Apparently not all of what the good General said was released by the Pentagram, here's the rest of the statement that was speaking of Chimpy being selected by god to be president:
• "I believe that God intervenes in the affairs of men, to include nations, as Benjamin Franklin so eloquently stated. Yes I believe that George Bush was placed in the White House by God as well as Bill Clinton and other presidents."
There's more. Interesting....still disturbing, creepy, and wrong, but more interesting knowing that the Potomac Puzzle-palace was more involved than I first thought in "damage control".
posted by Jo Fish on 10.21.03 at 12:16 AM
Comments:
One can agree or disagree with Lt. Gen. Boykin's religous prism for understanding the conflicts we face and his role in it...
I'm not a Christian but it makes a great deal of sense to me that he'd see it this way, in spite of the fact that I don't share his religous or intellectual faith in it. I do, however, believe that Lt. Gen. Boykin has demonstrated tremendous honesty regarding his perceptions and his behaviour. As near as I can tell, he's behaved with impeccable honor since the scandal broke - which leads me to believe he's been committed to his honor for quite some time.
That's very significant here because as you noted in an earlier post: it violates AR670-1 for him to have appeared in uniform while making those speeches and announcing religous convictions for the whole of our country, in violation of the Constitution he was sworn to defend - if, that is if, his behaviour had not been previously 'authorized by competent authority'.
Note that Boykin issued no apology for violating Army regulations or dishonoring the Army with his sloppy interpretation of what those regulations mean--in the censored or uncensored versions.
This, in theory, is perhaps the one thing a man of his religous conviction and distinguished service should have been compelled to be absolutely repentant for. In fact, the language of his acknowledgement on this point, "[T]he sensitivities of my job today dictate that further church speeches are inappropriate," are not an apology for misbehaviour so much as an announcement of policy change.
Given the fact that I find his forthcoming attempts to explain himself to be impressive thus far, I think all of this indicates that he'd been given tacit if not explicit authorization to do what he was doing. Given the fact that this administration relies so heavily on the pernicous tools of propaganda, I'm damn near certain they'd given him the nod to stir up the religous right with his seemingly official pronouncements of being locked in battle with that old familiar big, bad boogey-man: "Satan".
Lt. Gen. Boykin looks, to me, like a zealously religous man who allowed himself to be misused for propaganda because it suited his own personal conviction and then took the fall for an administration and the Pentagon when the shit started to fly for it.
