Posted on 05/23/2007 10:49:58 PM PDT by Jean S
Hearing sought over linguists' discharge
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers who say the military has kicked out 58 Arabic language experts because they were gay want the Pentagon to explain how it can afford to let the valuable specialists go.
Seizing on the latest discharge, involving three specialists, House members wrote the House Armed Services Committee chairman on Wednesday that the continued loss of such "capable, highly skilled Arabic linguists continues to compromise our national security during time of war."
Former Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Stephen Benjamin said his supervisor tried to keep him on the job and urged him to sign a statement saying he was not gay. Benjamin said his lawyer advised against signing because the statement could be used against him later if other evidence surfaced.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Benjamin said he was caught improperly using the military's secret level computer system to send messages to his roommate, who was serving in Iraq. In those messages, he said, he may have referred to being gay or going on a date.
"I'd always had been out since the day I started working there," Benjamin said. "We had conversations about being gay in the military and what it was like. There were no issues with unit cohesion. I never caused divisiveness or ever experienced slurs," said Benjamin, who was in the Navy for nearly four years.
He was fired under the "don't ask, don't tell" law passed in 1994. It lets gays serve if they keep their sexual orientation private and do not engage in homosexual acts. The law prohibits commanders from asking about a person's sex life and requires discharge of those who openly acknowledge they are gay.
Rep. Marty Meehan (news, bio, voting record), who has sought a repeal, organized the letter to Rep. Ike Skelton (news, bio, voting record), D-Mo., asking the committee hold a hearing about the Arabic linguists.
"At a time when our military is stretched to the limit and our cultural knowledge of the Middle East is dangerously deficient, I just can't believe that kicking out able, competent Arabic linguists is making our country any safer," Meehan said.
The letter, signed by about 40 House members, says that the military has discharged 58 Arabic linguists under the policy and that Congress should decide whether "don't ask, don't tell" "is serving the nation well."
For Benjamin, 23, the discharge ended a military career he had hoped to continue.
He said he was among about 70 people investigated at Fort Gordon in Georgia for using the computer to send personal notes. He said others who are not gay kept their jobs even though they were caught sending sexual and profane messages.
Benjamin said investigators from the Defense Department's inspector general's office pulled the message logs for one day and reviewed them for violations. Some people, he said, received administrative punishments for writing dirty jokes, profanity and explicit sexual references.
According to researchers at the California-based Michael D. Palm Center, which tracks these issues, three Arabic linguists were fired as a result of the computer reviews. Their names were not released. Benjamin agreed to discuss the incident publicly.
The center's director, Aaron Belkin, said, "There is simply no common sense reason for the military to fire Arabic linguists in the midst of a dire shortage of translators. Translating al-Qaida cables is more important the making sure that the military is free of gays."
Marine Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Pentagon is enforcing the law.
The Defense Department, he said, "must ensure that the standards for enlistment and appointment of members of the armed forces reflect the policies set forth by Congress," he said.
Benjamin said the computer review was done last December, but his discharge was not finalized until the end of March. His roommate, he said, was allowed to finish out his tour in Iraq and came home in February, then was discharged in early April.
"I was always discreet, I never considered it would be an issue," said Benjamin, when asked why he joined the military knowing the policy existed. "I thought if I don't say anything, they're not going to ask me. But, it was more aggressive than I thought."
Meehan's bill to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law has 124 co-sponsors, but efforts to get Congress to take another look at the issue have not yet been successful.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he was not reviewing the policy.
What’s to investigate? Don’t ask, don’t tell was a Clinton policy.
Right now there’s a room full of Democrat aides and interns (the ones not being molested) who are going through every newspaper editorial from 2000 to 2006 looking for any scandal or mini-scandal that might have been forgotten or overlooked so they can begin holding committee investigations.
We’ll suffer through a year and a half more of these types of headlines.
What a complete waste of energy and time. The miltary is not the SF Castro district. The military is not suppose to be PC. They are suppose to defend our country and kill our enemies. Not protect gay rights. Sooner or later there will have to be a backlash.
Cunning linguists?
And I don't know if I'd have used "discharge" in the headline.
Does anyone else notice that there are a un-natural number of Arabic linguists who happen to be gay?
things that make you go hmmmmmm!!
Does anyone else notice that there are a un-natural number of Arabic linguists who happen to be gay?
things that make you go hmmmmmm!!
Yeah right, democrats. It has nothing to do with the war, just gays. The democrats hate the military, rather openly too.
The democrats take their orders from the media, who have been ranting about this a lot.
The miltary is not the SF Castro district. The military is not suppose to be PC. They are suppose to defend our country and kill our enemies.I don't know what about being gay makes a person a poor interpreter. If you are more concerned about an interpretation because it comes from a gay person, it would seem that gay rights/non-rights, not defending our country, is your primary concern.
A third of my company are DLI graduates. They said people aren't learning much besides Arabic and Persian Farsi these days....
How ‘bout a freakin hearing on the Arab speakers in the FBI & State that cheered 9/11 and then got promoted.
Rather, that is to say, it doesn't mean they are all Arab.
I noticed. What's with that?
According to the article the don’t ask, don’t tell rule was broken. End of story.
That's the real issue here. Trying to turn it into a gay rights issue is just a red herring.
The army will flood with predatory gays if they ever allowed it... machoist queers, looking for boys out of high school.
And the effeminate-types really don’t belong there anyway.
all they have to do is get hired as a Linguist Contractor for $125K class one interpreter....Contractor won’t ask....
I think this gay situation is a Red Herring I did the Math for Flavia Colgan when she wrote about it in www.philly.com The amount of supposed gays outed in the Military is higher than the national Average... some guys just don’t want to be deployed, and the Homosexual Community wants it to look like an Issue they are being persecuted.
I’m confident you are correct on all points.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. My wife’s hairdresser is a flamboyant gay Iranian who hates the mullahs and would do anything to help this country overthrow them. I guess they don’t want his help.
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