The religious overtones freak me out...I would think this is not a good thing...

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

Read the whole article:

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_9217

I read the whole article, but for some reason can't see the images - although I heard about them on NYT this morning. That someone in Defense came up with the idea of sending biblical messages along with the daily reports is hardly surprising; Bush and his senior staff used to have prayer sessions in the Oval Office every day at noon when they could and I'm guessing the overwhelming majority of the people who actually saw those reports was pleased by them - not that it makes that it any less reprehensible and disturbing. I hate to say it, but it's kind of a shame that those cover sheets *didn't* get leaked early in his administration; yes, it would have caused us grave harm in the Middle East, but people would have seen incontrovertible evidence of what a bunch of lunatic zealots we'd ushered into the White House, and, I think, altered the results of the 2004 elections as even the 'fiscal conservatives' in the Republican party wouldn't have been able to ignore the wingnut threat to national security...

Then again, my father, who is not affiliated with any religion other than the Church of Supply-side Economics, continued to send me spam well into 2008 with headers like "Did you know? This is why God has blessed the USA" (unfortunately, then his religion collapsed ;) ) as well as the usual right wing hate propaganda similar to what Osgiliath has been posting, so they might have been willing to 'close their eyes and think of England' when confronted with that as well...

As far as the discussion of Rumsfeld's character and shortcomings, as the article mentioned on page 7 or so, Bush clearly *liked* the man and his way of handling things despite the reams of feedback from other administration officials about how difficult he was to work with, so it's a bit of a stretch to blame Rumsfeld for Bush's failures - he wasn't 'betraying' Bush, as it were (and even if he was, Bush kept him on for six years). And I'm hardly a Rumsfeld apologist, but concern about the Insurrection Act with regard to putting regular military troops on the ground with regard to the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort was legitimate; trying to blame the Katrina response on Rumsfeld seems a bit of a stretch as well, given how slow and disorganized Brown and Chertoff at FEMA/Homeland Security and Bush himself were with regard to recognizing the magnitude of the disaster and organizing any sort of response...

I think that, while interesting, that this is another rats/ship type article (in its singlehanded focus on Rumsfeld, who did *not* stay on until the end, and it is mentioned that it was not even Rumsfeld who came up with the idea for the religious messages on the briefings) seeking, ironically, to *apologize* for the Bush administration's fundamental corruption and abuse of power, by positing 'well if Rumsfeld hadn't made it impossible for us to work, we would have done much better'...

Regards,
Nydia

for some reason can't see the images

Turn off Adblock Plus if you're running it. NoScript would probably break it too.