Former Navy Chaplain Klingensmitt is pretty gosh darn teed off at

the cowardly bureaucrat in the Pentagon, (whose phone number is 703-695-9664), who decided for the first time in 42 years to deny a request for a military plane flyover at the "God and Country Rally."

The bureaucrat in question is Tech. Sgt. Roy Utley  who sent God and Country organizers in Nampa, Idaho the following:

Thank you for your request for Air Force aviation support during God and Country Festival on 01 Jul 2009 in Nampa , ID.
 
We have carefully reviewed this particular event. As you may recall from the request form’s instructions, the Department of Defense (DoD) authorizes the Air Force to participate in flyovers for those recognition events held in direct support of the five patriotic holidays (Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, POW-MIA Day and Veterans Day) and for aviation-related events, such as airshows and airport dedications. Sporting events that fall on one of the five patriotic holidays mentioned above are not considered to be events held in direct support of a holiday commemoration and will require a waiver.

Your Air Force aviation support request doesn’t fall into either approved category, as such, we are unable to approve it. Air Force and DoD policy prohibit support for events which appear to endorse, selectively benefit, or favor any special interest group, religious or ideological movement.

With an increasingly high operations tempo and limited resources to meet our training and operational commitments, we are required to take a hard look at all of our requests and carefully follow our policies and guidelines. In denying your request, we are not questioning the worthiness of the event, but rather enforcing DoD and Air Force policy to preserve the operational and training requirements of our aviation units and to practice the prudent stewardship of taxpayer-financed resources.

We hope that you can appreciate and understand our position. We believe that your event will, nevertheless, be a success. Any further questions can be referred to me at 703-695-9664.

Well now the Christain Defense Coalition has gotten involved. They are the folks who:

seek to obey the Lord’s prophetic call, engage the culture with the prophetic witness, and see the power of God released in the public square and governmental arenas…committed to challenging the Christian community to live out their faith in the public square, by engaging culture through radical Biblical obedience and discipleship.

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, states:

For years, flyovers have been allowed by the Pentagon at the ‘God and Country Rally’ in Nampa Idaho.  These flyovers were not to endorse or promote any one religious faith tradition.  Rather, they were held to honor and pay tribute to our heroic men and women who have served or are currently serving in our armed forces.

Guess what, some of those heroic men and women may be atheists. And others may not subscribe to organizers’ vision of God, which judging from the Christian Defense Coalition‘s involvement, doesn’t  seem very ecumenical or open minded. Like, I am all about God–it may actually surprise some people that I am very religious–but the angry, vengeful, uptight, manipulative, selfish, repressive God of these dominionist, Revelations-spouting, proto-facist control-freaks doesn’t seem to really be the loving one I keep hearing Christians go on about. I wonder what translation of the Bible these theocratic nuts are using because it sure doesn’t sound like the original Aramaic or even the King James Version, the one with satyrs dancing.

So you may want to call Tech. Sgt. Utely and give him some words of support, or maybe just mail him a gift certificate for a case of water or a pool float to help out in the fiery lake. I’ll joining him, wearing my polka-dot bikini.