Today a great and fact based Op-Ed column appeared in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/opinion/08benjamin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) authored by one of the Arabic speaking linguists who was fired under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The column shows just how stupid this policy is and why it needs to be repealed. Here in the greater Norfolk area, thousands of gays in the military have to live in fear when all they want to do is serve in their country's military. Here's a portion of the column:
IMAGINE for a moment an American soldier deep in the Iraqi desert. His unit is about to head out when he receives a cable detailing an insurgent ambush right in his convoy’s path. With this information, he and his soldiers are now prepared for the danger that lies ahead.
Reports like these are regularly sent from military translators’ desks, providing critical, often life-saving intelligence to troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the military has a desperate shortage of linguists trained to translate such invaluable information and convey it to the war zone.
The lack of qualified translators has been a pressing issue for some time — the Army had filled only half its authorized positions for Arabic translators in 2001. Cables went untranslated on Sept. 10 that might have prevented the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Today, the American Embassy in Baghdad has nearly 1,000 personnel, but only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers.
I was an Arabic translator. After joining the Navy in 2003, I attended the Defense Language Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class and then spent two years giving our troops the critical translation services they desperately needed. I was ready to serve in Iraq.
But I never got to. In March, I was ousted from the Navy under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which mandates dismissal if a service member is found to be gay.
If Bush and the GOP were really serious about the so-called "War on Terror," this policy would have been history years ago. But like so many things, Chimperator Bush claims one thing, and then acts the opposite of what common sense would dictate. The man is an idiot.
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