Pentagon drops bible quotes

According to news reports, the Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes Bible quotes on daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography.

For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the epistles of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq.

The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers’ deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. GQ has images of the briefings on its Web site. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.