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Air Force E-Mail Directs Personnel To Website Depicting Obama Thursday, February 5, 2009 By Jason Leopold An Air Force Colonel is under fire for distributing an e-mail to thousands of Air Force personnel from her official government account directing personnel under her command to visit a far-right, Catholic website where President Barack Obama was compared to Adolf Hitler and the Antichrist. Col. Kimberly K. Toney’s Jan. 16 e-mail was sent to eight different Air Force installations in the United Kingdom and Norway and included the subject line: “Inspiration of the day - A Giant of a Man - Meet Nick Vujicic,” who was born without limbs. “Every day, all around us, we meet people who make a difference in our lives,” Col. Toney’s e-mail says. “Please take a few minutes to enjoy the attached video and meet a truly inspirational individual who will provide you with an opportunity to think about life and how we handle challenges in our personal and professional day-to-day lives. “Keep doing the GREAT things you do and don't ever let the challenges get you down. Live, learn and enjoy! Thank you!” Col. Toney’s e-mail would appear to be a harmless, motivational message from a Colonel to personnel under her command. But the electronic communication pointing Air Force personnel toward a five-minute video clip about 25 year-old Vujicic, whose incredible story of courage and hope is indeed inspirational, is also rife with religious undertones. His story, as showcased on the website 4marks.com, would seem to have little to do with the challenges he faces and more about turning one’s life over to Jesus Christ. To be sure, a synopsis of the video says, says, “God has given [Vujicic] the strength to surmount what others might call impossible. Along with that, the Lord has placed within him an unquenchable passion to share this same hope and genuine love that he's personally experienced with more than two million people all over the globe. “Traveling extensively to over 19 nations, he's been extremely humbled by the continuous opportunities that the Lord has given him to share his testimony along with the hope that he has in Jesus with people in so many nations and situations. His greatest joy in this life is to introduce Jesus to those he meets and tell them of His great desire to get to know them personally by allowing Him to become their Lord and Savior.” Using official government e-mail to endorse religion, no matter how good one’s intentions may be, is a violation of longstanding military rules and regulations and the U.S. Constitution's 1st Amendment and Clause 3, Article 6 of the body of the Constitution completely prohibiting any "religious test.” A similar situation arose a couple of weeks ago, when military command and staff officers at Creech Air Force base in Nevada circulated an e-mail at the request of the senior base chaplain to all personnel stationed at the facility, inviting them to attend a Bible study class in which the topic for discussion characterized Jews as “whiners.” Last year, it was revealed that a presentation titled “Purpose Driven Airmen,” which incorporated the teachings of megachurch leader Rick Warren and creationism as a means of suicide prevention, was sent to 5,000 servicemen and women at RAF Lakenheath, the largest U.S. Air Force base in England. And the practice continues at Lakenheath, the most recent example being the Jan. 13, 2009 mass e-mail distribution of a flyer for the Christian movie “Fireproof,” sent out by the base’s senior command NCOs [non-commissioned officers] at the request of a chaplain. Another example of a recent mass e-mail distribution at a U.S Air Force installation was one where the content of the message contained an essay by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce L. Fister, the executive director of the Officers' Christian Fellowship. The essay began by posing the question, "Why do you serve in our military?” The answer was, "we serve our Lord by serving our nation, our family or prospective future family, and so that we have something that we can share with God's people in need. But what is the greatest need? Why do we serve our God as Joshua exhorted? We serve our God because of what Jesus did for us on the Cross,” Fister’s wrote in the e-mail. “We are blessed to be able, through our lives in the military, to demonstrate the message of salvation to those who have not heard or received it. It was by God's grace through faith that we were brought fully into His family and presence. Our love for Him motivates us to serve Him in our military, to serve and work for our families, and to serve and work to enable the message of salvation to reach those who have yet to accept Him as Lord and Savior." The Officers’ Christian Fellowship is an organization made up of more than 14,000 officers with chapters on virtually every U.S. military installation worldwide. The group’s mission is to "create a spiritually transformed U.S. military, with Ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit." Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the watchdog group the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), is responsible for exposing all of these cases. Weinstein, a former Air Force Judge Advocate General, White House legal counsel during the Reagan administration, and former general counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, aggressively pursued the issue at Creech and successfully forced Air Force officials to take corrective measures. Weinstein said the e-mail circulated by Col. Toney Jan. 16 is just as disturbing to him. "Seriously, how damn hard is this to understand? All service members, especially military commanders, are completely prohibited from using armed forces e-mail systems to distribute any messages of sectarian religious proselytizing, period,” Weinstein said. “A first grader could understand this maxim; maybe even a military K-9 German shepherd. Yet MRFF gets concrete evidence of this type of vile constitutional infraction almost everyday. Colonel Toney’s disgusting display of constitutional ignorance is at once sad and all too typical. It’s pretty obvious that DOD senior leadership doesn’t give a rat’s ass about it. Thus, MRFF is aggressively suing them in federal court to force them to care.” In fact, at least one of the e-mail’s recipients also believed Col. Toney was endorsing religion with her mass e-mail. Master Sergeant Jeffrey L. Thompson filed a formal complaint against Col. Toney accusing her of illegal proselytizing that would “negatively impact the human relations climate of the wing by sending a message of exclusion to those who do not share that faith.” MSgt. Thompson, who said he is a Roman Catholic, was told by an official with the Military Equal Opportunity office (MEO) that Col. Toney’s e-mail was not intended to come across as proselytizing. In a letter Thompson wrote directly to Col. Toney, he said he was told by the MEO official “that because the wing chaplain programs belong to you, that you are able to publicize religious programs.” “He made the point that the Air Force has legitimate concern in its members' spirituality (not necessarily in a religious sense, but which can include faith),” MSgt Thompson’s letter to Col Toney says. The MEO official “made the point that after his own thorough review of [Department of Defense] guidance, [Air Force Instructions], and chaplain program guidance, he cannot see a direct MEO violation by the e-mail. He made the point that you were unaware that the video and website had a religious association; again if I understand him correctly it was a simple oversight. Despite those clarifications and the context, I still cannot set aside my own impression that, even if unintentional, the e-mail promoted and endorsed Christian faith, which creates an environment of exclusion of others that do not share that faith. “Perhaps I am especially sensitive to this issue because I have been persistently pursued by fundamentalist Christians throughout my 23-year career to convert; from supervisors, to subordinates, to the once agenda-covert Military Marriage Seminar, and more recently strong anti-Muslim sentiment and characterization of our current operations in Southwest Asia as a mission from God by the then deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence Lt General [William] Boykin. For me, some of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place when the Air Force Academy scandal was uncovered in the media. Our top Air Force leaders were being "character-shaped" into a fundamentalist Christian mindset with the help of organizations the Campus Crusade for Christ and The Military Ministry who has run Military Marriage Seminars in order to proselytize.” Neither Col. Toney nor an official from the MEO’s office returned messages left for Col. Toney at her base of operations in the UK and Norway. A Pentagon spokesman said he was unable to comment for “at least a week” and did not elaborate. "How comforting it is to know that the MEO official sees no problem here,” Weinstein said. “Until the military is ready to treat unconstitutional religious predators with the same seriousness and severity which they finally impose on sexual predators, these transgressions will never stop. Moreover, aside from the alleged proselytizing, MSgt. Thompson and many others of the 501st Combat Support Wing who received Toney’s e-mail were outraged by what they believed was the Air Force’s endorsement of a website openly hostile to the new Commander-in-Chief. Apparently, personnel who surfed 4marks.com stumbled upon a series of presidential campaign articles and videos about Barack Obama on the site, one of which said the president is “a veritable forerunner of the Antichrist” who wants to “kill babies.” In another article, Obama is depicted as Hitler, wearing a Nazi uniform and holding a Nazi flag. Vice President Joseph Biden is called a “pseudo catholic,” an “American Judas,” and “pathetic.” Chris Rodda, the senior research director for MRFF, pointed out that although 4Marks.com “is a far right, extremist Catholic website” "MRFF receives virtually no complaints about Catholic chaplains or Catholic organizations within the military.” “We do, however, constantly hear from Catholic servicemen and servicewomen who are being pressured by Protestant fundamentalists who don't consider Catholics to be real Christians,” Rodda said. “MRFF is completely aware that the overwhelming majority of Catholics would find its content just as offensive and repugnant as we and the service members who reported it did." MSgt. Thompson explained to Col. Toney that the “4Marks.com website that you linked...explicitly promotes an atmosphere that is hostile to our commander-in-chief, which is potentially detrimental to the good order and discipline of our unit.” Additionally, MSgt. Thompson said he is particularly “troubled that wing leadership linking to, or promoting, the website may violate [Uniform Code of Military Justice] Article 88-Contempt Toward Officials.” “These are not forum discussions, but are posted articles and videos that make up the message of the 4Marks.com website, just as the video and article of Mr. Vujicic do,” MSgt. Thompson wrote. “The 4Marks.com website... seems to part of a network that is contemptuous and disparaging toward our president...I do not know what resolution is needed to put right this situation. As a commander you wield a tremendous amount of power over the four Air Base Groups and the 8 installations in the U.K. and Norway that make up our wing. What you say, write, or send out sets our direction and instructs us how to get there.”
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