Free The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson Page B

chapter 18 , verses 10–11:
    “There shall not be found among you
any one
that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination ... or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.”
    General Wickham believed, and in fact told colleagues, that Satan had somehow taken over General Stubblebine’ssoul. It was Satan, not General Stubblebine, who had bent the fork.
    In later White House administrations, including that of George W. Bush, General Wickham has continued to command respect. In his autobiography, Colin Powell twice refers to him as “my mentor,” and in June 2002 he received George
    W. Bush’s American Inspirations Award for his work as part of the Presidential Prayer Team, a 3-million-strong community of Americans who log on to presidentialprayerteam.org every week to be told what to pray for:
Pray for the ongoing efforts in the war on terror, that the President and all his intelligence sources will obtain the most helpful information in safeguarding America. Pray for them to have godly wisdom in the manner in which they handle each bit of information. Pray for the effectiveness of a new fingerprinting initiative that will screen foreign travelers entering America. Pray for the strong relationship between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. Pray that the President will continue to be guided by the Lord in his deliberations with the U.K.
     
    And so on. General Stubblebine might have suggested to General Wickham that prayer groups were not dissimilar to spoon-bending-type initiatives, both being attempts to harness the power of the mind to influence things from afar, but the general’s unassailable enemy regarding this logic was Deuteronomy, chapter 18 , verses 10–11.
    Funnily enough, and unknown to General Wickham, General Stubblebine had in fact undertaken every one of theabove abominations before the Lord during his tenure as head of army intelligence, with the exception of making his son or daughter pass through fire, although he
had
fire-walked himself in the mountains of Virginia, under the tutelage of the self-help guru Anthony Robbins.
    General Wickham’s hard-line interpretation of Deuteronomy was making General Stubblebine’s position untenable, hence his urgent need to come up with an indisputable miracle. Back home in Arlington, his late-night attempts at levi-tation met with no success. The general put this failure, too, down to his ever-burgeoning in-box, which is why he eventually flew to Fort Bragg in an attempt to persuade Special Forces to burst the hearts of animals just by staring at them. If he didn’t have the time to perfect these powers, perhaps they might.
    It is hard to predict whether General Stubblebine might have found a kindred spirit in his commander in chief, President Reagan. The president seemed to have a foot in both camps. His chief of staff, Donald Regan, wrote in his memoirs that “virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House chief of staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.”
    This woman, whose name was Joan Quigley, fixed the exact time when the president would sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty in 1987. Joan Quigley now goes by the presumably unauthorized title Presidential Astrologer Joan Quigley.
    But the president also shared, with his friend GeneralWickham, an abiding respect for the fundamentals of the Bible. When the states of Arkansas and Louisiana passed a law stating that creationism be taught in public schools, the president cheered the initiative, announcing, “Religious America is awakening!”
    When I telephoned General Wickham to ask for his account of that black-tie party, he said he remembered it well. It was a big dinner at a place called Quarters One. He couldn’t recall specifically blaming