WASHINGTON, Oct 16: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday defended a US general who portrayed the “war on terrorism” in talks to church groups as a spiritual battle by Christianity against Satan.

The religiously charged remarks by Lieutenant General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, appeared to run counter to the US administration’s insistence that the “war on terrorism” is not directed against Islam.

Mr Rumsfeld said he had not read or seen the general’s statements, which were reported by the Los Angeles Times Thursday. NBC aired videotape clips of some of them. But he refused to say whether he would even look into them.

“Whatever he said was in a private capacity,” he told reporters. “There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or in civilian life, or in the Congress, or in the executive branch, that are their views. That’s the way we live. We are a free people.”

“For anyone to run around and think that can be managed and controlled is probably wrong,” he said.

Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was a large gray area in the rules about what was out of bounds while in uniform.

“At first blush, it doesn’t look like any rules were broken,” he said.

Boykin, a highly decorated veteran of US special operations, was elevated in June to his new position with the mandate to reinvigorate the search for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who has eluded US forces in Afghanistan.

The general was a commando in the supersecret Delta force and took part in the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran and the 1993 raid in Mogadishu.

The Times said the day after he was nominated to the position of deputy undersecretary of defense, Boykin was speaking from the pulpit of the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Oregon. —AFP