White House wordsmiths and propaganda technicians to whom it may be safely
attributed. "For me, prayer has always been important but quite personal," Bush told the
Baptists. "You know us Episcopalians."
And, like a lot of people, I have worried a little but about shedding tears in public, or the
mention of it. But as Barbara and I prayed at Camp David before the air war began, we
were thinking about those young men and women overseas. And the tears started down
the cheeks, and our minister smiled back, and I no longer worried how it looked to others.
[fn 76]
In delivering this fanciful account, Bush broke into tears once again, a behavior which
showed more about his unresolved, and by that time public, thryoid difficulties, than it
did about his qualms in waging war. An interesting question involves the identity of the
minister mentioned by Bush. In order to drape his genocidal war policy with the mantle
of Christian morality, Bush was at pains to keep pastors and clerics at his side during the
development of the Gulf crisis. But a serious problem emerged in this regard when, in
late October, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Reverend Edmond
L. Browning, raised public questions about the morality of going to war with Iraq. Since
Bush regarded the Protestant fundamentalists of the Bible Belt as the indispensable
constituency for his vindictive line, he and his handlers were convinced that it would be
folly to go on the warpath without religious cover. This was provided by calling in Billy
Graham, the Methodist evangelist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
During the Nixon Administration, Billy Graham had become the virtual chaplain of the
regime. Nixon liked to organize prayer services inside the White House, and Billy
Graham was often called in to officiate at these. Graham was also an old friend of the
Bush family; just after Bush had received the GOP vice presidential nomination in 1980,
Graham had visited with George and Barbara at Kennebunkport for a campaign photo
opportunity. [fn 77]
During the 1980's, Graham had run crusades in the Soviet bloc, something that is hard to
do without intelligence connections. In May, 1982, he had created a furore with remarks
that he had seen no evidence of religious repression in the USSR. "I am not a communist
and have not joined the Communist party and was never asked to join the Communist
Party," Graham had told reporters upon his arrival in New York. [fn 78]
Now, during the week that Bush unleashed war and genocide, Graham became a fixture
in the White House, where he was Bush's overnight houseguest. "George Bush has the
highest moral standards of almost anyone I know," Graham told reporters. "Bush is the
best friend I have in the world outside my immediate staff." Some noted that Graham had
often abounded with fulsome praise for presidents, including Carter; power and
godliness, for Graham, went together. The line he recited several days later at the
National Prayer Breakfast was standard Bush boiler plate: "There come times in history
when nations have to stand against some monstrous evil, like Nazism." On January 28,
Bush would proclaim a virtual crusade against Arab Iraq: according to Bush, his war had
"everything to do with what religion embodies, good versus evil, right versus wrong,