Dems urge State Dept. to hire gay translators (back)

[babylonsister]

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-urge-state-dept.-to-hire-gay-translators-2007-06-25.html

Dems urge State Dept. to hire gay translators
By Jeremy Jacobs
June 25, 2007

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) urged the State Department Monday to hire homosexual military translators discharged under the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The lawmakers called the policy “absurd and highly biased” and said it “cripples our national security.”

“We are writing to urge the Department of State to take a specific step — the hiring of our unfairly dismissed, language-qualified soldiers — so our nation might salvage something positive from the lamentable results of this benighted policy,” Lantos and Ackerman wrote in a strongly worded letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.

The lawmakers went on to call “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” which was put into place under President Clinton, “one of the most regressive, counter-productive policies we could ever imagine.” They cited a recent Government Accountability Office report that said 300 soldiers with critical language skills, including Persian and Arabic, have been dismissed under the policy.

The lawmakers also highlighted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s February testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in which she referred to such translators as “critical to fighting the war on terror.”

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[aquart]

1. Because when we take over, we will, anyway.