There’s been plenty of speculation over the years that the president literally believes he’s following instructions directly from God. Seymour Hersh’s recent item in the New Yorker, for example, quoted a former senior official from Bush’s first term explaining that the president told him his belief that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror and interpreted the 2002 election results as a divine sign that he was on the right track.
Is Bush hearing voices from above? The Onion suggests there’s a less ethereal explanation for Bush’s confusion (via Froomkin).
Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God.
While journalists and presidential historians had long noted Bush’s deep faith and Cheney’s powerful influence in the White House, few had drawn a direct correlation between the two until Tuesday, when transcripts of meetings that took place in March and April of 2002 became available.
In a transcript of an intercom exchange recorded in March 2002, a voice positively identified as the vice president’s identifies himself as “the Lord thy God” and promotes the invasion of Iraq, as well as the use of torture in prisoner interrogations.
A close examination of Bush’s public statements and Secret Service time logs tracking the vice president reveals a consistent pattern, one which links Bush’s belief that he had received word from God with Cheney’s use of the White House’s telephone-based intercom system.
An NSA source added: “It sounded as though the speaker, who identified himself as God, stood away from the intercom to create an echo effect.” That Cheney, he sure is clever.
Remember, when you talk to God, it’s prayer. When God talks to you, it’s schizophrenia. And when Cheney talks to you pretending to be God, it’s a sign of a very dysfunctional White House.
Post Script: In case there was doubt in anyone’s mind, The Onion is a humor magazine. The Cheney-on-the-intercom story is a parody.