Bush’s Dobson meeting is not a good sign

May 16, 2007

In early 2003, literally just a few weeks before the president would launch a war with Iraq, Bush met with TV preacher Pat Robertson to discuss the conflict. The president reportedly told the televangelist that he believed there’d be minimal casualties, and soon after, began the invasion.

With this background in mind, I was not at all encouraged to see that Bush is now discussing Iran with James Dobson. (thanks to Bob for the tip)

“I was invited to go to Washington DC to meet with President Bush in the White House along with 12 or 13 other leaders of the pro-family movement,” Dobson disclosed on his radio program Monday. “And the topic of the discussion that day was Iraq, Iran and international terrorism. And we were together for 90 minutes and it was very enlightening and in some ways disturbing too.” […]

Later in his broadcast, during a discussion about Iran with author and self-proclaimed “prophecy expert” Joel Rosenberg, Dobson drew a parallel between current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Adolf Hitler.

“The world looked at Hitler and just didn’t believe him and tried to appease him the way we’re hearing in Washington today,” Dobson remarked. “You know, the President seems to me does understand this, as I told you from that meeting I had with him the other day, but even there it feels like somebody ought to be standing up and saying, ‘We are being threatened and we are going to meet this with force — whatever’s necessary.'”

Dobson continued, “Some of our listeners might not like that but I tell you, if we didn’t stand up to Hitler, we’d be speaking German today.”

Oh my.

First, the fact that Bush is talking about a possible confrontation with Iran at all is discomforting, to put it mildly. The administration is supposed to be showing renewed signs of interest in diplomacy when it comes to Iran; for the president to turn around and start talking about looming dangers isn’t a good sign.

“I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington,” [Dobson] said. “Many people in a position to know are talking about the possibility of losing a city to nuclear or biological or chemical attack. And if we can lose one we can lose ten.

“If we can lose ten we can lose a hundred,” he added, “especially if North Korea and Russia and China pile on.”

Second, I guess it’s too much to ask, but how about some scrutiny on the White House over the fact that the president is meeting with a nut like Dobson to discuss foreign policy in the first place?

Bush has been struggling to provide the evangelicals with their much sought after end-of-days. Now that Falwell is dead, all of us should join him??

The Democrats need to develop some serious spine very very quickly.

  • So—Commode Guy doesn’t see the need to discuss the war with the Congress, but he can find the time to discuss foreign military options with an apocalyptic nut-job like Dobson? We need to get these mad hatters impeached before they decide to “unitarily rapture” American citizens for the sake of some theocratic pipe dream….

  • “Some of our listeners might not like that but I tell you, if we didn’t stand up to Hitler, we’d be speaking German today.”

    First of all, we didn’t really “stand up” to Hitler until the Japanese bombed P.H. and one of our responses to the bombing would have made Der Fuher smile. Second of all, if Dobson were a little bit older he would have been among the slobbering arsehats who didn’t want to admit Jewish refugees into the U.S.

    S.T.F.U.

    Also: “I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington,” (emph mine)

    Yep. Because “pro-family” leaders are all foreign policy experts specializing in the Middle East. I guess they just open the old KJV and there it is, everything you need to know about the region.

    S.T.F.U.

    Fun exercise. Count the number of times this name-dropping little turd uses the passive voice.

  • Now I’m confused – I thought it was Saddam who was the second coming of Hitler.

  • With all the talk about losing tossed around in the latter paragraphs above, it’s surprising nobody mentioned the certainty that the U.S. would lose such a conflict – decisively and rapidly – unless it availed itself of the nuclear option. The U.S. has absolutely no evidence Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, or that the ongoing nuclear program is anything but energy-related: if such evidence existed, the toady media would be trumpeting it to the skies. Similarly, launching a war based on a convenient cross-border skirmish that turns out to result from deliberate goading will fool no one.

