Rep. Ackerman: ‘A Platoon Of Lesbians’ Could ‘Chase Us Out Of Baghdad’ (relative to DADT)

[Mass]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/08/dontask-platoon/

Yesterday, during hearings on the State Department’s 2008 budget, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) slammed the U.S. military’s ban on gay servicemembers, saying the Pentagon “seems more afraid of gay people than they are terrorists,” and that if the terrorists were smart, “they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.” Watch it

Ackerman’s tongue-in-cheek remarks to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came after noting that Rice had “repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting qualified language experts to work in the agency.” Ackerman pointed out that at least 322 language specialists with “some skills in an important foreign language such as Arabic, Farsi and Korean” had been discharged from the military since the ban’s inception in 1993.

Ackerman suggested that Rice hire the linguists who were kicked out of the military for being gay. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network praised the idea: “Faced with the shortage of language experts, the military would do well to consider Congressman Ackerman’s point. We cannot afford to lose critical personnel because of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

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