GQ has an array of daily briefing booklet sent by Donald Rumsfeld to George W. Bush on the Iraq war and the war on terror that featured Biblical sayings. This is the reading prepared for a president who called the war on terror a “crusade.” Such Biblical inspirational sayings as “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death” were coupled with triumphant pictures for the President’s daily briefings. The covers read like a Sunday school workbook for an adolescent student.
Strangely missing from the briefings on Christian war-fighting is Matthew 10:34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Less surprising is the omission of Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
What is interesting about this report is that these covers are likely to be used by our enemies to show that America does view its war on terror in biblical terms like a crusade. Under the standard recently adopted (from the Bush administration) by President Obama, such documents would be embarrassing to the nation and be used by our enemies — thus could be withheld from disclosure.
For a slideshow of the covers, click here.
For the pictures and story, click here.
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one…bible should not be given out at schools…
two…rummy seen the memos it was the fact that the torture was already happening that leaves the question how much did he know was going on and was someone holding something over his head to force him to agree to what was already going on….
the point of the matter is…it proved that it was to intimiate the iraqi people not to get information…and that it probably did happen in vietnam
please, faith isn’t all that bad but that is all i am saying…i agree there is logical answers to the “stories” in the bible….
but that is for another time..
Bibles in Frisco public schools spark debate over principles
12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 19, 2009
By JESSICA MEYERS / The Dallas Morning News
jmeyers@dallasnews.com
FRISCO – Some parents’ outrage over Bibles being handed out at Frisco secondary schools has grown into a debate over bigger principles: the right to religious expression and the desire to keep religion out of the classroom.
Some parents complained last week that their children felt pressure from classmates to accept books provided by Gideon volunteers.
Christinna Fuqua was aghast when she followed her daughter into Griffin Middle School and was handed a Bible.
More in link: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/frisco/stories/DN-bibles_19met.ART.State.Edition1.4c6117d.html
I guess you bible thumpers thought you’d get away with this stuff, huh. Some parents did speak out but if memory serves me correctly Fuqua is of the French Huguenots “Fouquet” originally. So I am unsure if they are counted as white/Caucasian or other.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0509/Rumsfeld_disputes_GQ_report.html
cough cough cough bullshit cough cough cough
Donnie never saw the memos. The ones his office was supplying and he was supposed to be delivering to the President as part of his security briefings.
Riiiiight.
Not in any office I’ve ever been in, governmental or otherwise. And I can guarantee you this: Rumsfeld is the kinda guy who is so paranoid and manipulative, he’d be checking reports complied by underlings just to make sure they weren’t sabotaging him. Didn’t see them? Didn’t ordered it played that way to manipulate our born-again dry-drunk boy-chimp?
I don’t believe it for a second.
bah humbug….thanz for pointing that out!!!
OK…UNITED…
i could make excuses but what the heck…i didn’t catch it…
though i did start reading an old book i picked up at the library sale…”Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences” by G. Frederick Wright D.D.,LL.D.,F.G.S.A. dated 1898 published by D. Appleton and Company
it is very interesting because it is alot of what i was verbally taught growing up and that his theories are still being discussed today even though people don’t know it!!!
Carlyle,
I think you make very good points on both accounts. I don’t see another way to honestly look at this except as: good = what “we” do and bad = what “they” do, once we engage in torture. It can’t be right under one country and leader and wrong under another. I also agree that there is no discrepency between depraved behavior and religious belief. They don’t always co-exist, but they do a lot.
Mike.
You may be doing Rumsfeld and injustice when you say that his piety is fake. He may be an example of the kind of religious believer that justifies my dislike of the pious. There is no conflict between a person believing that he is serving God or The Gods at the same time as he makes himself wealthy by corrupt means.
One can think of the Conquistadors or the pious protestants who killed off the native Americans, or the Australians who saved the souls of the disappearing Australian aborigines at the same time as they were causing that disappearance.
The thing about humans is that the vast majority see “good” and “evil” being equivalent to “us” and “them”.
When they do it to us it is torture and is evil, when we do it to them it is good and justified and is enhanced interrogation techniques.
The great value of torture is that it can get them to tell us what we already know to be true even when the facts say differently.
ravin: UNTIED WE STAND
bwwwaaaaahahahahahahahahaha perfect
there is no doubt that things have happened in the bush and clinton era…but the subject at hand is bush…torture is wrong…yet, i grew up listening to the side who said we tortured people in vietnam and to the vets who would not talk…
so, if the torture started before the memos were written…and the memo guys should have more than their licences taken away…it clearly shows that torture had already been done in the past…which is what lead to the first treaty between Prussia and the United States in 1795 as to the treatment of prisoners of “war” or subjects of the country we were trading with and had regular dealings with in the open seas…
bush showed us what some in the miltary and independant contracters would do in a war footing…the “cia” interregators were from CAC Internatiional Consulting or something like that…
at least the question that it really happened is answered and that includes vietnam…what someone held over rumsfeld’s head…i don’t know…
least we not forgot something good:
UNTIED WE STAND
Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.
President George W. Bush September 11, 2001
Psalm 29
The voice of the Lord in the storm.
Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
The voice of the Lord upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord powerful; the voice of the Lord full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.
The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to clave, and discovereth the forests: and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory.
The Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever.
The Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with peace.
AMEN
Mespo72Cubed,
Nicobarese, thanks. I had never heard of that before. I wikied it and it was very informational.
Buddha,
If I offended you I apologize.
mespo,
Well said indeed.
Jill:
“I believe there is evil in the world and I believe there is good, but ususally this is a far more complex story than “good vs. evil”. This is the paradigm we know best and are thus open to exploitation around it. It is both a secular and religious mindset of our culture. Therefore it is dangerous to leave it unexamined in any situation it occurs.”
**************
There is indeed “good” and “evil” in the world and we know it because we invented the two ourselves in accord with what provides our generation the most pleasure versus the most pain. Each generation struggles to define these concepts using cultural and sometimes religious contexts, but as we can see the triggering events for these definitions change with the times. It was once considered evil to drink alcohol; to be in the company of an unmarried women without chaperon; to wear clothing of different threads side by side; to engage in sexual relations with those of the same gender. These concepts are uniquely human and wrapped in somewhat naive notions of absolute free will, religious necessity, and genetics-free accountability. We don’t consider wolves “evil” when they kill baby rabbits to satisfy their carnal needs. We do consider humans who kill babies “evil” when they do the same thing and for the same reason. We apply different standards to different species and the highest standards to ourselves reasoning we have both awareness of our conduct and the will to alter those choices. About the most universal act garnering moral condemnation is murder, but even that finds anthropological exceptions in, for example, the Nicobarese tribes. To say, as some religious do, that there is some absolute morality divorced from its historical context is contrary to human experience. That is not to suggest that certain acts are not so heinous as avoid capital punishment merely because our judgment is not supported by divine sanction; it merely means we need not cheapen our rationale for enforcement of our standards by arguing that we do so because God ordained it as an absolute standard. We have the right as a society to define “good” and “evil” and to encourage or discourage these notions as the case may be. We all know that unique circumstances and new information changes everything, so I suggest we do not pretend that they do not.
Buddha:
Well Joe had some help from Abraham Lincoln but no matter, it was a great line.
Queen of Sheba:”So what the country got was a dry drunk for a president, convinced he was chosen for the job by God, whose choice was reinforced by the SCOTUS.”
And now the country needs in-patient rehab and detox.