Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Wanted: a few good (straight) linguists

(Pam from the Houseblend reports)--

Friends at Servicemembers Defense Legal Network passed along an ad in yesterday's Washington Post (above, with my inserted edit to increase its accuracy). The Army is looking for a few good [straight] men and women to serve as linguists.

They've already shot themselves in the foot by discharging a whole slew of experienced gay linguists. The Pentagon is also bone dry on high level skills, and this search is the result. Rumsfeld's gang actually withheld the true number of linguists expelled for being gay.
Records obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request show that the military misled the public and discharged three times the number of gay Arabic linguists that it had said.

The records were obtained by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, a research unit of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Despite previously saying that under ''don't ask, don't tell'' it had discharged seven translators who specialized in Arabic the new documents show that between 1998 and 2004, the military actually discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers.
Is this how Dear Leader conducts the War on Terror? How nice to know that such good, effective judgment is occurring on our behalf.

Related:
* Report on soldier with Arabic translation skills who was booted under DADT

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