This story is so strange I checked to see if it was a hoax -- apparently it is not! It is so wrong on so many levels:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Muslim groups reacted angrily Wednesday after it emerged that the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.
The company producing the sights, which are also used to train Afghan and Iraqi soldiers under contracts with the US Army and the Marine Corps, said it has inscribed references to the New Testament on the metal casings for over two decades.
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The Pentagon sought to defuse the brewing controversy, saying it was "disturbed" by the reports.
"If determined to be true, this is clearly inappropriate and we are looking into possible remedies," Commander Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman, told AFP.
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The move appeared to be a direct violation of a US Central Command general order issued after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that strictly prohibits "proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice."
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According to photographs seen by AFP, the coded inscriptions include JN8:12, an apparent reference to John 8:12: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
Trijicon, a defense contractor founded by devout Christian Glyn Bindon, vows on its website to follow "biblical standards" it says make America great.
Source: AFP, Thu Jan 21, 2010
5 comments:
I find this story to be such a joke. Somehow a few little letters and numbers after an optic sights serial number is somehow worst or insult to the injury of getting shot?
I'd be more worried about the cheap and shoddy Chinese crap our troops get stuck with than some obscure references on a US made, quality product.
tahts a fair enough point -- if i am in a rifle scope my bigger concern is getting shot and not the writing on the scope. but still, it seems very weird secretly to put bible verse on a rifle
Our corporatist (fascist) government has bought scanners for Cdn airports with our money. Our police routinely execute people with tasers. Our country is engaged in a war based on false pretexts of phantasm terrorist strikes, in reality staged by secret service agencies and complicit operatives. Our government has injected our people with tax-paid, totally unnecessary toxic vaccines. All has been done with the complicit SILENCE of your mainline parties! Our politicians, Liberal and Conservative, routinely go to international meetings to conspire with other foreign politicians to negotiate away our sovereignty and civil rights and liberties (Trilateral, CFR, Bilderberg, G-20 and UN), organizations run by global elite billionaires and international banking interests. A pox on all Canadian mainline political traitor parties. Vote only for independent candidates next election. Don't tase me, don't scan me, don't inoculate me, don't even think about chipping me! Keep your stinking hands off me, my family and my community you parasites!
What it basically comes down to is that the U.S. military is not supposed to kill people in the name of God. Referencing passages from the bible makes it look like they're killing people in the name of God.
I agree it's really bizarre they would bother to do that but their a private company who sells a good product.
The fact that this little inside joke by the company has gone un-noticed for so long makes this funny.
Killing folks for Jesus? Seriously?
Seeing Obama reference God in a public speech is going to have far more effect than a serial number that has gone un-noticed till now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oEtCBG6DVg
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