Hearing Voices

Joel Bleifuss July 18, 2003

George W. Bush is talking with God. According to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, during the June summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Abbas, Bush made the following statement: “God told me to strike at al-Qeada 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.” This report of our president’s providential communications comes from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which obtained a transcript of a negotiating session between Abbas and leaders of Hamas and other extremist Palestinian groups, in which the Palestinian prime minister related the above statement. It was not clear whether Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign is also divinely inspired.

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Joel Bleifuss, a former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the editor & publisher of In These Times, where he has worked since October 1986.