Still reeling from a series of sexual assault accusations in 2003, the Air Force Academy has slipped into yet another public-relations nightmare in recent weeks. Critics have charged the well-ordered institution with letting religious fascism run wild. The supposed culprit: old-fashioned evangelicalism.

Patrick McCarron joined the Virginia National Guard in the wake of 9/11, says his wife Inna, because "it just shook him so much. He wanted to do something." So Mr. McCarron, who worked in maintenance at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., spent the next few years as a "weekend warrior." They knew he could be shipped overseas but, like many Guard and Reserve recruits, "thought it would be a more local-type thing," she says, probably helping with homeland security.

During chow-time at a U.S. Army base outside Baghdad, Spc. Amanda Pagac has lately heard the soldiers of B Company, 118th Medical Battalion, tossing around one particular adjective.

"Slime!" they call out between forkfuls of dinner.

It's not the food they're bashing. The epithet-among others, she says-rings out whenever Sen. John Kerry's face appears on the dining facility TV.

An old saying on preparedness may sum up the Bush-Rumsfeld strategy on Iraq: "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst." A military buildup underway since at least October is expanding to strike strength the American forces that have long surrounded Iraq. In addition to Navy and Air Force jets patrolling (and dodging Iraqi missile fire) in the 11-year-old no-fly zone over Saddam's southern flank, U.S. troops man permanent bases in: