Congress ain't fucking around with Condoleezza Rice. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos of California and New York Rep. Gary Ackerman, both of whom happen to be Democrats, railed against The Pentagon for booting gay translators.
Citing the 9/11 Commission's warning – "under-investment in critical foreign languages presents an urgent and immediate threat to our national security" – the politicos urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her staffers to rehire gays and lesbian translators…
They wrote:
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.
They then went on to refer to Don't Ask, Don't Tell as "one of the most regressive, counter-productive policies we could ever imagine," according to The Hill.
This isn't the first time Rice and her office have come under fire for firing these essential soldiers. Ackerman blasted Rice last February, saying,
It seems that the military has gone around and fired a whole bunch of people who speak foreign languages – Farsi and Arabic… For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are [of] terrorists, but they’re very brave with the terrorists. If the terrorists ever got hold of this information, they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.
That shit still makes us giggle!
With The Pentagon's slight shift on DADT, perhaps Condi and company will change their tune. Although, this administration's not so great at admitting mistakes, so we aren't holding our breath…
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Your summary of the Hill article is misleading. Rice was asked to hire gay translators for the State Department that were dismissed from the military under Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Where's that fairness doctrine when you need it?
I'm going to have to agree that this is a bit unfair for Condi. Not only is she not in charge of whether gay people can serve, neither is the military. Congress passed that particular piece of nastiness in 1992 and we're stuck with it until Congress changes its mind or the courts overrule.
Incidentally, it was just recently that the military issued it's official statement on DADT. It mostly said "take off the uniform and come back to work for the DoD as a civilian and don't blame us for this law and incidentally we will punish any harassment against gay servicepeople". They underlined the "work for the Defence Department" part and capitalized ANY harassment.
Has there been any evidence that the translators dismissed from the military even WANT to work for the State Department?