National Review Column: DADT Needs to Go - UPDATED

UPDATE: Per live blogging by HRC, apparently, Elaine Donnelly made an ass of herself at the Congressional hearings on DADT (why am I not surprised?) and prompted a lot out outright laughter at her crazy statements. At one point, Arkansas Congressman Vic Snyder (D) admonished Donnelly for her outrageous claim that gay and lesbian servicemembers increase the risk for other soldiers contacting HIV and told her that, ironically, by her logic, she should only want to let lesbians into the military. Loud laughter all around. The woman truly needs to be in an institution under mental health care.

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Yes, it is a bit of a shock, but the National Review Online is carrying a column by one of its contributing editors slamming Don't Ask, Don't Tell ("DADT" and adamantly concluding that the policy needs to go. The piece also has some interesting statistics as to just how much the military has had to lower its standards to meet recruiting goals. Meanwhile, competent, educated, patriotic, law abiding gays have been forced out of the military. Common sense makes it clear that the policy was idiocy when adopted and has only become more stupid. It needs to go NOW. Elaine Donnelly (and closet cases like Robert Knight) will simply have to find a new group to victimize in order to have an orgasm or otherwise make herself (himself) feel better about her/his hate-filled, nasty self. Here are some highlights:

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As a House Armed Services subcommittee surely will discuss this afternoon, Pentagon officials evidently trust military inductees with felony rap sheets more than they do law-abiding gay GIs. Having relaxed academic, age, and weight restrictions to achieve recruitment goals, the Defense Department has granted “moral waivers” to criminal convicts. Simultaneously, it uses the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to jettison gays in uniform, usually for merely disclosing their sexuality. This policy deserves a dishonorable discharge.

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Between 2006 and 2007, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently revealed, convicted felons accepted by the Marine Corps rose 68 percent, from 208 to 350. Equivalent Army admissions rocketed 105 percent, from 249 to 511. Between 2003 and 2006, U.C. Santa Barbara’s Michael D. Palm Center calculates, “106,768 individuals with serious criminal histories were admitted” to the armed forces.

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Last year, the Army . . . admitted five rape/sexual-assault convicts, two felony child molesters, two manslaughter convicts, and two felons condemned for “terrorist threats including bomb threats.”

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Conversely, expelled military personnel include Arabic linguists and intelligence specialists who help crush America’s foes in the War on Terror. “Don’t Ask” has ousted at least 58 soldiers who speak Arabic, 50 Korean, 42 Russian, 20 Chinese, nine Farsi, and eight Serbo-Croatian — all trained at the prestigious Defense Language Institute. Al-Qaeda intercepts need translation, and Uncle Sam may need people who can walk around Tehran with open ears. Yet these dedicated gay citizens now are ex-GIs.

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A December 18, 2006 Zogby poll of 545 GIs who served in Iraq and Afghanistan found that 73 percent considered themselves comfortable among gays. Also, 23 percent said they knew gay people in their units, while 45 percent believed they did. So, 68 percent of GIs confirmed or imagined that they worked with gay colleagues, with no evident clamor for their ejection. If there is a gay-fueled crisis in unit morale and cohesion, it appears to have gone undetected.

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Today’s hearing of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel will consider what to do about this policy. Here is a simple idea. “Don’t Ask” should yield to equality: Sexual orientation should be irrelevant while inappropriate sexual conduct — gay, straight, or otherwise — should be punished. Our enemies are Islamofascists who murder Americans, not gay patriots who unravel terrorist plots and introduce jihadists to Allah.