When will the "US mainstream news media" revisit the
disgraceful story of how the Bush cabal protected the wacko General Boykin, now that questions about his character and competence have taken on new significance in the harsh light of his role in the shame of Abu Ghraib? When will the "US mainstream news media" start asking the hard questions about the incredible shrinking _resident disturbing religious beliefs, and those of his hard-core fundamentalist brown shirted supporters, and how they have influenced his disasterous policies in Iraq and the Middle East? Remember, doggedly, day after day, although banished from the air waves, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta), is campaigning in one red state after another, with determination and discipline, contrasting himself as "mainstream" and the incredible shrinking _resident as "radical" and "partisan." And it is resonating with the US electorate, JFK currently leads in almost all major polls.
Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian: Saving General Boykin seemed like a strange sideshow last October. After it was revealed that the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence had been regularly appearing at evangelical revivals preaching that the US was in a holy war as a "Christian nation" battling "Satan", the furore was quickly calmed...Boykin was not removed or transferred. At that moment, he was at the heart of a secret operation to "Gitmo-ize" (Guantánamo is known in the US as Gitmo) the Abu Ghraib prison. He had flown to Guantánamo, where he met Major General Geoffrey Miller, in charge of Camp X-Ray. Boykin ordered Miller to fly to Iraq and extend X-Ray methods to the prison system there, on Rumsfeld's orders.
Save the US Consitution, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0520-03.htm
Published on Thursday, May 20, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
The Religious Warrior of Abu Ghraib
An Evangelical US General played a Pivotal Role in
Iraqi Prison Reform
by Sidney Blumenthal
Saving General Boykin seemed like a strange sideshow
last October. After it was revealed that the deputy
undersecretary of defense for intelligence had been
regularly appearing at evangelical revivals preaching
that the US was in a holy war as a "Christian nation"
battling "Satan", the furore was quickly calmed.
Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, explained that
Boykin was exercising his rights as a citizen: "We're
a free people." President Bush declared that Boykin
"doesn't reflect my point of view or the point of view
of this administration". Bush's commission on public
diplomacy had reported that in nine Muslim countries,
just 12% believed that "Americans respect Arab/Islamic
values". The Pentagon announced that its inspector
general would investigate Boykin, though he has yet to
report.
Boykin was not removed or transferred. At that moment,
he was at the heart of a secret operation to
"Gitmo-ize" (Guantánamo is known in the US as Gitmo)
the Abu Ghraib prison. He had flown to Guantánamo,
where he met Major General Geoffrey Miller, in charge
of Camp X-Ray. Boykin ordered Miller to fly to Iraq
and extend X-Ray methods to the prison system there,
on Rumsfeld's orders.
Boykin was recommended to his position by his record
in the elite Delta forces: he was a commander in the
failed effort to rescue US hostages in Iran, had
tracked drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia, had
advised the gas attack on barricaded cultists at Waco,
Texas, and had lost 18 men in Somalia trying to
capture a warlord in the notorious Black Hawk Down
fiasco of 1993.
Boykin told an evangelical gathering last year how
this fostered his spiritual crisis. "There is no God,"
he said. "If there was a God, he would have been here
to protect my soldiers." But he was thunderstruck by
the insight that his battle with the warlord was
between good and evil, between the true God and the
false one. "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I
knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."
Boykin was the action hero side of his boss, Stephen
Cambone, a conservative defense intellectual appointed
to the new post of undersecretary of intelligence.
Cambone is universally despised by the officer corps
for his arrogant, abrasive and dictatorial style and
regarded as the personal symbol of Rumsfeldism. A
former senior Pentagon official told me of a
conversation with a three-star general, who remarked:
"If we were being overrun by the enemy and I had only
one bullet left, I'd use it on Cambone."
Cambone set about cutting the CIA and the state
department out of the war on terror, but he had no
knowledge of special ops. For this the rarefied
civilian relied on the gruff soldier - a melding of
"ignorance and recklessness", as a military
intelligence source told me.
Just before Boykin was put in charge of the hunt for
Osama bin Laden and then inserted into Iraqi prison
reform, he was a circuit rider for the religious
right. He allied himself with a small group called the
Faith Force Multiplier that advocates applying
military principles to evangelism. Its manifesto -
Warrior Message - summons "warriors in this spiritual
war for souls of this nation and the world ... "
Boykin staged a traveling slide show around the
country where he displayed pictures of Bin Laden and
Saddam Hussein. "Satan wants to destroy this nation,
he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to
destroy us as a Christian army," he preached. They
"will only be defeated if we come against them in the
name of Jesus". It was the reporting of his remarks at
a revival meeting in Oregon that made them a subject
of brief controversy.
There can be little doubt that he envisages the global
war on terror as a crusade. With the Geneva
conventions apparently suspended, international law is
supplanted by biblical law. Boykin is in God's chain
of command. President Bush, he told an Oregon
congregation last June, is "a man who prays in the
Oval Office". And the president, too, is on a divine
mission. "George Bush was not elected by a majority of
the voters in the US. He was appointed by God."
Boykin is not unique in his belief that Bush is God's
anointed against evildoers. Before his 2000 campaign,
Bush confided to a leader of the religious right: "I
feel like God wants me to run for president ... I
sense my country is going to need me. Something is
going to happen."
Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter, tells
colleagues that on September 20 2001, after Bush
delivered his speech to the Congress declaring a war
on terror, he called Gerson to thank him for writing
it. "God wants you here," Gerson says he told the
president. And he says that Bush replied: "God wants
us here."
But it's Bush who wants Rumsfeld, Cambone and Boykin
here.
· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior advisor to
President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of
Salon.com
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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