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.

Rummy, how have you screwed us? Let me count the ways: Newly released top-secret documents from the Rumsfeld White House that slathered religion all over the war.

Followed up by:

Soldiers in a prayer group exhorted to “hunt people for Jesus.” (Proselytizing is an expressly prohibited practice in the U.S. military, but they seem to be thinking up ways to weasel out of that.)

“Do we know what it means to proselytise?” Captain Emmit Furner, a military chaplain, says to the gathering.

“It is General Order Number One,” an unidentified soldier replies.

But Watt says “you can’t proselytise but you can give gifts.”

And this, Harper’s cover story for May, about a group of soldiers who painted “Jesus Kill Mohammed [sic]” on their Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and drove around with an interpreter blaring out the phrase over the loudspeaker.

“Jesus kill Mohammed!” chanted the interpreter. “Jesus kill Mohammed!”

A head emerged from a window to answer, somebody fired on the roof, and the Special Forces man directed a response from an MK-19 grenade launcher. “Boom,” remembers Humphrey. The head and the window and the wall around it disappeared.

“Jesus kill Mohammed!” Another head, another shot. Boom. “Jesus kill Mohammed!” Boom. In the distance, Humphrey heard the static of AK fire and the thud of RPGs. He saw a rolling rattle of light that looked like a firefight on wheels. “Each time I go into combat I get closer to God,” DeGiulio would later say.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation works to expose and litigate these kinds of fundamentalist violations in the U.S. military. If you care about this issue, now is the time to give. They have a matching program going on how until the end of May.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–’I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’

— U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1

Write to Rep. Dunn to tell him that the capitol is not the house of God, and that Atheists are not “evildoers.”