God put Bush in charge, says the general hunting bin Laden [says it all]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/17/wboyk17.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/17/ixnewstop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=15391

this pretty much says it all, huh: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

it's about time to open a little can of DEM'CRATIC WHOOP-ASS.

--------------
God put Bush in charge, says the general hunting bin Laden
By David Rennie
(Filed: 17/10/2003)


The general leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein has publicly declared that the Christian God is "bigger" than Allah, who is a false "idol", and believes the war on terrorism is a fight with Satan, it emerged yesterday.


Investigative reporters from the Los Angeles Times and NBC television have dug up two years' worth of seemingly incendiary comments from Lt Gen William "Jerry" Boykin, the newly promoted deputy undersecretary of state of defence for intelligence.


Gen Boykin has repeatedly told Christian groups and prayer meetings that President George W Bush was chosen by God to lead the global fight against Satan.

He told one gathering: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."
<snip>

dont they have mandated psychiatric tests and drug tests for these people?

we have the name of someone to blame!

A truly disturbing case of mental illness.

If he didn't have so much power and control over weapons of mass destruction, this guy would be entertaining as he strolled down the street, talking to trees!!!

he many souind crazy but he doesn't sound depressed; far from it. I think this nut-job is MERELY another fundamentalist on the warpath.

BTW...he was speaking to his congregation in a church. I think even men and women in uniform are entitled to their own religious views while in church. Who would deny them that?! What I need to understand is IF when he (or she) puts on a U.S. military uniform, where their free speech begins and where it ends. Did he cross the line (according to the Pentagon's own rules) or is he entitled to say whatever he believes even if it's goof as all get-up.

There are jumbo First Ammendment issues here whether we agree with this guy or not. Nobody flame me, please...Im just trying to sort-out important precedents that may lurk within the usual heap-o-ridicule we pile onto these characters.

How has it all come to this?

that this country is on a course to theocracy, this should wake you up.
No doubt this fool, Boykin, agrees with Ashcroft that this will bring about Armagheddon, a good thing in their estimation.:nuke:

seems to be a modern phenomena that is a scourge across the world.

The Hindu fascists are India's verison.

Of course, the Taliban had/have more in common with this man than with any foundations of democracy.

Yes, the religious fascists spent thirty years working their way into positions of power in the U.S.

The neo-cons have formed a coalition with them because their own interests meet at the point of the middle east. The neo-cons welcome the use of religion to control a gullible populace.

Render unto Ceasar....godhead...and you have the rationale for a dictatorship.

They treat Bush like they would a King George.

For a while there, all the Neocon chiefs were using this mantra in the media. It gave me the creeps every time I heard it.

Royalist rhetoric.

Indeed.

I serve at the pleasure of the president what fuckwittage. Really someone please hand me a barf bag.

Every fecking time I hear that damn bullshit I see someone on their knees sucking Bush's ridiculous prick.

Yuck and Barf O Rama. It is a very creepy and fecking Royal thing to utter.

Colin was the KING of spewing this tripe. The visual evolving from this is pretty fecking gross.

FUCKWITTAGE at it's very best. BARF.

<snip>
He told one gathering: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

In January, he told Baptists in Florida about a victory over a Muslim warlord in Somalia, who had boasted that Allah would protect him from American capture. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real god and his was an idol," Gen Boykin said.

He also emerged from the conflict with a photograph of the Somalian capital Mogadishu bearing a strange dark mark. He has said this showed "the principalities of darkness. . . a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy".
<snip>

This man is a GENERAL? What asylum did he escape from? This is truly frightening.

WRITE to yuor Congressional Delegation and to the papers...

Oh and include the DoD....

This man not only stated a political opinion, (which is the
gray area that Myers may have refered to... giving Myers the
benefit of the doubt) but he did it IN UNIFORM, which is an
absolute NO-No

If any service member I know did this, they would be subjected
to a General Court Martial.

The man should be cashiered, write, call, show your anger...

MAYBE they will cashier him... and I do not care how distinguished
his career is, so was Douglas McCarthur's... it is time
for this boy to fade away to the snake handler circuit.

