Did Bush invade Iraq because of End-times Prophesies?

When it comes to the idea that the Bush Administration might have been influenced by religious faith to invade Iraq, I usually tend to dismiss the ides. Really. It's easier for me to grasp a motive like, say, the simple desire to do a whole lot of war-profiteering, or to benefit the heck out of oil-biz cronies. But since I saw this linked from DU, I realized, especially after that story regarding the Pentagon briefings with the Bible quotes--that this no longer seemed so outlandish to me.

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".

I ended up Google-searching, and after noting it was cited elsewhere over the last few years, this link indicates that the story will be corroborated in a book from a French journalist who heard it from Chirac.

The story has been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book yet to be published in English by French journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs”.

It would only be tickling my "cynical bone" if Bush used this justification in a bs kind of way, just presuming his hearer will assume he's a pious idiot without his actually being a pious idiot--much as I assumed when he said this load of whackiness:

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

It's a disturbing thought. If he was merely using that kind of "God talks to me" destiny-language in a manipulative way, well, that's infuriating. But if he believed in it--that's freaking scary. I thought part of the War on Terror was keeping nukes out of the hands of religious idealogues, and yet, I now have this feeling like the greatest nuclear arsenal on the planet was in the hands of one.

Oh, how I'd like to go back to just being angry and cynical.