Good Judgment, Very Presidential

If the inside the Beltway crowd is to be believed, Virginia Senator George Allen has the inside track to the Republican nomination in 2008. Via MyDD, here's an early indicator of how foreign policy would be run under an Allen Administration. Apparently, we'd give the crazy crusader guy a full command:

A Senate Republican wants an Army general who drew criticism for church speeches casting the war on terrorism in religious terms to lead the U.S. special operations command.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Sen. George Allen, R-Va., recommended Lt. Gen. William G. (Jerry) Boykin, currently the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for intelligence, for the post at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

The current commander, Army Gen. Bryan "Doug" Brown, is retiring, and the Pentagon has not filled the job.

"I am told, and I believe it to be true, that no special operations officer currently on active duty is more highly respected or admired by his superiors, peers or subordinates alike, than Jerry Boykin," Allen wrote in the letter dated March 31 and obtained by The Associated Press.

Gen. Boykin is as close as Gen. Jack D. Ripper as you can get, only instead of being obsessed with keeping his purity of essence, he's a zealot who thinks what matters in a battle is which side has the bigger God.

...Boykin is the subject of an investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general over comments he made at several church presentations, in which he referred to the United States as a "Christian nation" joined in "spiritual battle" against Satan. On at least two occasions, he talked of seeing demonic forces in black marks on a photograph he took from a helicopter over Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. And, in discussing a Somali Muslim militia leader, Boykin said, "I knew that my God was bigger than his."

Oh yeah, Boykin also was a ringleader at Abu Ghraib, helping fashion the policies that led to the detainee scandal.

And this is the guy that George Allen looks at and thinks, "Now THERE'S someone ripe for a promotion!" I don't know if this is playing to the fundie base or what, but a key element of determining someone's fitness for the Presidency is JUDGMENT. Allen literally found the looniest guy he could dig up to recommend for a high-level posting. He's not under obligation to recommend anybody for this. He went out of his way to do it.

Not only does George Allen not deserve to be in the Oval Office, he doesn't deserve to be in the Senate, a position that he's admitted to being "bored" with. We actually have two great candidates in Virginia competing in a primary. Either one of them would be a welcome addition over Bored George.