home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback

 

New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Liberation Four Years After: Iraqis Should Look to Serbia to Find Out What "Freedom" Will Be Like; Unfolding Nightmare: Inside the Humanitarian Disaster in Post-War Iraq; Good News, Bad News: Countering the Flood of Propaganda; You Want Victory?: Return to Vieques; Iraq's War Message to Latin America: You Could be Next. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Recent Stories

April 22, 2003

Carl Estabrook
Oblivious Americans: They Distort, We Subside

Ramzy Baroud
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America?

Steven Sherman
About That Cuba Letter

Wayne Madsen
Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult

 

April 21, 2003

Elaine Cassel
An Administration in Contempt

Edward Said
Give Us Back Our Democracy

Gary Leupp
Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus and Kanaka WaiWai

Roger Witherspoon
Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action

Uri Avnery
At Midnight, a Knock on the Door

Col. Dan Smith
Early Lessons from Iraq

Jo Freeman
After the Protest Comes Politics

Michael Berry
The Friedman Absurdities

Gray Brechin
Hang Black Banners: Mourning the Cultural Loss

Bob Riedel
The Taliban from Texas

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/21

 

April 19, 2003

Gary Leupp
The Rape of History

Saul Landau
Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's War, Wait for Armageddon

Michael J. Fellows
Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia

Pablo Mukherjee
Roadmap to Resistance

Omar Barghouti
Sharon's Bloody Beat

Anthony Gancarski
Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World

Mickey Z.
Animals: the Other Collateral Damage

Will Potter
When Police Attack Journalists

William MacDougall
America's In-Bedded Journalism

Neve Gordon
Haunted by History

Adam Engel
Wal-Mart and Peace

Dr. Susan Block
Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace

Poets' Basement
Albert, Buono, Guthrie

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/19

Song of the Weekend
Baghdad to Basra

 

April 18, 2003

Uri Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom": This One's Not About Oil

Jorge Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation

Mickey Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes

Hussein Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV

Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles

Matania Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President of Israel's Supreme Court

Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us

Joe Allen
My Lai Revisited

Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/18

Website of the Day
Meet the Victims of War

 

April 17, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in the Patriot Missile System

Joanne Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications for the Pentagon

Issam Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman to Baghdad

Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism

Robert Fisk
The Army of Occupation

Boris Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim

Biljana Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where is the Truth?

Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire

Stanley Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like

Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation

Harold A. Gould
Iraq After the War

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/17

 

April 16, 2003

Michel Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians"

Jason Leopold
Halliburton's Bloody History: They'll Work for Anyone

Kurt Nimmo
The Destruction of Iraq: Hey, It's Good for Business

Stephen Green
Dancing to Sharon's Beat: the Road to Unilateral Pre-emption

Diane Christian
The Devil in Bush's Details

Carol Norris
Mourning Iraq

Anthony Gancarski
They Call Themselves Economists?

Michael Sells
Nero in Baghdad

Alexander Cockburn
Contract with Iraq

Ninan Koshy
India's Devious Middle Path Through the Iraq War

Brenda Norrell
Lakota Leader: World Must Resist American Empire

Wallace Gagne
End of History; More in a Moment

Stew Albert
On the Road Again

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/16

 

April 15, 2003

Uzma Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go

Robert Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the US Must Leave

Dr. Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again

Robert Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad

Col. Dan Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions

Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/15

 

April 14, 2003

Chris Floyd
Bush's War Without End

Uri Avnery
Gunboat Democracy: This is Only the Beginning

Wayne Madsen
Americans: The New Mongols of the Mideast?

