from Crikey .....

Rumsfeld and Cheney's torture approval was about self-justification

Editor of Overland Jeff Sparrow writes:

"He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."

So said Richard Nixon, a man who knew something about ruthlessness and bastardry, about Donald Rumsfeld back in 1971.

GQ today provides a fascinating glimpse of the man at work. In the early days of the Iraq war, Rumsfeld was responsible for regular briefings known as Worldwide Intelligence Updates, often personally delivered to the White House.

On their covers, they featured colour photos from the war, adorned with passages from the bible. Given Muslim sensitivities about the war as a "crusade", the linkage between battle reports and scripture would have been disastrous if leaked. Besides, Rumsfeld himself had never shown much concern for religion. So why the quotes?

Presumably because he understood how best to soothe the man-child allegedly running the country. Famously, Bush didn't read the newspapers and relied on aides for knowledge of the outside world. The President also believed he'd received a divine mandate to attack Iraq: ("God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.' And I did.") Thus when the war effort ran into problems, Rummy calmed his commander-in-chief with biblical wisdom.

On 3 April, for instance, the Worldwide Intelligence Update ran: "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."

With the President duly pacified, Rumsfeld could busy himself with his other obligations. Like, for instance, using torture to produce a link between Iraq and al Qaida.

That is, there's increasing evidence that so-called "enhanced interrogations" were pushed by senior Bush officials to justify the war on Iraq. Last month, McClatchy newspapers reported a former senior U.S. intelligence official as saying that the pressure for such techniques came from Rumseld and Cheney, increasingly frustrated about their inability to link Iraq with bin Laden.

Elsewhere, NBC's Robert Windrem says that Cheney's office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner suspected to have knowledge of al Qaeda connections; a report on pre-Iraq war intelligence reveals that the first questions put to Khalid Shaikh Muhammad (as he was waterboarded hundreds of times) related to Iraq; a de-classified Senate Armed Services Committee report quotes army psychologist Maj. Paul Burney explaining that his work on a Behavioral Science Consultation Team was "focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq"; Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, writes that the administration's "principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida."

The last point's worth reiterating. Have a look at the gallery of new Abu Graib photos recently leaked by SBS, since they show "enhanced interrogations" in progress: the cells spattered with blood, the men hanging upside down or being bashed by thuggish guards.

Those techniques were never, it seems, about ticking time bombs. They were about protecting the political reputation of men like Rumsfeld and Cheney, who launched an apocalyptic war and then needed some basis to justify it.

Contrary to Karl Rove's bizarre article in The Australian today, the implication of Democrats in the waterboarding program doesn't lessen the need for an inquiry. As Rumsfeld's Bible would have it (Mark 4:22), "for nothing is hidden, except to be revealed." Bring on the investigation.

and then .....

Why Bush invaded Iraq: the war on Gog and Magog

Visiting Professor at Yale University Clive Hamilton writes:

On Sunday GQ magazine published an amazing scoop revealing that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld embellished top-secret wartime memos with covers featuring quotations from the Bible.

Leaked by an unknown official who was disturbed enough to keep copies but reluctant to fan Islamic fears that the United States was on a crusade, the memos are being seen as Rumsfeld's means of manipulating or ingratiating himself with the born-again President.

From Ephesians he chose:

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

But there is another, perhaps more alarming, story about Bush's Christian fundamentalism and the Iraq War that has yet to come to light.

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacque Chirac. Bush told Chirac that Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and they had to be defeated.

Gog and Magog are Biblical creatures, forces of the Apocalypse, who appear in Genesis and Ezekiel. At the end of the millennium they would come out of the north and, unless stopped, destroy Israel in a final battle. Bush believed the time had now come for that battle.

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 is believed to have told 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 emerged only because the Elysee Palace, baffled by Bush's words, sought advice from Thomas Roemer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Roemer subsequently gave an account in the September 2003 issue of University's review, Allez savoir. The small piece apparently went unnoticed, although it was repeated in a French newspaper in 2007.

The story has been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book yet to be published in English by French journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush's invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs".

In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on "a mission from God" in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.

There can be little doubt now that President Bush's reason for launching the war in Iraq was fundamentally religious. He was driven by his understanding of the realisation of Biblical revelation in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.

That the US President saw himself as the vehicle of God whose duty was to prevent the Apocalypse raises serious questions about Australia's participation in the war. In his intimate moments with Bush, did John Howard hear about Gog and Magog and the holy mission to fight the forces of Satan?

More than three thousand US troops have died in the campaign to defeat the evil forces from the north. Were Australian troops sent to risk their lives because of George Bush's Biblical delusions?

In a coda to this story I stumbled across a curious fact. It's common knowledge that while a senior at Yale George W. Bush was a member of the exclusive and secretive Skull & Bones society, a fact that has given rise to lurid stories about an old boys' network at the pinnacle of corporate, government and CIA power.

George's father, George H.W. Bush had also been a "Bonesman", as indeed had his father. Members of Skull & Bones are assigned or take on nicknames when they join. And what was George Bush Senior's nickname?

"Magog".