Thorp and Sailor's Grave Board

U.S. Military Rifle Scopes Inscribed With Bible Verses

XHonusWagnerX - 1-19-2010 at 10:56 PM

MikeResist - 1-19-2010 at 11:49 PM

Great. Stuff like this aggrivates me. Freakin religious wackos making guns.

DaveMoral - 1-20-2010 at 12:54 AM

Jeez. Those are hard to explain away huh?

I'm not sure it's a sort of proselytizing though... how many people in the military are going to know what those marks might refer to? Let alone Iraqi police or soldiers in training? At the very least it's extremely short-sighted of the manufacturers.

You'd think I'd be outraged about this, but it's hard to surprise me with something like this. The majority of gun enthusiasts and military people are right leaning and often evangelical Christians.

BDx13 - 1-20-2010 at 02:14 AM

part of me thinks this is fucking funny, the other part thinks it's a little crazy.
regardless....
my only concern is for the safety of the men and women out in the field.
this seems very short sighted on the part of the manufacturer.
why give the enemy more ammunition?

wez138 - 1-20-2010 at 10:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by DaveMoral
Jeez. Those are hard to explain away huh?

I'm not sure it's a sort of proselytizing though... how many people in the military are going to know what those marks might refer to? Let alone Iraqi police or soldiers in training? At the very least it's extremely short-sighted of the manufacturers.

You'd think I'd be outraged about this, but it's hard to surprise me with something like this. The majority of gun enthusiasts and military people are right leaning and often evangelical Christians.



But there learning and getting rightous kills at the same time,whats the beef?

Discipline - 1-20-2010 at 11:49 AM

I think there are more important issues for the news to cover than this. Who cares?

morgan - 1-20-2010 at 06:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Discipline
I think there are more important issues for the news to cover than this. Who cares?

DaveMoral - 1-20-2010 at 11:47 PM

^It's a pretty important newstory, actually. I mean, it's not good for that whole "hearts and minds" thing when you've got people pointing guns with scopes carrying Bible verses at Muslims in Muslim lands. Kind of doesn't help dispell the neo-crusader image that many Muslims in occupied lands have of American forces.

morgan - 1-21-2010 at 02:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by DaveMoral
^It's a pretty important newstory, actually. I mean, it's not good for that whole "hearts and minds" thing when you've got people pointing guns with scopes carrying Bible verses at Muslims in Muslim lands. Kind of doesn't help dispell the neo-crusader image that many Muslims in occupied lands have of American forces.


Good point but in my opinion, we're not "winning" shit let alone "hearts and minds". We need to cut our loses and get the fuck out. Being there isn't accomplishing anything other than wasting lives and money. This isn't meant to be disrespectful to our armed forces, who I have nothing but respect for and have several friends currently serving, I just feel that a continued presence isn't accomplishing anything.

moforn - 1-21-2010 at 02:37 AM

I think it's a newsworthy story... imagine the weeping and gnashing of teeth if government contracts (particularly military contracts) were being awarded to companies with passages from the Qur'an on the products being supplied? I find the whole thing to be too ridiculous to do much but laugh at... but I do find the breach of church/state separation, especially given the circumstances, to be pretty offensive.

tireironsaint - 1-21-2010 at 02:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by moforn
I think it's a newsworthy story... imagine the weeping and gnashing of teeth if government contracts (particularly military contracts) were being awarded to companies with passages from the Qur'an on the products being supplied? I find the whole thing to be too ridiculous to do much but laugh at... but I do find the breach of church/state separation, especially given the circumstances, to be pretty offensive.
Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I can't imagine a much more blatant attempt to make our side of this whole mess into the holy war it's not supposed to be. This sort of thing can only make our position look worse to the rest of the world and continuing to allow a company like that to have a government contract supports the argument that there really IS some religious agenda on our side. At the very least it's one more thing causing trouble for our troops and I think they've got a tough enough time already.

Maybe I'm not remembering things as clearly as I think, but I could swear that even the administration of that right wing christian nutjob that used to live in the white house recognized that we needed to keep religion out of our reasons for going to war. No matter your religious views, it needs to be noted that if we allow this to be seen as a religious war on our side, the ONLY possible end to such a war is the total elimination of one side or the other.

DaveMoral - 1-21-2010 at 07:09 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by morgan
Quote:
Originally posted by DaveMoral
^It's a pretty important newstory, actually. I mean, it's not good for that whole "hearts and minds" thing when you've got people pointing guns with scopes carrying Bible verses at Muslims in Muslim lands. Kind of doesn't help dispell the neo-crusader image that many Muslims in occupied lands have of American forces.


