How Rumsfeld's Pentagon Used God

He needed some way to get through to Bush.

From Salon:

[A] new article in GQ by Robert Draper is doing more damage to [Former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld's already-tarnished reputation. Veterans of the Bush administration, who'd apparently been waiting for the opportunity to unload on an old foe, dished plenty of dirt on the former defense secretary, and delivered some truly amazing images to go along with it.

On its Web site, GQ has published a slide show of cover sheets that accompanied intelligence updates produced by Rumsfeld's DOD for Bush. They all feature images of American soldiers in the field, and biblical quotes. It was, apparently, at least partially an attempt to appeal to Bush's religious belief, but it also made other administration officials quite unhappy, in part because if they ever leaked, the images would bolster the perception, which the administration had been working to counter, that America was fighting a holy war against Islam.

From Gentleman's Quarterly:

And He Shall Be Judged by Robert Draper:

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”