As if the motivations for the war against Iraq weren’t already arguable, or maybe because they are, nutjobs from one end of the planet to the other are inventing more outlandish justifications for hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in Iraq. My favorite new reason—favorite mainly because it’s bonkers, and yet it seems just on the feathery fringe of logical—is that George Bush, a devout Christian, and John Ashcroft a fundamentalist Christian of such commitment that he fears cats as the tools of Satan, believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ is overdue. The theory is that, according to the wackjob to whom I will not give credit for fear of encouraging his ongoing self-lobotomization, a) The return of Jesus Christ is just months away; b) His point of entry will be the site of the Garden of Eden, that is, in the Mesopotamia Valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; and c) As they would with the arrival of aliens from outer space, the Christian fundamentalists and the American government want joint first dibs on Him. My “source” believes this also explains French opposition: while the French have a Catholic majority, it is a Catholicism by birth and tradition rather than by practice and belief.
