I Wouldn't Call It A Crusade, Per Se

Think of these guys as the Gideons......but with guns and a penchant for building naked Muslin pyramids.

From HuffPo:

A U.S. church raised money to send Bibles, printed in the Pashtu and Dari languages, to American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, a report on Al Jazeera documented Sunday night.

It is against military rules to proselytize -- a regulation one of the soldiers filmed by the network readily acknowledged. "You cannot proselytize, but you can give gifts," says the soldier. It is a crime in Afghanistan to attempt to convert anyone from Islam to any other religion. "I also want to praise God because my church collected some money to get Bibles for Afghanistan. They came and sent the money out." The footage is said to be roughly a year old.

The Al Jazeera report also shows a military preacher urging army parishioners to "hunt people for Jesus."

"The Special Forces guys, they hunt men. Basically, we do the same things as Christians. We hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the Kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business," he says

RedState Pretends To Know Gay People

This is just too rich:

President Obama is reportedly set to nominate California Representative Ellen Tauscher for the post of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

If you consult Ms. Tauscher’s biography, her work on arms control and non-proliferation makes its first appearance in the 12th paragraph (in a bio with 14 paragraphs overall). Her work in this area is apparently not as important as her work on Wall Street, her leadership on the Transportation Committee (including getting funding for a tunnel in her district), or her work on public school funding - all of which get prominent mention before non-proliferation issues.

...There’s another interesting thing about Ms. Tauscher: she is the sponsor of legislation to undo the military’s ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy. She reintroduced the legislation on March 3 — about two weeks before her nomination was announced. It has 134 cosponsors as of today - nearly one-third of the House, just a few weeks after introduction. When she introduced the bill, she planned to hold hearings to educate the public, and suggested that Secretary Powell could lead the effort to sell repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It seems as if Ms. Tauscher had done a good job of laying the groundwork for an effort to repeal the measure in the House.

So why did Barack Obama choose to elevate a leader for repealing the ban on gays in the military, to a position where she would lose all influence over the matter?

...If I had supported Barack Obama because he promised to allow gays to serve openly in the military, I sure would be disappointed today. It’s a shame they couldn’t pick someone other than Ms. Tauscher for such an important post.


Thanks for caring.

Obama Fulfills Promise To End "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

Gays In The Military: 1971

Over at The Daily Dish, Chris Boddener posted his father's account of serving with the gays in Vietnam:

When brought to the battalion's recon platoon, I made only one request of the battation's commander. I asked to bring my rifle platoon's "point man" (the scout, the first-to-the-front when traveling in file). He had very keen senses, was an excellent shot, and was strong as an ox and walked like a cat. His reputation among soldiers was that of a "John Wayne." I believe he had probably saved my life more than once.

However, the very intense members of the recon platoon were convinced that they already had the best point man in the battalion. To my surprise, the point man of this predominately-Southern, white group of men was a 20-year-old black Cajun soldier with a very slight build, noticeably effeminate speech, and who even wore a gold ring in his left ear. "Cajun" was quite a contrast to the other men, to say the least, particularly compared to my new platoon sergeant -- a self-described "redneck" from Georgia who had already served 6 tours in Vietnam and was so conservative that he voted for the segregationist George Wallace in '68.

Over the course of my time as recon leader, "John Wayne" and "Cajun" served superbly as dual point men, most notably the time we had to secure the perimeter around the second-worst air disaster in Vietnam history (when a Chinook helicopter carrying 30 men lost its rear transmission and rotor upon take-off and crashed, killing everyone aboard).

What I eventually came to realize before we redeployed to the U.S. was that BOTH of my point men were gay. The main point of anything that can be or has been said of these fine soldiers is ... so what?! To some degree, probably every one of the 700 men in the battalion owed their welfare to these two men. Their personal habits and their being "non-heterosexual" didn't concern anyone in the small group of very focused and highly intense young men who lived and slept very near both of them. It didn't bother me in 1971 and it certainly doesn't concern me one damn bit in 2008. A fine soldier is a fine soldier, period.

Fred and Sharon Say "Don't Inhale"

It's been a while since we checked in with movie moguls Fred and Sharon Spencer. Here's the creepiest "tribute to the troops" that you will ever see.

Busting WALNUTS!'s Military Monopoly

From TNR:

This will make for a fascinating political and cultural moment:

To underline his own family's military pedigree, Obama plans a trip in coming weeks to the Punchbowl National Cemetery in Hawaii, where his grandfather, who served in World War II, is buried.

P.S. I hadn't known Obama's great-grandfather was named Ralph Waldo Emerson (Dunham). That seems fitting, although apparently Mr. Dunham didn't much care for the name.