Bush planning the end of the world.

Or so the UK television station, Channel 4, would have us believe. Tonight, the channel is broadcasting The Doomsday Code, a programme which is anti-American even by their standards.

Tony Robinson, the diminutive republican (as in Robespierre, not George Bush) is presenting what purports to be a serious examination of the influence of the Book of Revelation on American politics.

The chain of logic is crude: Revelation is a "weird" book so those Christians who take it literally are weird. These weird Christians are "End Timers" who believe that end of the world is nigh and some of them visit the White House.

No one knows if George W Bush is an End Timer himself, but his policies are at one with those of the evangelical Right and his language is often apocalyptic, such as when he describes the 'war on terror' as 'the epic struggle of good and evil'.

So Bush and the evangelical right are ascribed beliefs according to the programme's agenda, rather than any evidence of what either might, or might not, believe.

It gets eerier:

There are End Timers in the White House, manipulating US policy in the Middle East: Before the war in Iraq, the USA supported a negotiated settlement in which Israel would return the Occupied Territories to the Palestinians. By 2004, after a torrent of criticism of the Roadmap to Peace, Bush's position had changed and now there is no call for a large-scale withdrawal from the West Bank.

No mention that the rise of Hamas and Hezballah has led to the painful realisation by all concerned, including the Israeli Prime Minister, that the Roadmap seriously undermined Israel's security.

For good measure, the End Timers are also blamed for the AIDS crisis in Africa and are accused of regarding the UN as the Anti-Christ. According to the Radio Times preview (not on line) the End Timers are actively undermining belief in global warming.

I think I'll record the programme and report back later in the week.

(update 17.9.06)
I've watched the programme and there is nothing to add to the above. It was sadly typical of what passes for factual documentary television in the UK: tenuous connections and similarities presented as fact.