Bush and God

The Guardian's headline:

George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'

The Independent's headline:

Bush: God told me to invade Iraq

Normally there's a fair degree of consensus across the broadsheets (as they used to be) as to what constitute the major stories of the day. Oddly in the Times this story is only mentioned on page 46, in a brief paragraph, after an account of Bush's speech yesterday:

The White House has denied that President Bush said that he was instructed by God to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nabil Shaath, a former Palestinian Foreign Minister, said that he had heard Mr Bush say so during an interview for a documentary.

He said that in June 2003 he heard Mr Bush tell Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Prime Minister: “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.”

An official for the Bush Administration said: “This account is false.”

So why are the Guardian and Independent making such a big deal of it? If they weren't such respectable newspapers you could almost believe they had some kind of agenda to try and make Bush look as stupid as possible in order to pander to the prejudices of their readership.

Comments

[Eamonn]

Funny that those particular newspapers don't bat an eyelid when other people cite God as the reason to fly planes into skyscrapers, or behead infidels, or hang gay men. Must be the "wrong sort of God".