Jesus!

I noticed this tidbit in yesterday's ThinkFast post over at ThinkProgress:

In a letter to Secretary Rumsfeld, Sen. George Allen (R-VA) recommends that Lt. Gen. William Boykin -- who infamously described the war on terrorism as a battle between a “Christian nation” (the United States) and “Satan,” and claimed that Muslims worship an “idol” -- be promoted to lead the U.S. special operations command.

I vaguely remember this character, and thankfully Michelle Goldberg over at Salon's War Room provides some reminders:

In the summer of 2003, Boykin donned military dress and appeared before an evangelical audience to talk about Christianity and the war on terror. It was one of at least 23 such talks he delivered to religious audiences, almost always in uniform. Islamists, he told his listeners, hate America "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

He meant that literally -- Boykin apparently believes that Satan's supernatural soldiers participate in the military operations of America's enemies, and that said soldiers can be captured on film. At several of his talks, he showed photos from the capital of Somalia, where he had commanded Delta Forces during the 1993 battle there. In the pictures, there were black streaks in the sky, photographic evidence, he said, of a "demonic spirit over the city of Mogadishu."

To some, this kind of delusion might suggest that Boykin is not well and should be relieved of his duties. Instead, George W. Bush chose to promote him to deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, where he was put in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

But wait, there's more...

In his new position, Boykin served as military assistant to Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and he helped his boss bring the kind of torture and degradation that went on at Guantánamo Bay to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. As Reuters reported in May 2004:

"The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas.

"A Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was told on Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners.

Sounds like the perfect BushCo soldier...