Holy war, Christian warriors and torture

This article makes a very good and very relevant point about the use of torture in the Bush-and-Rummy gulag:

Abuse photos undermine Bush' religious rhetoric San Francisco Chronicle 05/07/04

Rosemary Ruether, a professor of theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, said the president and many of his supporters on the Christian right speak of his administration as "messianic agents chosen by God to combat evil and to establish good.''

But that is not the impression given by the photos coming out of Iraq in the past week.

"They fly in the face of that kind of language,'' Ruether said. "There is something horrendous and contradictory in having all this torture come out of the very same prison used by Saddam Hussein's torturers.''

Josh Marshall also calls attention to an important point.  Remember William Boykin, the Christian Warrior-General who says Our God is bigger than Their God?

In many of the article on this emerging Iraqi prisoners story, it has been claimed that some of the key instigators or enablers of bad acts were military intelligence officers.

Now, who's the head of military intelligence? 'Head' is too vague. There's no such post per se. But what comes pretty close is the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

And who's that? Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin.

What's next?  Quotations from Christian theologians of the Middle Ages on how torture is okay because if the victim is Christian and they die from it their souls will go to Heaven?  And if they're not Christian, of course, well, it's their own fault that they'll burn in Hell forever.