"Even with such backing, however, Boykin indicated that he had learned a lesson, telling NBC News that he will be curtailing his speechmaking. Said Feaver, "This is the kind of thing that's corrected within minutes of being made aware of."
Washington Post Story

Oh, so he's not going to give those speeches any more? What about all the people he's already converted? This is so sad.

Do we have to watch while "religion" destroys our planet?

now recanted and will no longer do this... TOO LATE!

The man should be removed from his post, ex post facto.

This is a threat to the good order and discipline in the US
Armed Forces.

By the way I have written to his chain and my delegation, as well
as the local paper.

... so don't punish me.

We all know about the enlisted men who got threatened with courts martial (perhaps threats made good) for simply speaking their mind about the war and their leaders.

This guy should be court martialed, regardless of his beliefs, which he is entitled to no matter how absurd and pernicious, he is not allowed to speak out to the detriment of our war effort. And this speech is going to do nothing less than prove to a lot of Muslims that we really are on a crusade.

This is beyond bad, this is a f*cking catastrophe.

You can bet it wasn't Boykin's idea to apologize. :think:

somebody in his chain had a talk with him for embarrasing them.

Now his chain is as follows:

General of the Army (used to be Chinseki)

Chief of Staff Myers

Deputy Secretary of the Army

(He may or may not be in Wolfowitz chain)

Secretary of defense

President of the US.

Care to guess who sat with the boy and explained how much he has
embarrased the services by doing this, which he should have known
from his days as a CADET was a NO-NO?


He got caught, if this shit is condoned, guess what boys and
girls this is the OFFICIAL Policy of the US Army... the only
way they will get this corrected is if they dock his pay for a month
and at least go bad, general, bad.

Preferably he should be removed from comand and ahem, encouraged
to retire... reality is he should be relieved.

Oh and a note to all... this has nothing to do with what he said (as
personally abhorrent as this is), but with the crass
violation of the UCMJ.

On the bright side, now troops can go to anti war and pro war rallies
in full uniform... and can talk to the press without fear of
retribution... after all if a three star can do this, why can't a low level soldier critize the CiC, with no fear of retribution? Here is
where good order and discipline comes into the fray.

When you join the military.

All military personal are subject to the UCMJ, and this dude is in clear violation of that code. Keep in mind this isn't some kid who just joined up, this is a career officer in charge of a major military operation. He knows better and obviously doesn't care.

This will be a very dangerous thing if the military doesn't not take appropriate action in this case. You might as well take the UCMJ and throw it out the window because it won't be worth the paper it's printed on.

When you have a wartime deserter as "Commander In Chief"??

. . and worse yet, y'all got the power to run the world

and into ruin I fear,

(sigh)

After all, the general pointed out that the majority of people here DIDN'T want W* as President...

. . if it just disappeared into oblivion

and became a 3rd world type of country

Just My Humble Canuk Opinion

We'd still be right here, just south of you. You'd have to beef up your Border Patrol (or whatever you call it) quite a bit. Also, I've heard Canada complaining about pollution drifting north--it would get a lot worse.

Perhaps you could hope that decent Americans, who actually are in the majority, manage to retake their country.

It was NOT the 90's.

So when was it?

It's been a while...

Like, probably before the industrial revolution, before profit at any cost and power by any means for the priviledged few at the expense of the many because the prevailing ideology for the nation.

How long to we keep talking about "taking the country back?" I'm so sick the the progressive downward spiral of things that either we actually do take to country back and put in place a true progressive agenda that would rival or surpass all of canada's successes, or no kidding, I just wish someone would blow us off the face of the earth. :(

how long would it take, hypothetically, for the Bushco cartel to overtake and control Canada ifthey wanted to...an hour? 8 hours? Maybe a whole day?

Just wondering....that's a pretty long, unprotected border...and not just the with the U.S....Russia could conquer Canada just as fast; faster by several hours than a concerted effort by the EU to expand westward if that's what the EU wanted to do. Come to think of it, if North Korea take a crude nuclear "swing" at the U.S. and misses, Canada's west coast is toast. And without the rich west coast, eastern Canada kinda just sits there speaking French and plotting a schism.

You folks sure can be snippy for such a vulnerable, third-rate power. Where does that come from? Is it your ultra-homogenious lily-white society thjat makes you so smug or is it the chill of cultural and technical inferiority going back to the early 1800s?

