Sunday, May 17, 2009

Crusade?


Who said anything about a crusade?


Ooopsie.

Pic shamelessly stolen from The Huffington Post.

7 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

It really is odd that this stuff didn't come out sooner. I'm surprised at the extent Americans during the Bush Regime were so willing to self-censor or to ignore their much-vaunted values of separation of Church and State and their various freedums of speeches and of teh presses.

Never again should we let these people lecture us on the fundamentals of liberty and democracy.

deBeauxOs said...

Good find, Lulu. I bookmarked that text as I will probably find a use for it some day to smack down the usual fundamentalist christian zealots.

sooey said...

You can't actually look like Donald Rumsfeld and not be evil. It isn't evolutionarily possible.

Dharma Satya said...

What I would like to know is who was picking out the verses? Who were the people actually responsible for the physical creation of these texts covers?

Why did no one object? Are Americans really that stupid as to ignore the very foundation that allows them to practice their personal religions in peace?

It seems to me that those who would allow such a slap to the separation of church and state would be best removed from any position that allows them to bite the hand(s) that feed them again.

...and whatever happened to sedate blue and red folder covers? Why the fancy images? What would the point possibly be? Advertising for a war?

Sick, really.

Rev.Paperboy said...

Dharma, it is a lot of things but not advertising. These reports were highly classified and only circulated to the top levels at the White House and Pentagon and security agencies. Rummy insisted on the biblical verses and the gung-ho-Onward-Christian-Soldiers illustrations. These guys really did believe they were fighting a holy war because Jesus told them to.

Dharma Satya said...

I'd like to point out, in response to the rev. paperboy that as a former Director of Marketing for a company, advertising is not only an "external" action. Companies and corporations advertise internally, often in an effort to define company culture, promote "Corporate Values" and to inform employees of upcoming opportunities, incentives and programs.


When you put bright, attractive pictures on a report cover, it's advertising. It's marketing. You are attempting to provoke a visceral, unconscious reaction in your audience in order to more effectively "spin" your message so your audience will be more receptive to your information.

Frank Frink said...

They (the cover sheets, verses, etc..) weren't exactly Rummy's doing but he certainly didn;t discourage them.

From the GQ feature:
"These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers in an attempt to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle. Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout—as one Pentagon staffer would later say—“would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”But the Pentagon’s top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush’s public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages."