Al Kamen has an interesting report on how President Bush has been misinterpreted into saying God told him to wage war on al-Qaeda or Saddam. It ends with a Mennonite columnist seeing a “fine” difference between Bush declaring that God speaks through him and what he said to Bob Woodward, that

“I pray I be as good a messenger of his will as possible.” That is NOT a fine difference, but a huge one. The first suggests an arrogant certitude as God’s proxy, and the second suggests a humble, prayerful hope to do God’s will, to seek to discern it. But the first is the way opponents of a war on terror would like to cartoon it.