You really think He would vote for Junior? ;-)

when He let the US Supreme Court nod Junior into office....maybe to show the electorate just how bad things really have to be before you can say "things ain't never been this bad before"

So praise to the Anointed One (as in 'anointed with oil')!

"All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful
The Repugs double crossed them all"

His inflammatory, anti-Islamic speeches make people in other countries think the US is on a crusade to destroy Islam.

FYI, Gen. Boykin-"Allah" is Arabic for God. Not an idol. God. The same God that you worship-there IS but one God!

1. God put General Putz in his position;
2. General Putz is "leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein";
3. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are still out there somewhere; therefore
4. God must not want Osama and Saddam captured.

Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?

I knew that the GOP thought the world was flat but now God is talking in this man Bush? Give me a break.Besides that JC was a man of peace. What is Bush the Roman God?

they only get better one by one."

Whistle Ass has told several people, including Cabinet members, that God selected him to be president so that he would be in office on 9/11.

...I have to ask: did they actually SPEAK with God? Receive some sort of sign? Or do we simply have to take their word that they're working with God?

- Insanity on a national scale.

with differnt headlines. Isn't that a good thing? Eventually, mainstream media will likely pick it up and get it to the masses, not all of whom are fundie sheeple.

two other threads in LBN on this speech Boykin gave. Had time to get one, which is still on page one of LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=170117&mesg_id=170117
This guy must be a recruiter for al Qaeda. This sort of theocracy BS is not helping our cause any and is probably as supportive to our troops as whistle ass's "Bring 'em on" challange to those out to disuade our military from further invasions and occupations.

Am becoming convinced that the only answer the neocons have to the serious problems facing the nation is continued war to divert our attention (and divert lots of taxpayer $$$) from their actual failure to make any productive contribution to the nation. It is not unlike CEOs who don't actually improve a business, just chop off personell costs in a sprint to make quarterly profits look good to stock brokers.

Life is no longer about sustaining and enriching life. It is about what we can add to the quarterly report now. Boykin may be right, Satan may well be our enemy, but he surely isn't the one leading those who face Mecca to pray. He leads those in too many boardrooms and their political puppets who prey on all people of all religions.

"I have no King but Jesus" John Ashcroft said this at Bob Jones University.

So it is quite obvious that Boykin believes whole heartily that Ashcroft is on to something.

too late.

i love how he admits that the majority of the country didnt vote for *'s sorry ass.

"We didn't "steal" the election, It was given to us by God"

just like Jake & Elwood.

I give this General about two weeks before he's relieved of duty. No?

Abbas said that at Aqaba, Bush promised to speak
with Sharon about the siege on Arafat. He said
nobody can speak to or pressure Sharon except
the Americans.

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush
said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I
struck them, and then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am
determined to solve the problem in the Middle
East. If you help me I will act, and if not,
the elections will come and I will have to
focus on them."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

What I like most about this quote is that Bush believes that his God wants him to stop working on Middle East peace so that he can work on the election.

Just when you think they're hopeless, something comes along like this morning's coverage on Morning Edition. It got a lot of air time, including a paranoid and stammering Rummy making a fool of himself, calling the press bloodthirsty for wanting an explanation.

and so was al quida's bombing of the WTC.

for the Crusade-Reichmarshall Rumsfeld approves him wholeheartedly

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/17/international/middleeast/17GENE.html

http://news.tbo.com/news/MGA2KQCPVLD.html

<snip>
So last weekend, she joined tens of thousands of Americans beginning a 40-day program of group discussion, worship, study and service to find her purpose and put it to work. Nationwide, members of some 5,000 churches...
<snip>

<snip>
The book espouses a Bible- based plan that's been embraced by members of the Oakland Raiders, NASCAR drivers and employees, Coca Cola executives, female professional golfers, Hollywood producers, President Bush and first lady Laura Bush. By year's end, more than 2 million people will have participated in the 40 Days of Purpose campaign, a figure that thrills Warren.
<snip>

<snip>
``The Purpose-Driven Life'' is unabashedly Christian, touting ``five eternal purposes'' for life. They include worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism. Two of the book's most emphasized messages are in the first chapter: ``It's not about you,'' and ``You are here for God.''

