©2005 UrbisMedia
I am beginning to think that generals make the worst liars. It must be something about the binary nature of their business; you are either dead or alive, the enemy either controls the terrain, or you do. But it’s not because generals are not willing to tell or repeat lies. They just don’t do it well. As when an Amy general gave his report of the Pentagon’s investigation of the contentious Quran flushing at Guantanamo that Newsweek reported (and withdrew for lack of confirmation) that triggered riots in Afghanistan and elsewhere and caused Bush puppet Hamid Karzai to jump off his strings. The general said that the investigation had not turned up a flushing incident, but did turn up a dozen or so incidents in which the Quran was not properly used in interrogations, and five incidents in which the Quran was “mishandeled.” (There is also an interesting FBI report.) In these five incidents. however, the Muslim holy book was “accidentally mishandled.” Really !? Would you want to serve under somebody like this? Hey General, when’s the last time you accidentally mishandled your Bible?
Let us consider some examples — using the Bible (at the risk of inciting riots in Red States) — of holy book mishandling (A = accidental; M = mishandling):
- You have one leg on a chair that is short by the exact thickness of your Bible. You use the Bible to prop up the short leg. This case is M, but not A.
- You are reading from your Bible the Song of Solomon, which causes you to dance around the living room (but not the way those sinful druggie heavy metal people and hip-hoppers dance). Your Bible slips out of your hand during your religious ecstasy, and crashes through your stained-glass window of George Bush and Jerry Falwell. The torn pages are A, but this does not meet the standard of M.
- You are at a special prayer service to ask God to support our troops and give the infidel Muslims itchy venereal diseases. You have a cold and are about to sneeze but can’t reach your hanky quickly enough. In a panic that you might spread your cold you tear a couple of pages out of Deuteronomy and sneeze into one of them and blow your nose into the other (Chapter 29: 21 –28, the part about infidelity). Is this A? No way; you should always have your hanky at the ready in church. You might sneeze on your bible, or the bibles of others, causing their pages to stick together. Is it M. Of course it is. You could have covered up your sneeze in the proper manner in church, by going “Ah, ahhh, AHhhh, AHHhhhHalliluliahhhhhh!” (Proper response is “Praise Jesus,” not “Gezundheit”) Anyway, it doesn’t matter, the pages you ripped out are full of stuff about a bunch of Jews.
- You can’t find your latest issue of theSports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which you always read while sitting on the toilet. So you decide to bring in your King James version in with you. After forty-five minutes your wife pounds on the door and yells, “George, are you touching yourself inappropriately again?” In a panic, thinking you have the SI Swimsuit edition rather than the Bible, you throw your reading matter into the toilet and flush it away. (You knew where I was going with this one, didn’t you?). Hmmmmm, seems A at first consideration, but that might depend on whether your wife is right about what you were doing in there (this is getting sort of Jesuitical, isn’t it?). M? Well, we might have to ask the Rev. Billy Graham if it is M to take your Bible to the toilet with you. I think it is OK (ergo not M) to take the Bible into the bathroom; after all, the Gideon Bible is in motel rooms, and you know what goes on in them.
- You are working for Haliburton in Iraq, faking invoices for services to the Army, when you are kidnapped by “insurgents”. Being a good American patriot and employee of Dick Cheney, you have your Bible with you at all times. The insurgents strip you of all your clothing (but do not take digital photos of you with Iraqi women pointing to your genitals, or threaten same with dogs). In your shame, caused, as you know, by Eve screwing things up in the Garden of Eden (Gen, 3: 21), you place your Bible over you genitals. Is this M? Shouldn’t you be willing to bear your shame (no, not for the fake invoices, silly) and keep your Bible untainted by contact with your private parts? It definitely isn’t A, is it? I think it’s OK to do this; just be careful when you slam the Bible shut.
But, just when you think this one is easy the insurgents take your Bible away from you (“Oh no, and this room is really cold!”). Then one of them opens the Bible to Exodus 20 and begins to read: “Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not bear false witness. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s oil . . . (or something like that). How dare he!!! How dare he use our Bible in such a manner! This is not A, this is not M, this is BD (Bible Desecration) of the most heinous sort! Born-agains will be rioting in Kansas and South Carolina, in Oklahoma, other Red States, and, of course, Texas. We will rise with new resolve to strike the infidel by going deeper into deficit and giving bigger tax cuts to rich people, and by pasting “Support Our Troops” ribbons on our trucks and SUVs. Damn these insensitive infidels! Desecrate our holy book, will they. By Jesus, they want jihad , we’ll give ‘em jihad !
Thank you, general, for your customary clarity and candor.
___________________________________
©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 5.28.2005)