    America’s reputation, and its ability to muster friends to its causes, is at a heretofore unimagined nadir. Does the cataclysmically retarded military-industrial wet dream currently occupying the White House really intend to drive it left of zero?

  • “The world looked at Hitler and just didn’t believe him and tried to appease him the way we’re hearing in Washington today,” Dobson remarked.

    Interesting quote. The president that this brings to my mind is not Iranian.

  • Only three events have ever increased Bush’s poll approvals significantly in six years: 9/11, invasion of Iraq, capture of Saddam Hussein.

    (It did level off and increase slightly in 2004 during the election campaign, just enough to get over the hump. But I think that is a case of the population tightening up for the election, not anything Bush did.)

    So you’re sitting now at 24-28%, two years to go, legacy in the toilet, and those three are the only things that have worked to your favor. Never mind that all three are failures and/or clusterf**ks. The only other ones sitting around the table are Rove, Cheney, Rice, Hadley, Bartlett, and Bolten. What options do you think are going to come out of that meeting?

    Only two:
    1. Double efforts to get bin Laden and Zawahiri.
    2. Find or create an enemy to attack militarily.

    I have no problem with number one, but I fear number two will look too clever by half to those boneheads sitting around the table. What geniuses they will think they are, creating their own reality and all.

    Of course, the President is on record as having committed several federal felonies. Exploring that option is how I would like to spend my summer.

  • Oh boy, I suppose now we can probably add Churchill to the list of historical figures that Dubya is comparing himself to…and I’m guessing he is thinking that it’s just about time to stand up to Hitler.

  • It’s a freudian slip. Bush plans a nuke attack on us to validate war with Iran. Why would he talk to Dobson about foreign affairs rather than any number of Senators at his disposal. It’s a ‘tell’. Bush is getting ‘spiritual’ approval which he can not get anywhere else. Which means he is planning an attack on Iran especially now that he has his “War Czar”. The only way to stop him is to Impeach him now. If we don’t stop him America will never be the same again, we are playing right into the hands of our destruction.

  • I think it’s time for Dubya to expand his Axis of Evil.
    After Congress shuts down Iraq and Iran goes through its cycle of invade-collapse-withdraw, where THEN will Haliburton, KGR, and Blackwater get its no-bod contract money with which to provide the GOP kickbacks?

    For the love of Pete, George, get on it! Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen are cruisin’ for a bruisin’! Sniff out some WMDs for us, quick!

    Code Orange, pronto!

  • Here is some more background…

    Laura and I were active members of the First Methodist Church of Midland, and we participated in many family programs, including James Dobson’s Focus on the Family series on raising children. As I studied and learned, Scripture took on greater meaning, and I gained confidence and understanding in my faith. -George W. Bush, A Charge To Keep

    The Bush-Dobson meeting is like “deja vu all over again.”

    [2004] The Jesus Landing Pad: Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move: It was an e-mail we weren’t meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that “the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level”—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we’re not supposed to know the National Security Council’s top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios. But now we know. Continued here: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0420,perlstein,53582,1.html

    A just war or just a crusade?

  • The amusingly ironic part of Dobson’s comments (if we can see the lighter side of this evil man) is that, if Dobson had been born some six decades earlier, he almost assuredly would have been demanding American neutrality at best, or declaring Nazi Germany the defender of Christendom at worst.

  • And I thought Sponge Bob was the threat.

    With so many enemies, Iran, “the terrorists” North Korea, nicklodeon, bin laden, etc, surely Dobson will be calling for a Military Draft to face these threats.

    He’s got a pulpit, he could call on the dobsonites to enlist.

    Oh well, tinky winky can probably rest easier tonight.

  • You may be onto something bjobotts, (#10). Remember how the decider guy looked into Putins eyes and saw into his soul, (or whatever). I wonder if he looked deep enough to see Putins actions to justify a second Chechnyan war? This reference might be relevent: .
    RTSlater

  • What’s really scary is that such stupid, reckless people hold such power. If they only hurt themselves, I wouldn’t mind as much.

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