Washington Post—-Full Article
LAST FALL, DEFENSE Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ducked the embarrassing matter of grossly offensive, anti-Islamic remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin by asking the Defense Department’s inspector general to examine his behavior. This was a ruse. The problem with Gen. Boykin’s words was never the possibility that they violated this or that department regulation — the sort of thing inspectors general are charged with investigating. The problem was that Gen. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was delivering himself of bigoted remarks — generally while in uniform — that directly undercut President Bush’s repeated insistence that America’s war is not against Islam generally and is not a clash of religious civilizations. By unloading the matter on the inspector general, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush avoided having to condemn the remarks forthrightly while seeming to take appropriate action.

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