Aziz: "Bush and Blair... wanted to destroy Iraq for the sake of Israel..."

Martin Chulov, writing for guardian.co.uk today, quotes imprisoned Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's former deputy prime minister, in his first interview since the fall of Baghdad --

"Bush and Blair lied intentionally (about Iraq's weapons program). They were both pro-Zionist. They wanted to destroy Iraq for the sake of Israel, not for the sake of the US and Britain."

Jeremiah the hebrew prophet wrote that the destruction of the land of Babylon -- modern-day Iraq -- would come as a vengeance for Israel: "The inhabitant of Zion will say, 'May my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea,' Jerusalem will say. Therefore thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I am going to plead your case and exact full vengeance for you,... and Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants'... Indeed, Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel, as also for Babylon the slain of all the earth have fallen," (Jer 51:35-37, 49).

Aziz also had harsh words for current US President Barack Hussein Obama -- "Obama is a hypocrite. He is leaving Iraq to the wolves." He said America and Britain "killed our country in many ways." In his first interview in seven years, Aziz said the United States would cause the death of Iraq if it continued to withdraw its combat forces.

But Jeremiah predicted just such an abandonment by the occupying reconstructionists -- "Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken; wail over her! Bring balm for her pain; perhaps she may be healed. 'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers to the very skies,'" (Jer 51:8-9).

Bush told Chirac: "This confrontation is willed by God.. to erase his people's enemies"

In a May 22-24, 2009 article at counterpunch.org, Yale University Visiting Professor Clive Hamilton reveals that U.S. President George W. Bush had lobbied French President Jacques Chirac in 2003 to join the Coalition of the Willing by describing the Iraq invasion plan as a "confrontation... willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".

According to Hamilton's article, the story, which first emerged in a University of Lausanne review article of September 2007 by Professor of Theology Thomas Römer, has been confirmed by Chirac in a new book by journalist Jean Claude Maurice, published in France in March. Speaking of the book, Hamilton writes, "Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush's invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq..."

As mentioned earlier in this blog, Bush had also reportedly told the Palestinian foreign minister in 2003 that he was on "a mission from God" to remove Saddam Hussein from power and, as Hamilton writes, was "receiving commands from the Lord."

Hamilton continues: "There can be little doubt now that President Bush's reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam's Iraq was the fulfillment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord."

And so as the prophecy of judgment on Babylon -- modern-day Iraq -- found in Jeremiah 50-51 describes, "Behold,... a great nation and many kings will be aroused from the remote parts of the earth; they seize their bow and javelin; they are cruel and have no mercy... marshalled like a man for the battle against you, O daughter of Babylon... Behold, one will come up like a lion...; for in an instant I shall make them run away from it, and whoever is chosen I shall appoint over it... Therefore, hear the plan of the LORD which he has planned against Babylon... At the shout, 'Babylon to be seized!' the earth is shaken, and a protest is heard among the nations" (Jer. 50:41-46).

Apparently, when one is chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord, one knows it, and can't resist telling others, no matter the stupified outcry over that revelation.

"God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq"

The Jeremiah 50-51 prophecy of calamity upon "Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans" (Jer. 50:1) includes a "great nation and many kings (being) aroused from the remote parts of the earth (who) seize their bow and javelin; (men who) are cruel and have no mercy... marshalled like a man for the battle against (the) daughter of Babylon" (Jer. 50:41-42).

The passage continues: "Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thicket of the Jordan to a perennially watered pasture; for in an instant I shall make them run away from it, and whoever is chosen I shall appoint over it..." (Jer. 50:44).

So, according to the prophecy, the leader of the "great nation" and its coalition of "many kings" which are aroused from the remote parts of the earth -- "foreigners (dispatched) to Babylon that they may winnow her and may devastate her land... in the day of her calamity" (Jer. 51:2) -- had been "chosen" by God himself to perform this deed.

One would think if God himself had actually chosen someone for some special assignment of that magnitude, that someone might have been let in on the special commission, as if having been given a word directly out of the heavens. That would be my thought, anyway.

And so we read the headline in the Guardian Unlimited (UK) of Friday, October 7, 2005: "George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'". This article cites a senior Palestinian politician who claims when President Bush met with a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he told them, "I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

The Palestinian official who recounted this was Nabil Shaath, who was the Palestinian foreign minister at the time. According to the report in the Guardian, the BBC persuaded Mr. Shaath to go on the record for a television series on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.

The Jewish newspaper, Haaretz, reported Bush's words on their web site, Haaretz.com, this way: "According to [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas, [...] Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did[...]'"