---

Boykin violated military rules with speeches, report says
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- The Pentagon's chief intelligence official violated military procedures while giving controversial religious speeches, an internal investigation has reportedly found.

News organizations reported Aug. 19 that the Pentagon inspector general's office had given lawmakers a long-anticipated report on Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin. Boykin angered Muslim-Americans and many supporters of church-state separation in October, after news reports revealed comments he had made in a series of speeches to Christian groups.

Among the most controversial of Boykin's statements were comments casting the war on terrorism in spiritual terms, referring to the United States as "a Christian nation," saying Muslims worshiped an "idol" and asserting that God had put President Bush in the White House.

But Boykin's most publicized remarks came during a January 2003 speech to a pastors' meeting at First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, Fla. There, he spoke about his involvement fighting warlords during the United States' ill-fated intervention in the Muslim nation of Somalia. One top lieutenant to a Somali warlord had been quoted on CNN as saying he would not be captured because Allah would spare him.

"Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his," Boykin said, according to a tape of the speech. "I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol. But I prayed, 'Lord, let us get that man.'"

He also reportedly showed his audience photographs of Mogadishu taken at the time, and pointed to a black streak above the city that he described as the presence of evil. ...