A Token Of Intolerance...Or More?

(Note: I know the videos have been MIA lately, and that is because of a technical difficulty that I hope to have resolved soon.)

I happened to come across this Daily Kos diary which has to do with the story reported here by Reuters and elsewhere of our latest PR blunder in Iraq; namely, the handing out of coins with Bible verses on them to Iraqis in Falluja by one of our marines (and I’m not blaming the marine, I hasten to add; as far as I’m concerned, our military is trying to do its best in a hopeless situation, made so because of what passes for Iraq’s “political leadership” as well as our own)…

"(Our military has) initiated an investigation into that and there is some evidence of an individual that was doing that," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Marine has been accused of distributing the coins to Iraqis as they passed through a check point in Falluja, U.S. officials said.

"Where will you spend eternity?" was written on one side of the coins, according to a report from McClatchy News Service.

On the other was a Bible verse written in Arabic referring to Jesus: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16."

If true, the Marine would have violated U.S. military rules that prohibit the promotion of any religion, faith or practice.

"This has our full attention," Col. James Welsh, the U.S. commander in western Iraq, said in a statement. "We deeply value our relationship with the local citizens and share their concerns over this serious incident."

I have a really crazy thought about this, and being a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, I’m going to unleash it here.

This MSNBC story from January of last year tells us that our friends up in the Great White North came up with an interesting little scheme that goes a little further than anything we’ve talked about so far…

In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.

The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins.

Now are you going to tell me that it’s beyond the realm of possibility that we could be trying to do that in Iraq to track actual or suspected insurgents? And are you going to tell me that there is no way we could be carrying out such an activity because of the cost (the budget for No Such Agency is always “off the books,” let’s not forget).

I’m with Daily Kos diarist testvvet6778 on this story in that I cannot imagine how this was an isolated incident of a marine acting on his own. The crooked Bushco cabal his done everything it can to destroy the precious separation of church and state in this country envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, among many others. Who’s to say that it wouldn't concoct a “red herring” like this in the name of the battle against Terra! Terra! Terra!?

(On a personal note to provide further evidence, I should tell you that a first cousin once removed recently enlisted in the Army, and he was told that he needed to join a religious organization of one type or another, whether it was a Catholic church, other denomination, synagogue, mosque, whatever; while I applaud someone on a spiritual journey of sorts, I don’t think it’s the place of our government to make that a requirement of service.)

(By the way, I just noticed that profmarcus weighed in on this here with some typically insightful observations.)