US-MADE RIFLES INSCRIBED WITH BIBLE CODES ON AFGHAN ARMY GUNS

The inscriptions do not include actual text from the Bible but refer numerically to passages

US-made rifles inscribed with Bible codes are being used by US forces and Afghans to fight the Taliban.
The weapons come from Trijicon, a manufacturer based in Wixom, Michigan, that supplies the US military. The company's now deceased founder, Glyn Bandon, started the practice which continues today.

• David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Afghan capital Kabul, said: "It is a rallying cry for the Taliban. It gives them a propaganda tool.
• "They've always tried to paint the US efforts in Afghanistan as a Christian campaign."
• General David Petraeus, the chief of the US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, called the inscriptions, which he said he only learnt about on Wednesday, "disturbing".
• "This is a serious concern to me and the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan because it indeed conveys a perception that is absolutely contrary to what we have sought to do," he said at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Thursday.
• A Nato spokesman in Afghanistan acknowledged that the inscriptions were inappropriate but said the guns would remain in use for now.
• Interviewed by Al Jazeera on Thursday, Colonel Gregory Breazile, of the Nato Training Command in Afghanistan, said: "We were told about it last night and when we looked into it, we noticed it was true.
• "We started to take action and notify both the ministry of defence and our chain of command and they have all taken action so that we don't purchase any more of these sights.
• "We gave the Afghan military these weapons. We are very disappointed, but it's a tiny little inscription and very hard to notice and I don't think it will be an issue in the field."
• Breazile said: "We would have not bought these sights had we known they had these inscriptions on them."
• Trijicon said it has inscribed references to the New Testament on the metal casings of its gun sights for over two decades.
• But it offered on Thursday to stop putting Biblical references on all products manufactured for the US military.
• The company also said it would provide, free of charge, 100 modification kits to the Pentagon to enable the removal of the references that are already on products that are currently deployed.

Source: The Agencies