The Missionary Position.

That George W. Bush is a born-again, fanatical asshole is no big surprise. Now news of a 2003 phone call to France shows just how willing he was to squander American lives over a fairy tale.

From the Council for Secular Humanism:

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

The Iraq War has cost nearly $700 billion. That's almost three-quarters of the cost being discussed for health care reform over a ten-year period. Where were all those budget-conscious teabaggers and town hall screamers when Bush was waging his jihad for Jesus, anyway?