Jean Edwards Smith derides a negative review of his new book about George W. Bush

by Jean Edward Smith

Jean Edward Smith was a member of the faculty at the University of Toronto for thirty-five years, and at Marshall University for twelve. He has also been a visiting scholar at Columbia, Princeton, and Georgetown. He is the author of "Bush," a biography of George W. Bush.

Will Inboden’s recent review of my biography of George W. Bush illustrates the Bush administration’s ability to live in a world of make-believe. The errors he claims to have found in the biography exist not in the book but in his review.

Inboden begins by asserting that the conversation between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac on the eve of the Iraq war, in which Bush claimed the coming war was a battle against Gog and Magog before the final judgment, never took place. He also claims the source I cite, Kurt Eichenwald’s 500 Days, is by a partisan journalist “without any sourcing.”

Inboden is wrong on both counts. Eichenwald explicitly cites the article describing the role played by professor Thomas Römer, the biblical scholar at the University of Lausanne, who was consulted by Chirac’s office to interpret Bush’s remarks. The article is titled “George W. Bush et la Code Ezéchiel” and was published in Allez Savoir, the official journal of the University of Lausanne, in September 2007.

More importantly, Chirac himself confirmed the conversation in an interview with Jean-Claude Maurice, who was writing a book about Chirac. Maurice’s book, Si vous le répétez, je démentirai: Chirac, Sarkozy, Villepin (Paris: Plon, 2009), quotes Chirac at length about the discussion. Chirac said he was stupefied by Bush’s invocation of biblical prophecy and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

Inboden’s denial of this incident sets the pace for his review, which is simply another attempt to rewrite history on Bush’s behalf. ...

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