Bush's
"Christian" Blood Cult
By Wayne Madsen
www.counterpunch.org
28 April, 2003
George W. Bush proclaims
himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed
neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft,
and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham
appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it
comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This
cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than
life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions,
particularly the Pope.
One only has to check out
Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death
over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record
setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again
Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison
ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year
the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong
law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported
in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team"
members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections
during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.
Bush mocked Tucker's appeal
for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's
appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes,
and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That
went too far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, himself
an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable
that the governor of a major state running for president thought it
was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death," said
Bauer.
A former Texas Department
of Public Safety officer, a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter
that evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy to ignore DNA
data and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent
people to the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He said the
number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who
committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive
and a "phony Christian." When faced with similar problems
in Illinois, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death
sentences of his state's death row inmates and released others after
discovering they were wrongfully convicted. Yet the Republican Party
is pillorying Ryan and John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues
to investigate the former Governor for political malfeasance as if Bush
and Ashcroft are without sin in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules
in the Republican Party.
Bush's blood lust has been
extended across the globe. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate
those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually
suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter),
and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign
leaders. Bush's determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family, and
his top leaders with precision-guided missiles and tactical nuclear
weapon-like Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication
of Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic predecessors.
It now appears that in his zeal to kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons
of a Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's precision Joint
Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was
recognized by over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member state
of the United Nations. Hussein, like North Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's
Bashir Assad, and Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive
Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is still in effect. Bush's
"Christian" blood cult sees no other option than death for
those who become his enemies. This doctrine is found no place in Christian
theology.
Bush has not once prayed
for the innocent civilians who died as a result of the U.S. attack on
Iraq. He constantly "embeds" himself with the military at
Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant references to God when
he refers to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses
his sordid killing spree. He makes no mention of the children, women,
and old men killed by America's "precision-guided" missiles
and bombs and trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in indiscriminate
blood letting. Since he never experienced such killing in Southeast
Asia, when he was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit, Bush
just does not seem to understand the horror of a parent watching one's
children having their heads and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of
shrapnel or children witnessing their parents burning to death with
their own body fat nurturing the flames.
Bush and his advisers, previously
warned that Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of historical documents
and books were in danger of being looted or destroyed, instead, sat
back while the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library were ransacked
and destroyed. Cult leaders have historically attempted to destroy history
in order to invent their own. The Soviets tried to obliterate Russia's
Orthodox traditions, turning a number of churches into warehouses and
animal barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out Buddhism's famed
Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to stamp out his country's Buddhist
history. In March 2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush administration
on a natural gas pipeline, Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive
1600-year old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration, itself run
by fanatic religious cultists, barely made a fuss about the loss of
the relics. It would not be the first time the cultists within the Bush
administration ignored the pillaging of history's treasures.
The ransacking of Iraq's
historical treasures is explainable when one considers what the blood
cult Christians really think about Islam. Franklin Graham, the heir
to the empire built up by his anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has
decided being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding than being
anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes from the Nixon tapes, complained
about the Jewish stranglehold on the media and Jews being responsible
for pornography.
Franklin Graham continues
to enjoy his father's unfettered and questionable access to the White
House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham has a fanatic adherent.
Graham has called Islam a "very evil and wicked" religion.
He then announces he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an opportunity
to convert Muslims and unrepentant Eastern Christians, who owe their
allegiance to Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of blood
cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to send his Samaritan's Purse
missionaries into Iraq to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream
Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange food, water, and medicine
for the baptism of Iraqis into his intolerant brand of Christianity.
In the last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his chicanery.
The Desert Storm Commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead
in the tracks Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to
U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon shows no such compunction
to put a rein on Graham. It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon
at the Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense Department's Muslim
employees. To make matters worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative,"
Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S. government funds for
its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, something that should be an affront
to every American taxpayer.
Bush's self-proclaimed adherence
to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus
Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and his constant reference
to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system
and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership
of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican
report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about
Bush's ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush's
death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of Karla
Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world's mainstream
religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World
Council of Churches - an organization that represents over 350 of the
world's Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's
own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal Church are members of
the World Council.
Bush's blood lust, his repeated
commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil
doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the
hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ.
People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff
wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility
that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John
Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final
confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament.
Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now
standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity
has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society
or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are
now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church,
of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing
the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although
we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing
abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism
are impressive.
According to journalists
close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned
that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior
Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their
course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy
that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership
near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.
The Pope worked tirelessly
to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose
Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen
the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's
Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile,
Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution. If one were to believe
in the Book of Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can seek
solace in scoring a symbolic victory against the Bush administration.
Whether Bush represents a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples
his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult (as I believe)
or he is either the anti-Christ or heralds one, the Pope should know
he has fought the good battle and has gained the respect and admiration
of many non-Catholics around the world.
-- Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based
investigative journalist and former naval officer assigned to the National
Security Agency. He testified before Cynthia McKinney's hearing on the
genocide in the DRC in May 2001 and has worked with Bob Barr on privacy
legislation in the past. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: [email protected]