It might be argued that when you start pulling in over $650 million in government money as a military defense contractor, you can pretty much call the shots (no pun intended). But recently, when ABC News broke a story that Michigan military defense contractor, Trijicon, has been encoding references to certain Biblical verses on the scopes of the rifles used by our US Special Operations Forces, the Marines and the Army for quite some time, the business of fighting our enemies with the power of Jesus on our side took on a whole new meaning.

While many servicemen and women knew that the sights bore the quote references and did nothing to protest the practice, a concerned US military soldier who is also Muslim, obviously felt that the sights created a safety issue for his fellow military and sent his concerns regarding the sights to the US Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a military group that advocates separation of church and state.

Among the reasons given by MRFF for asking Trijicon to stop the encoding practice was the argument that the placement of references to Bible verses was in direct violation of federal laws that demand separation of church and state. However, more importantly, the soldier who reported the encoded sights had a more personal reason. In his e-mail, he stated “everyone is worried that if they were captured in combat that the enemy would use the Bible quotes against them in captivity or some other form of propaganda."

Fortunately, it didn’t take long for this particular debate to hit a brick wall and almost as soon as the firestorm began over the sights, Trijicon issued a statement that they would no longer imprint the verses on the scopes and would provide their military clients with modification kits to remove the existing quotes immediately.

This is good news, but one has to wonder how is it that military personnel on the ground, i.e. infantrymen and women, knew enough about these sights to be concerned for their safety, yet a statement issued by the Pentagon claiming that the Department of Defense applauded the decision by Trijicon to remove the Biblical references that were “clearly inappropriate was issued only after ABC News picked up the story? And, in addition, how is it that CentCom commanding officer, Gen. David Petraeus and other field commanders knew about the sights, had considerable discussions about the sights, yet, only when a Muslim soldier complained to MRFF were the vocal objections heard and acted on by Trijicon?

This is yet another example of the Pentagon being so poorly managed that it cannot accomplish what one indignant US infantryman can when such a blatant disregard for federal law is pushed aside by a Defense Department that appears to lack serious oversight capabilities.