God to Bush: Invade

The White House last week categorically denied that President Bush ever said God had personally commanded him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q: Are you aware of the -- there's a BBC broadcast tonight that's quoting the Palestinian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister as saying that they were in a meeting with the President in June of '03, and there are some very detailed quotes here, saying that the President said to them, "God told me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan,' and I did," and then "God told me, 'George go and end the tyranny in the Iraq'" and so forth and so on?

Scott McClellan: No, that's absurd. He's never made such comments.

All the same, that's how Mahmoud Abbas remembers it, according to the Washington Post (published in the Indianapolis Star):

Shortly after the summits took place, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz obtained the minutes of a Palestinian meeting in which then-Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas recounted the session with Bush. Haaretz provided a translation of Bush's words into English that was remarkably similar to the BBC account.

Arab columnists vented. God declined to comment. Just another day in U.S.-Arab politics.