Forget Wright: Bush Sr. just hosted cult leader

Jeremiah Wright? Come on.

The Moonies have just trumpeted the latest delegation of their dreaded leader, Sun Myung Moon, to the Bush presidential library in College Station, TX. The occasion: a statesmanlike party Moon was throwing in D.C., from April 28 to May 2, 2008, celebrating his dreams of influencing world events and burying Jesus Christ.

The host: George H.W. Bush.

These mundane photos are from UPF.org, an official Web site of the cult. Moon is on record as opposing constitutional government; according to his church, he told his audience that he envisioned a world [emphasis mine]

where some of the weaknesses of democracy, and in particular the wasted efforts of extreme partisanship, can be relieved by the involvement of elder statesmen as senior advisors.

Elder statesman like, oh, for example, Washington Times publisher Sun Myung Moon, who has dumped over $3 billion into the conservative paper. According to a reliable source within the Moon organization who provided me with password-guarded HTML files, the Reverend elaborated on his fantasies last year in a sermon so shocking, it was not released to the public (unlike thousands of others available online.)

All the irrelevant books in the world should be burned away. I cannot tolerate books that belong under the leftist ideology. Do you understand?

Here are some highlights of the past relationship between the Bush family and Moon's cult, which typically poses as a world peace organization to cultivate an aura of gravity, sort of like Star Trek's United Federation of Planets. And as seen here, it also calls itself the "Washington Times Foundation," when the occasion suits it.

1995. George and Barbara Bush give six paid speeches in Asia for Moon's "Women's Federation," while mothers of cult members beg them not to. [Washington Post]

1996. The former president surfaces with Moon in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he's filmed introducing the publisher as "the man with the vision" whose newspaper, the Washington Times, restores "sanity to Washington." "Reverend Moon never told 'em what to say, who to endorse..." [Reuters, BBC]

2005-present. George's son Neil joins Moon for ongoing tour of the Third World. [AP]

2005. $250,000 is paid by a Moon company to George W. Bush reinauguration fund. [MSNBC]

2006. A million dollars apparently finds its way from Moon interests to the Bush presidential library. [Houston Chronicle]

2006. Former GOP insider Kevin Phillips writes that Moon "has been close to" the Bush family. Columnist David Brooks calls this a "bizarre assertion" and an example of "the paranoid style in American politics." [New York Times]

2007. Michael Jenkins, chief of the American arm of the Moonies, is filmed making bizarre claims that the cult convinced George H.W. Bush to drink its "Holy Juice," a mystery fluid that brings drinkers into communion with the Reverend Moon, during another trip to the presidential library at Texas A&M. When I ask about this, spokesman Jim Appleby replies, by e-mail: "the Office of Former President Bush cannot justify such a ridiculous question with an answer." [YouTube]

Neil Bush visits presidential palace in Paraguay with Moonie leaders, February 28, 2008 [Getty Images]