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For months, the Obama-Hagel Pentagon has promised that reports of military trainers teaching troops that traditional Christian groups are extremists comparable to terrorists were isolated incidents by rogue instructors.
Now, an official Army document contains evidence to the contrary.
Fox News's Todd Starnes reported this week on a Ft. Hood briefing where reportedly soldiers were told that evangelical Christians and Tea Party supporters are a threat to the United States and are “tearing the nation apart.”
They were labeled extremists.
Soldiers were reportedly told that they could be charged with committing a military crime if they supported or donated to such organizations.
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Todd Starnes, with Fox News, is reporting, "Soldiers attending a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood this month say they were told that evangelical Christians and members of the Tea Party were a threat to the nation and that any soldier donating to those groups would be subjected to punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice."
He says, "A soldier who attended the Oct. 17th briefing told me the counter-intelligence agent in charge of the meeting spent nearly a half hour discussing how evangelical Christians and groups like the American Family Association were 'tearing the country apart'.”
He also said there was little to no mention of radical Islam.
Michael Berry, an attorney with the Liberty Institute and a former Marine JAG Officer, is advising the soldier and has launched an investigation into the incident. The soldier is asking to remain anonymous at this time for fear of reprisals.
Berry says, "The American public should be outraged that the US Army is teaching our troops that evangelical Christians and Tea Party members are enemies of America and they can be punished for supporting or participating in those groups."
This is a very serious charge.
Something is very, very wrong with this picture.
The soldier at Fort Hood told Todd Starnes there is a blanket statement that donating to any groups that were considered a threat to the military and government was punishable under military regs.
He said, "My first concern was if I was going to be in trouble going to church?"
"Can I tithe?"
"Can I donate to Christian charities?"
"What if I donate to a politician who is a part of the Tea Party?"
The public affairs office at Fort Hood is denying the soldier's recollection of what was said, but another soldier who was also in attendance says his recollections of the briefing is the same as this soldier who reached out to Starnes.
The soldier said they were also told the pro-life movement is another example of radicalization.
He said the military told the soldiers that "evangelical Christians protesting abortions are the mobilization stage and that leads to the bombing of abortion clinics."
Each time these incidents occur, the military has either denied that it happened or have said they are isolated incidences.
This past April, in a letter to Rep. Doug Lamborn, (R-Colo), Secretary of the Army John McHugh said the episode at that time was "an isolated incident and the Army didn't sanction the material used for the briefing."
This left many wondering who exactly is running the military?
Breitbart says, "This is just the latest outrage in a long train of disgraces. Just days ago, soldiers at Camp Shelby in Mississippi were instructed that the Christian conservative American Family Association is a domestic hate group. A month earlier, a security presentation portrayed the Founding Fathers as extremists. Before that, we reported on a Christian chaplain who was officially censored by military commanders for talking about the importance of religious faith. And several months before that, Lt. Col. Jack Rich at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, instructed soldiers that traditional Christian beliefs are incompatible with 'Army values'.”
In April, Breitbart News broke the story and we wrote about it in this Blog, of top Pentagon brass meeting with an anti-Christian activist calling for court-martialing Christians who share their faith and the gospel of Jesus Christ with others in the military. This atheist activist continues to call them “fundamentalist monsters” who are “enemies of the Constitution” and says they should be punished for “sedition and treason.”
Sharing one's personal faith with a colleague in the military is now labeled "proselytizing."
McHugh told Rep. Lamborn that the April incident was "merely a misguided attempt to explain that extremism is not limited to one religion."
That is very difficult to square up with this most recent episode at Fort Hood.
It is stunning that activists within our own military would single out Christians and conservatives to label as enemies or domestic threats at the very base where a mass murder was carried out by a radicalized Muslim soldier, Nidal Hasan. He killed 14 Americans including one unborn child and by his own admission, did so in the name of Islam.
Yet our government and the Commander in Chief have consistently called this radical mass murder "work place violence" rather than domestic terrorism.
Congress is empowered by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution with establishing the training and discipline of the military.
Congress needs to get to the bottom of this—quickly.
Be Vigilant. Be Discerning. Be Informed. Be Prayerful. Be Active. Be Blessed.