Shahid Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free

Hani Shukrallah
Day of the Chicken Hawks

Terry Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train

John Chuckman
The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda

Patrick Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence, Misery and Poverty in Iraq

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/14

 

April 12 / 13, 2003

Carol Lipton
Wag the Kennel: the Kenneth Joseph Story

Wayne Madsen
Meet the New Butcher of Baghdad: Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III

John Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling of the Saddam Statue

Kathy and Bill Christison
Final Thoughts from Palestine

William Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation

Wallace Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin

Ann Harrison
Rosenthal Update: Judge Delays Ruling in Medical Pot Mistrial Case

Henry Miller
What is the Greatest Treason?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Render Unto Cesar

Zeljko Cipris
Mocking Militarism: On Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars

Ishikawa Jun
The Song of Mars

Jamey Hecht
Chairman of the Sandwich Board

Adam Engel
Hell of a Town: Mayor Bloomberg and the News

Poets' Basement
Chang Yang-Hao, Adam Engel and Hammond Guthrie

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/12

 

April 11, 2003

Omar Barghouti
From Saddam to Uncle Sam

Ron Jacobs
Greed is Rewarded

David Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq

Paul de Rooij
Propaganda Stinkers: Fresh Samples from the Field

Anthony Gancarski
Foreign Aid: Embezzlement as Public Policy

Mas'ood Cajee
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger

Michael Neumann
Now What?

Michael Berry
The Neo-Cons Have a Dream

Stew Albert
Oh Freedom

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/11

Website of the Day
About Those Dancing Crowds

 

April 10, 2003

Zoltan Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier the Victory, the Harder the Peace

Uri Avnery
The Night After

Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire

David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel Abbas

Jeremy Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?

Robert Jensen
The Unseen War

Geoffrey Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution: A Patriot Attack on America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad

Hammond Guthrie
Rumors of War

Joseph Heller
Nately's Old Man

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/10

Website of the Day
The Third Page

 

April 9, 2003

David Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes, the War Is About Oil

Doug Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and War

Susan Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement

David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It

John Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do as It Damn Well Pleases

Akiva Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance with the Christian Right

Ray Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide: Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/9

 

April 8, 2003

David Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental

Richard Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches

John Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam: a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures

Ben Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"

Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations May Have Violated Federal Law

Anthony Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle

Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"

Ahmad Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy

Wallace Gagne
Baghdad Babble

Harry Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair Summit

Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in a Baghdad Hospital

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/8

M. Shahid Alam
The Israelization of America

 

April 7, 2003

Todd Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers

David N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University: The CIA is Back on Campus

Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce

Gideon Levy
America is Not a Role Model

Diane Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War

Jules Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin

James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush Shake Gerry's Hand?

Robert Fisk
The Twisted Language of War

Patrick Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah

John Mackay
War and Art

Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/7

 

April 5, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is in Shambles

Anne Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem

Uri Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere

Chris Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush

William Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...

Gila Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers

Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?

Joanne Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies

John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders from the Lord

Romi Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead

Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with Other Mideast Regimes

Mary Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight

William MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism

Ron Jacobs
War and Occupation

Bernie Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God

Mark Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo

Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini

Poets' Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz

Jeffrey St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud

Norman Madarasz
Canada and the War

 

April 4, 2003

Anthony Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame

John Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?

David Krieger
The Meaning of Victory

Tom Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support or Treason?

Adam Federman
The Absence of War

Vijay Prashad
There Are No More Arguments

Tom Stephens
The End of the Innocence

Mickey Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing Bush Speak

Pierre Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality Show

Hammond Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab

Steve Perry
War Web Log 04/04

 

April 3, 2003

Uri Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and the Theater of Operations

David Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?

Anthony Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer

David Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused to Fight

Michael Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits

Ramzy Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?

Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears

Anton Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon

Alison Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie

Bruce Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice

Eliot Katz
War's First Week

Steve Perry
War Web Log 04/03

 

Hot Stories

Paul de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

Click Here for More Stories.


Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!

Subscribe Online


Search CounterPunch

 

April 22, 2003

Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult

Concerns Raised by the Vatican

by WAYNE MADSEN

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, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.

Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com

Today's Features

Carl Estabrook
Oblivious Americans: They Distort, We Subside

Ramzy Baroud
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America?

Steven Sherman
About That Cuba Letter

Wayne Madsen
Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult

 

Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /