A Dark Cloud Over the Air Force Academy

Re “School’s Religious Intolerance Misguided, Pentagon Reports,” June 23: To blame “religious jokes, slurs and disparaging remarks” on “a lack of policy spelling out the difference between appropriate and inappropriate religious expression” is disingenuous. If the offending individuals -- who include cadets, chaplains and professors -- need guidance to tell the difference between respectful and disrespectful conduct, then they are too ignorant, immature and prejudiced to remain in their positions.

The Air Force Academy is no place for religious proselytizing, let alone intolerance.

I am disgusted that such religious fanatics are charged with protecting our country against threats from abroad. Oh, the irony.

Mike Laskavy

Oak Park

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Not bothering to investigate a single one of the 55 individual complaints of religious discrimination filed in the last four years at its academy, the Air Force’s finding of religious slurs, jokes and disparaging remarks directed at non-Christian cadets, and of Christian professors using their positions as officers and authority figures to promote their faith, concluded that “instances of religious intolerance were less malicious than misguided.”

Thank God. For a moment, there, I thought the investigation might turn into a whitewash.

Bob Kertesz

Los Angeles