Readers are encouraged to read a chapter a day for 40 days, then put the practicum to work in their lives. Some critics call it fast-food Christianity - a quick-fix approach for broken or lost spirits.
<snip>


BTW, I am NOT against people being spiritual but I am against ALL religion that espouses that someone is better or above someone else! This truly disturbs me and I have to think about it..just found it.

EDIT: BOLD-face is mine

his/her/its mind next November.

"Why is this man in the White House...(though)...The majority of Americans did not vote for him?...because God put him there."

I've long suspected that God is Georgie's co-pilot, but have been too tactful to say so. So the U.S. really IS being run by the same kind of despotic religious fanatic that it normally drop bombs on.

Of course, the real question is, does Georgie agree with him? If so, has he committed the ultimate melding of church and state? If not, is he going put this guy on permanent leave? With allies like God, who needs Congress? By the way, General, how IS the hunt for bin Laden going?


rocknation

P.S. How does he knows that, Allah didn't put him there knowing that he'd screw up?

"and the enemy is a guy called Satan."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3275496,00.html

...Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary for intelligence, has said he will curtail his speechmaking, officials said. But he has not been put forward by the Pentagon to make a public statement, a development officials said they might try to orchestrate later Friday.
Helloooo--he CONFIRMED that Bush stole the election! How can they allow such a flagrant act of disloyalty pass? I mean, this means that either the Boykin is nuts, or Georgie is!

...But Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, R-R.I., said that if media reports accurately quoted Boykin, the general's comments were deplorable.
If the quotes are accurate, he's got to go. That's so obvious even a REPUBLICAN was able to figure it out!

"Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policy-making position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America's motives and intentions," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Helloooo--I rest my case!


rocknation

I understand why there tends to be a spirit of bitterness and distrust frequently on these boards towards those of us who lead a religious life. I try not to get upset - I consider it the price I have to pay thanks to morons such as this.

I don't have much to say. I'm sitting here just feeling very sad about this. It hurts my heart to see something that has been so beautifying and joyful in my life, my spiritual faith, be so twisted and rotted by so many. It hurts me like somoene stabbing me in the heart to see "religion" twisted into a tool of power and manipulation.

It's just sad...

But we still have to support our troops!

...but I'd strongly disagree with his interpretation of the Divine Plan.

If you believe, as I sometimes do, that God takes an active, guiding role in human history (atheists need read no further), it is easy to account for the sudden emergence of nobodies like a Joan of Arc (a female peasant), a Lincoln (a minor politician), or a Churchill (whose star was distinctly on the wane) during a time of crisis. God raises these extraordinary people up and clears the path for them until the job is done. If this much is true, it follows that something so historically earth-shaking and terrible as the rise and temporary triumph of a Hitler (who also enjoyed a curiously "charmed" career until he had served his purpose) must also, somehow, be an integral component of the plan; at any rate, such a man would not be permitted to prosper if God chose to disallow it (unless you take the view that Satan or the Demiurge or whoever has the power to put his own pieces into play on the cosmic chessboard).

The idea that God is only ever going to do things that are perfectly happy and beneficial for all involved is, I believe, in error. God Himself admits as much in the Old Testament when he allows Jerusalem to be destroyed and the Jews to be carried off to slavery in Babylon. He does it to teach them a lesson which they evidently weren't going to learn any other way. Many people who went through the blood and horror of the American Civil War strongly believed that it was punishment from God for the sin of slavery, the sin of the Mexican War, or both. To tread on very sensitive ground, I've heard it argued that one of the reasons the Holocaust was permitted to occur was to create the conditions under which the state of Israel could be established. One may argue whether such episodes' ultimate benefits to mankind are worth the human misery required to bring them about, but that's a whole different topic.

A happier spin on this is provided by Thomas Paine:

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." The American Crisis I

I'm still conflicted as to whether the current right wing stranglehold on American life and policy represents a temporary aberration that has just about run its course or a darkening twilight that will deepen to an enduring night of fascism. If the latter, given the ideological fervor of the people in charge and the might of the machine they'll be able to operate in pursuit of their ends, given the repercussions that even now their reckless gambling with the nation's finances and their meddling in the Islamic tinderbox have set rippling into generations yet to come, it may well be that we are living in one of those times when the Unseen Hand is manipulating human history to perfect its own inscrutable design. So in this the general is correct. But historical precedents suggest that that design is something no one now is able to foresee; and liars, thugs, haters, and hypocrites have always been among the most fervent to believe that God is on their side, when in reality their self-proclaimed crusade is frequently a tool which He uses and then discards when it has served its purpose.

