This is helpful how?

Some Evangelical Marines seem to be taking it upon themselves to evangelize Iraqis with this coin bearing a Christian scripture verse. So imagine yourself as a regular Iraqi, at a US checkpoint. You go up to a burly, heavily armed Marine who checks your papers and does whatever he needs to make sure you're not a walking bomb, and after all this necessary inconvenience, he puts a funny-looking coin in front of your face. Well, you really need to get through the checkpoint to buy food or work at a job or something else important for your survival, so you don't want to get stuck. You take the coin. Oh, did I mention you are a devout Muslim?

We'd ike to ask the Evangelicals out there if they agree with this coercive form of proselytizing? Is this something Jesus would do? And politically it's really unhelpful, as it's pissing off the very people we need on our side to make Iraq a place we can leave someday.

As some of the comments show, this says to the typical Iraqi male: "You're weak, you can't even keep them from desecrating your religion." Just another thoughtless blunder brought to you by the theocrats that abound in the Bush junta.