Feb 8th, 2007
Gays, not Terrorists, biggest threat in military
From an SLDN press release:
Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) today [Feb. 7] urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to consider hiring military linguists discharged under the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual service members. During hearings on the 2008 State Department budget, Ackerman pressed Secretary Rice to address the government’s foreign language deficit by employing discharged lesbian and gay linguists with training in Arabic and Farsi. Secretary Rice responded that she “certainly will look at what we are doing right now,” when asked by Ackerman if the proposal was realistic.
Our Secretary of State has to “look at” what they are “doing right now” as if this is the first time she has become aware of the issue? There is no way her response can be accepted at face value, considering that would mean any viewer of the Daily Show is more familiar with this matter of national security than is Secretary Rice.
“[I]t seems that the military has gone around and fired a whole bunch of people who speak foreign languages — Farsi and Arabic, etc.,” Ackerman said. “For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are [of] terrorists, but they’re very brave with the terrorists,” he continued. “If the terrorists ever got hold of this information, they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad,” Ackerman said.
Ummm…me thinks that quote won’t be going away any time soon.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon has dismissed more than 300 language experts under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” including more than 55 who were fluent in Arabic.
And we’re all supposed to pretend Secretary Rice doesn’t have this information.
“Secretary Rice would have no trouble finding gay linguists,” said [Sharon] Alexander, [deputy director of policy for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN)]. “In fact, our government could go a long way in addressing the shortage of language expertise by doing just as Congressman Ackerman suggests. SLDN would be happy to introduce Secretary Rice to our many clients who speak Arabic but have been dismissed because of the ban.”
Kudos to SLDN and Ackerman for continuing to call out this hypocrisy.
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