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Is Bush criminally insane?
The US President claims to have been "instructed" directly by God himself to conquer Iraq and Afghanistan.
"God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and
then He instructed me to strike at Saddam"
- G. W. Bush, August 2004 If this is just a figure of speach, what does he mean by "instructions", exactly?
Is Bush just trying to say that God automatically supports the US government no matter what they do? Or, more importantly, is the leader of the world's most powerful nation actually hearing voices?
I mean, if somebody claims to be receiving instructions directly from God himself, he is either a prophet or he is a madman. Right? So what is Bush: Holy Man or madman?
Bush's symptoms are consistent with paranoid schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. To be fair, the man has been under a lot of pressure. He is known to suffer from irrational fears, most famously the threat of WMD in Iraq. More recently, he suddenly became convinced that al-Qaeda was about to attack at any moment, but it turned out that he was looking at intelligence dated before 9/11.
Bush would not be the first madman to be "instructed" by a voice in his head claiming to be "God". Madmen can seem sincere and credible, often persuading others to take their delusions seriously.
If God himself is not pulling the strings at the White House, who is?
SOURCES
Haaretz (Il), "`Road map is a life saver for us,' PM Abbas tells Hamas ", 12 August 2004.
[ http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788 ]
Selected minutes acquired by Haaretz from one of last week's cease-fire negotiations between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and faction leaders from the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular and Democratic Fronts, reveal some of the factors at play behind the scenes in the effort to achieve a hudna.
...
According to Abbas, immediately thereafter 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, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
BBC News, "US terror plot intelligence 'old'", 3 August 2004.
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3530358.stm ]
The US administration admits that new warnings of attacks on American cities were based on information gathered by al-Qaeda up to four years ago.
Security was tightened around US financial institutions earlier this week after raids in Pakistan recovered documents reportedly naming them.
Homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said some of the information recovered was collected in 2000/2001.
But she said some may have been updated "as recently as January of this year."
On Sunday, Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said the US had received "new and unusually specific information about where al-Qaeda would like to attack".
"In light of new intelligence information, we have made the decision to raise the threat level for this sector in these communities to bring protective resources to an even higher level," Mr Ridge said.
Some have suggested that the timing of the latest US government warning is designed to knock presidential challenger John Kerry off the front pages after his nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate last week.
But Ms Townsend said: "It had nothing to do with the Democratic National Convention."
Her comments followed reports in leading American newspapers that US officials were unsure if Osama Bin Laden's network was still conducting surveillance on the sites named as potential targets.
She confirmed: "You can't tell from the intelligence itself whether or not those individuals [who amassed it] are still here."
Employees turned up for work this week despite specific US government warnings naming the New York Stock Exchange, the Citigroup Center building in New York, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington DC, and Prudential Financial's headquarters in Newark, New Jersey.
The raids in Pakistan reportedly turned up hundreds of photos, sketches and written documents, which included details on the number of pedestrians passing named buildings, and whether explosives would be able to melt the steel holding them up.
A computer and communications expert reportedly linked to al-Qaeda, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, and one of America's most wanted terror suspects, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, were among those held by the security forces.
'Nation in danger'
BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says some leading Democrats believe that the Bush administration is playing the terrorism card for all it is worth.
But he adds that whatever lies behind this heightened alert, the broader threat remains real enough and is likely to grow as November's election gets closer.
President George W Bush has described the US as a "nation in danger".
He has asked Congress to clear the way for a new national intelligence director, and announced the creation of a national counter-terrorism centre to collect and analyse data on suspected terrorist activities.
The measures follow recommendations made by the Senate commission that investigated the 11 September attacks.
BBC News, "Iraq 'ended nuclear aims in 1991'", 11 August 2004.
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3556714.stm ]
The head of Iraq's nuclear programme under Saddam Hussein has said Iraq destroyed its nuclear weapons programme in 1991 and never restarted it.
Jafar Dhia Jafar told the BBC sanctions and inspections worked in stopping the reconstitution of the programme.
He also said Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programmes were destroyed after the first Gulf War and never reactivated.
Mr Jafar ran Iraq's nuclear programme for nearly 25 years.
One of the most powerful arguments in the case for war on Iraq was the US and UK's claim Saddam Hussein was trying to restart his nuclear programme.
Equipment 'destroyed'
But Mr Jafar, whom the former Iraqi leader originally asked to build the country's nuclear bomb, said all nuclear development stopped in July 1991, under the orders of Saddam Hussein.
"The Insider" mailing list article, 13 August 2004.
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