After Photography

April 1, 2003, cover of Worldwide Intelligence Update

On a daily basis Donald Rumsfeld provided President George Bush with a sickening mix of Biblical quotations and romanticized war photographs on the cover of the President’s intelligence briefings, according to an article by Robert Draper in GQ magazine. Despite a fear that if leaked these covers would further inflame the Muslim world with their Crusader-style invocations following the invasion of Iraq, both the Secretary of Defense and Commander-in-Chief apparently preferred their intelligence analyses sprinkled with Biblical references.

“It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men,” a quotation from Peter in the New Testament, was arrayed over an image of Saddam Hussein talking on the briefing cover of April 7, 2003. “If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast O LORD,” reads one quotation from Psalms on top of an image of a soldier on an aircraft carrier.

GQ magazine publishes a series of the covers (one of the attendees at the briefings was troubled enough to have saved them). Unfortunately, the covers confirm suspicions of a highly irresponsible government, willing to mix religion with conquest just like their purported, if non-existent, enemy in Iraq. (Thanks to Elizabeth Kilroy for pointing the GQ article out.)