US: The Pentagon's inspector general is to review the case of the army general who made controversial remarks about Islam, US Secretary of Defence Mr Donald Rumsfeld announced yesterday.
Mr Rumsfeld declined, however, to criticise Lieut Gen William "Jerry" Boykin, whose remarks were recorded on amateur video tape, saying he had seen one of the tapes but the words were not fully audible.
Addressing a religious group in Oregon in June, Gen Boykin said radical Islamists hated the US "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian and the enemy is a guy named Satan".
Gen Boykin, recently promoted to deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence, on another occasion commented on an Islamic warlord in Somalia who said he was protected by Allah: "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Mr Rumsfeld emphasised that "this is not a war against religion" and said the request for a review came from Gen Boykin himself, who was described as "sad" that his comments created such a furore.
Mr Rumsfeld also said, against a background of morale problems among US forces in Iraq, that the bulk of soldiers would be rotated out in the first half of next year. He said, however, that reservists called up would be required to serve for a year, rather than the usual six months.
There are 133,000 US soldiers in Iraq and 24,000 from other countries, Mr Rumsfeld said. The Pentagon budget provides for a reduction of 30,000 US troops in the coming year as new Iraq defence forces grow in strength.
The morale problem was underlined this week when more than 30 US soldiers on a two-week leave from Iraq failed to report back to their units. Some 1,300 troops have so far been brought home for two-week breaks, a scheme introduced last month to counter rising disquiet at longerthan expected tours of duty. Of these, 34 failed to turn up for the journey back to Iraq, according to US Central Command.
A poll by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes of 1,935 soldiers in Iraq last week found that 49 per cent described morale in their units as low or very low. A military advocacy group cited two cases to the Washington Post where soldiers called to say they did not want to return to Iraq.
The US army also faces a scandal over reports about the treatment of sick and injured soldiers at Fort Stewart, Georgia, including Iraq veterans, who say they are waiting weeks and months for proper medical help.
Many of the army reserve and National Guard personnel in "medical hold" at the base have been billeted in a hot cement training barracks with outside latrines and are waiting months to see doctors. The army said it would spend money to improve those living conditions and is dispatching a team to look into the soldiers' complaints.