It's the abuse of power, stupid.

From personal testimonials in the Compliance Report (PDF) at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation:

I worked at Wright Patterson Air Force Base for just over a year as a civilian contractor. This is what I experienced:

Staff meetings were prefaced and closed by Christian prayer sessions and the senior NCOs [non-commissioned officers] who led the prayers sessions made is clear to the military trainees that they were being judges on whether or not they enthusiastically participated.

The trainee airpersons were given the choice of attending fundamentalist Christian religious ceremonies on Sunday or being assigned to particularly onerous substitute duties.

It was made very clear to them that decent evaluations and a successful training period leading to a tolerable term of enlistment or a career in the Air Force included completely embracing Christianity. And airperson who did not fall into line was going have a very difficult time of it.

I began to realize that the work environment was one of fear for many junior officers, particularly ones who owed large amount of service time in return for having education money If they did not fall into line with the Christian agenda, they were going to be given lousy assignments and have a file full of bad evaluations to deal with when they finally entered the civilian job market. These evaluations did not reflect their actual performance, but their lack of Christian belief.

But wait! It gets better:

Noon services and Christian prayer circles were pervasive, I was appalled to find groups of officers praying as a decision making aid.

This could explain a lot about Iraq.

Once I got to know people and heard more conversations, I realized that for many officers, the war in Iraq is not politically motivated, but religious motivate: it is a Christian jihad that will bring on the apocalypse and rapture. Hearing this from people who control destructive weapons systems is terrifying.

And this could explain a lot about our Middle Eastern Policy.

UPDATE Yet another example here.

UPDATE Welcome, readers of the incredibly excellent Avedon.