To say that God allows evil and hatred to prosper for a time is not to say that He looks kindly on the men and the cause which prosper. The Ancien Régime, Napoleon, the Southern slaveholders, the Russian Tsars, Hitler, and the Soviets were all allowed to work their evil in the world for their varying lengths of time, but when the limit had been reached (whether you ascribe this to the will of God or to the collapse of social, cultural, or political supports that just weren't going to stand it any more) they all went down to ruin. There is a famous comment by a Confederate official in which he contrasts the South's exultant feeling of invincibility and divine protection in May 1863 to the shock, horror and despair that befell them two months later when Lee's army had been wrecked at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had been taken, and both on the Fourth of July. Antony Beevor in The Fall of Berlin 1945 powerfully describes the various reactions of German civilians, soldiers, and politicians when the Russian armies came pouring into the Reich. There was very little screaming for the Führer in those days.

Their eyes were opened then. General Boykin and all his ilk may yet live to see their eyes opened too. I share the feeling of many on these boards that the next few years will be critical in this regard, and that if the American right wing is not checked soon it will only become more brutal, irresponsible, and destructive in its use of power; and that the longer its reign, the more terrible will be its inevitable downfall and the greater the number of innocent people who will be buried in its ruin. But I won't give up hope. There may yet be a new Washington or Lincoln waiting in the wings. If so, it's probably someone no one has heard of yet.

Françoise (sorry this post is so long)

P.S. Here's a much more eloquent expression of this idea than I could ever give:

"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Both read the same bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we not be judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. The prayers of neither have been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'

"If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray - that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn by another with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altoghether.'" -- Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address

suppositions, it was eloquently argued.

Everyone who does not agree with me, however, is a TRAITOR! Or, perhaps, a heretic.

(just kidding) :)

Françoise

all flavors and ilk.

crosspost (edited) from here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=543814

I would be less disturbed by this if GWBush hadn't already gone on record as considering himself placed in the WH to fulfill some divine plan for the American Nation. And if the Bush WH hadn't already left behind a long unsavory trail of lies, obfuscations and arguably illegal manipulations of the American public -- for reasons that still remain mostly unclear and open to the most outrageous speculations.

In the early days after 911. He was heard on a number of occassions refering to our retalliatory actions as a "crusade". I also distinctly remember some kind of 30 second propaganda piece on FOX around the time of the Afgan invasion in which still photos of military personnel "in action" was backgrounded with stirring patriotic music and a tribute piece about the courageous American men and women in uniform and so forth ... and in the middle I glimpsed a very quick flash of a black screen with white letters reading the word: Christian.

This was not an hallucination. I never saw the spot again. But I mentioned it at work the next day. Distrurbing and true, though I have no way of proving it. At the timme I had not been an activist or particularly well informed by real news. Just another anecdote...

But the Bush WH is populated with ideologues, not prudent policy brokers. Since they installed themselves in the WH, they've been running roughshod over everything from the environment (Kyoto treaty, logging, pollution standards etc.) to our constitutionally granted protections as American citizens, to the balooning national debt -- as if there was no tomorrow.

This should disturb anyone who reflects on the kind of mindset that would implement such a massive campaign of radical policies like this with no public debate and apparently no thought of future repercussions for the American people and the world community. Is it so farfetched to suspect their might indeed be some form of eschatology involved? At least for Bush Jr.?

Of course I also think their PNAC ideology represents the height of ignorance, but ignorance doesn't always stop men of "vision" from making life very uncomfortable for the rest of us.

I prefer to remain alert and not cut slack for any man or woman in power who makes inflamatory statements such as framing this grotesque campaign of war profiteering as some kind of holy offensive prosecuted from on high.

mental illness. Those who got their orders from God or were convinced God was talking to them were heavily medicated and institutionalized, they weren't appointed to the presidency or given the status of General (although there were some who thought they were General's) Someone needs to order a psych. eval on this guy and up his meds. That shit just sounds scary! Next he will be leading the Armaggedon (sp).