In a new book about Karl Rove, it’s revealed that, back during his governing days, GWB stated to a reporter that he was going to tell Israeli Jews that they’re “all goin’ to hell!”

The quip never received wider media attention, even though the Austin American-Statesman reported it in December of 1998.

“As he gazed out a hotel hallway at the Superdome and waited for an elevator, Bush — clearly going for a laugh at his own expense — said the first thing he was going to say to Israeli Jews was that they were all ‘going to hell,’” Herman had reported. “Bush, who has both a quick wit and generally good judgment on when to use it, made the comment to the same Austin American-Statesman reporter who had reported his 1993 comments about his religious beliefs.”

If I remember correctly, our “dear” president converted to Christianity at around that time. Way to make the rest of Christendom look bad, huh? (As if mainline Christians didn’t receive enough of a bad reputation already from the various sirens of the Religious Right.) Though, oddly enough, at one time, GWB was engaged to a woman who was half-Jewish.

The authors of The Architect assert that religion and ethnicity have been manipulated by Bush and Rove to “divide” and “conquer” the nation.

I would agree with the authors. This bit from Amazon’s listing of The Architect…

In The Architect, James Moore and Wayne Slater, the bestselling authors of Bush’s Brain, return with an even more penetrating examination of Rove, his sweeping agenda, and the price he may have to pay for his audacity. Drawing on their decades-long study of Rove, they provide a rarely seen view of the politics of absolute power in Washington—how it is acquired, expanded, and turned to startling ends. Specifically, they unveil how Rove:

• Used lobbyist Jack Abramoff as a cat’s-paw to manage unruly legislators

• Energetically led the antigay marriage movement while protecting a family secret that made his stance bizarrely cynical

• Turned Christian churches into a gigantic vote delivery system, despite privately admitting to being a nonbeliever

• Repeatedly leaked information to harm political opponents, making him the man investigators most wanted to talk to when they began probing the Plame affair

• Was intimately involved in an international disinformation scheme to lead America to war

The middle one disturbs me the most, of course. Last year around this time, “Justice Sunday I” and “Justice Sunday II”–both used to rally churchgoers around the Republican “flag” (if you will) went down. Neither of the “Justice Sundays” had anything to do with justice…unless you’re talking about terrorism or something like that.

In other news, an op-ed about remarks made by members of the administration–including GWB himself–throughout this past week. But I’m going to pick a little on Dick Cheney this time, since some of the comments he made this week to the VFW makes him seem really out to lunch…

We can pretty much set aside Cheney’s recent remarks, since he’s been wandering in the rhetorical wilderness for a long time now. But I can’t resist citing one line. He told the VFW that the “Bush Doctrine” is to hold accountable “any person or government that supports, protects or harbors terrorists.” So what about the newly installed Iraqi government, with its suspected ties to Shiite death squads? And what about the Pakistani government, which gives the Taliban and al-Qaeda safe harbor?

Or how about past administrations? Who trained Osama Bin Laden to begin with? Our CIA. Who, pretty much, helped the Taliban rise to power in Afghanistan in the late 1990s? Err, that was us. Who supported the rise to power of Augusto Pinochet in Chile after the original September 11 (1973)? Us again. Who had a hand in overthrowing Haiti’s past democratically-elected government and Aristide? The Ited-unay Ates-stay. Where did Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols come from? The “land of the free and the home of the brave”. So how come we’re not coming after ourselves? ;) (Don’t answer that.)

Okay, one more from Cheney. To those who point out that Iraq wasn’t a nexus of terrorism until we invaded, Cheney responds, “They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway.”

Huh? The terrorists who attacked on Sept. 11 didn’t come from Iraq. Except in Cheney’s mind, I don’t know where the fact that we were attacked by terrorists trained in Afghanistan (and sent by Osama bin Laden, who’s probably now in Pakistan) somehow mitigates the fact that we’ve made Iraq a hotbed of terrorism.

In fact, it was, pretty much, proven (once again) this week that Iraq had squadoosh to do with September 11, 2001.

Methinks they’re trying to “rally the troops” again for government domination, since it’s seeming like the House–at the very least–will be going Democrat again in a couple of months. *nods*