Fire Boykin letter from Congress

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2004
Fire Boykin letter from Congress
1
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 4:08pm
11 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS SIGN ‘FIRE BOYKIN’ LETTER

On September 2, eleven members of Congress, led by Rep. Barney Frank

(D-MA), submitted an official ‘Dear Colleague’ letter to President Bush

calling on the dismissal and firing of Lt. Gen. William Boykin as

Deputy

Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence for his anti-Muslim remarks

made

while in official military uniform.

The letter reads, in part: “One such step…is for you to dismiss Lt.

Gen.

William Boykin as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for

Intelligence. We were appalled when we learned of the comments General

Boykin had made invoking religion in an inflammatory and inappropriate

way

while in uniform. Many of us hoped at the time that your

administration

would act promptly to remove him, but you instead decided to give him

the

benefit of a thorough investigation. Now that investigation has

demonstrated what has been clear to many of us all along – namely that

General Boykin should not serve as a high intelligence officer of the

U.S.

government. We find his judgment to be severely lacking on many

counts. The offense he has given to hundreds of millions of Muslims in

the

world clearly can only exacerbate many of the problems we face…”

The other honorable signatories included Rep. James McDermott (D-WA),

Rep.

Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Martin

Meehan

(D-MA), Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep.

Stephanie

Tubbs Jones (D-OH), Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)

and

Rep. Fortney Pete Stark (D-CA).

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-05-2004
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 4:24pm
Publicity stunt from desperate Democrats.