Another One Bites the Dust (#5 in an occasional series)

[Peter Boulding]

The US armed forces' most notorious Christian wingnut, Lt. Gen. William
Boykin, is to retire in August.

Boykin is best known for public comments that revealed his violent Christian
fundamentalism to such a degree that he earned himself reprimands from the
Pentagon, from Congress, and even from the likes of Joe Lieberman. Example:

"He went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, 'They'll never get me
because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.' Well, you know what?
I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God
and his was an idol."

On another occasion he likened the War on Terror to a Christian struggle
against Satan.

Other highlights of his career:

* He was accepted into Delta force in spite of a Fort Bragg psychologist's
warning that he was "too religious".

* He was the Delta Force operations officer on the Iranian hostages rescue
debacle.

* He was seriously wounded in the Invasion of Grenada.

* He headed the hunt for Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar that ended in
Escobar's assassination.

* He was an adviser to Janet Reno during the Waco debacle.

* He led a Delta force unit during the "Black Hawk Down" debacle.

* For a while under Bush he led the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

* More recently he worked under Donald Rumsfeld's 2IC Stephen "Mr Torture"
Cambone, and appears to have directed special ops in, amongst other places,
Afghanistan and Iran; he also appears to have been heavily involved in
supervising the interrogation techniques used at Bagram, Guantanamo, Abu
Graib, and elsewhere. (Incredibly, when fingers were pointing at the upper
echelons of the Pentagon, Cambone appointed Boykin to "get to the bottom" of
abuses committed by an elite counterinsurgency task force. Boykin, surprise,
surprise, found no pattern to them.)

--
Regards
Peter Boulding
p...@UNSPAMpboulding.co.uk (to e-mail, remove "UNSPAM")
Fractal music & images: http://www.pboulding.co.uk/