Good point but in my opinion, we're not "winning" shit let alone "hearts and minds". We need to cut our loses and get the fuck out. Being there isn't accomplishing anything other than wasting lives and money. This isn't meant to be disrespectful to our armed forces, who I have nothing but respect for and have several friends currently serving, I just feel that a continued presence isn't accomplishing anything.


Hell, I'm not "for" the war or "winning" anything. Frankly, I don't think a "war on terror" is something that can ever be won, particularly with military might. You want to stop terrorism? Stop giving people cause for pissed off at you. That's what it comes down to. For too long this shit's been construed as "they hate our freedoms" or "they are just pissed because we aren't Muslims and they want to force us to be" when the reality is that most of the guys that get strapped up with bombs are people who see something wrong in the world and make connections(often rightly, though sometimes wrongly) to American foreign policy and take aim at who they feel is to blame for whatever situation has pissed them off. Be it the exploitation of a countries people or resources and the ouster of governments that we don't like(Haiti is a pretty good current example of that, way to go 2 coup de'tats in 20 years thanks to Bush I and II as well as Clinton) or the support of a government that has basically enshrined racial prejudice into it's constitution and carries out gross misuses of military force against an impoverished civilian population in the name of security(Israel/Palestine) or the invasion and occupation of other nations and the support of undemocratic leadership(Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt etc). Those things drive people to do extreme acts, and unfortunately the outrage at injustice that alot of these young Muslim men are feeling(and let's not forget that terrorism from Muslim so-called extremists is actually a smaller portion of worldwide terrorism than most would think) has been harnessed and directed by people with a perverse view of Islam and Islamic law and ethics.

Hell, a big part of the problem in Iraq, for example, is that our government and financial institutions look at that place primarily as a "market" to be opened, rather than as a nation with millions of people living there. It's just another place in the world that has a resource we want to exploit.

So, yeah, bring the troops home. In the meantime, don't fuck around and get them killed by putting fucking Bible verses on their guns.

Six66Mike - 1-21-2010 at 09:54 PM

It's not much different, in fact I think it's less offensive than little Israeli school kids writing on bombs & weapons that kill Palestinian's.

The same scopes are used here and the army had no idea what the serial numbers meant. They'll be removing them from the scopes.

barc0debaby - 1-21-2010 at 10:01 PM

Blackwater's CEO Erik Prince and his zealous christian views are what they really need to be talking about. Dude believes he is carrying out a modern day crusade....and we are funding his crazy shit.

DaveMoral - 1-21-2010 at 11:23 PM

^That right there is fully the truth. It really pisses me off that a bunch of those assholes just got away with murder because of some bullshit loopholes in the law. For far too long they've ignored the sinister side of Blackwater, all they had to do to stay employed was change their fucking name. Unbelievable.

wez138 - 1-21-2010 at 11:46 PM

Hey, i have an idea!!


Scrap the gun's/tank's/knife's and whatever else they use to kill each other and give the catholic's bibles and the muslim's koran's. Let it all be endorsed by some giant book company and see how hard it is to win a religious then?

I bet its well hard to kill someone with a book,not a hard back too!
Paper back,anybody in?

XHonusWagnerX - 1-22-2010 at 01:31 PM

Youtube is blocked at work so I'm not 100% sure this is the right link, but the company making the rifle scopes has stopped putting the bible verses on them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIbOKZ2hj-U

Jason the Magnificent - 1-22-2010 at 02:21 PM

Discipline - 1-22-2010 at 02:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by tireironsaint
Quote:
Originally posted by moforn
I think it's a newsworthy story... imagine the weeping and gnashing of teeth if government contracts (particularly military contracts) were being awarded to companies with passages from the Qur'an on the products being supplied? I find the whole thing to be too ridiculous to do much but laugh at... but I do find the breach of church/state separation, especially given the circumstances, to be pretty offensive.
Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I can't imagine a much more blatant attempt to make our side of this whole mess into the holy war it's not supposed to be. This sort of thing can only make our position look worse to the rest of the world and continuing to allow a company like that to have a government contract supports the argument that there really IS some religious agenda on our side. At the very least it's one more thing causing trouble for our troops and I think they've got a tough enough time already.

Maybe I'm not remembering things as clearly as I think, but I could swear that even the administration of that right wing christian nutjob that used to live in the white house recognized that we needed to keep religion out of our reasons for going to war. No matter your religious views, it needs to be noted that if we allow this to be seen as a religious war on our side, the ONLY possible end to such a war is the total elimination of one side or the other.


A very good point. I hadn't considered it from the perspective of the appearance of a religious war.

DaveMoral - 1-22-2010 at 10:38 PM

^I'm pretty sure Dubya was known to have used the word "crusade" in conjunction with his "war on terror" at least once.