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Military Purging Its Arabic Linguists
This makes a lot of sense: "A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified." Right, because the Army has way too many Arabic language specialists just sitting around. Oh, wait.
This isn't the first time either; a report in 2005 found that the Army has discharged 26 Arabic and Farsi linguists for being gay. Whether any of them actually had the privilege of facing their accusers is unclear.
My heart goes out to this guy. I read in the paper today that he was honorable discharged and all of his awards and commendations were listed on his discharge papers. Then they also listed that he was discharged for being gay. With his commendations, honorable discharge, and specialization he'll have many job offers in the civilian world and they won't care that he's gay. I can only hope that one day the government and military will stop this senseless discrimination.
What does being gay have to do with translating one language to another?
For pity's sake, the military sounds like a high school, run on cliques and rumors!
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a misnomer. Blame the news media. If you actually did a little research, you'd see that the sentence "though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified" is meaningless. Besides, whatever you may think of the policy, it's still policy, and he signed a contract stating he would abide by it. Since he failed to abide by the contract, he was discharged. What's the problem?