All I have to say about this is that it shouldn't have taken this long to get the pentacle added to the official list of religious symbols on headstones. It would at least have been understandable if Wicca had not been included in other aspects of the military's treatment of religions, but as the article mentions, Wicca was already included in military chaplains' paperwork and engraved on dog tags. To make allowances for Wicca on these grounds, but then to deny a Wiccan symbol on the headstone of fallen soldiers, reeked of a kind of final insult to the soldiers. I honestly don't know why the military didn't come to this decision sooner, as I doubt that any right-wing backlash over this decision is going to be as costly as the court case that led to it.

I have to admit that I still personally kind of sting over Dubya's proclamation in 1999 that he didn't consider Wicca to be a religion, and it does continue to colour my feelings about the man. I've never read of anyone asking him to clarify his statement since then, and I'd like to think that this would be a matter of at least some interest to some journalist out there, particularly given all of the "uniter not a divider" rhetoric we've heard over the past seven years (and all of the actions to the contrary). Then again, it's been hard not to notice over the past few years, across the political and ideological spectrum, of people attempting to "disprove" the history of Wicca that some (not all) Wiccans claim the religion has. Maybe it's some kind of post-Buffy backlash, I don't know, but it's certainly not a welcome development as far as I'm concerned.