amount, so I’m not exactly sophisticated in bracket terminology.
Common Dreams doesn’t buy it:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0630-04.htm
The Washington Post doesn’t buy it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/08/AR2005100801094.html
And the source of the quote is Abbas and only Abbas:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
But you still believe it. Typical.