Mere hours after General Peter Pace denounced faggotry as “immoral”, the Pentagon released the not-so-thrilling news that last year’s Don’t ask, Don’t Tell dismissals are “the fewest annual discharges since the law’s enactment”.
612 Servicemen and women got the military boot last year, down from 742 the previous year, according a Servicemember’s Legal Defense Network press release. SDLN executive director C. Dixon Osburn says:
The Pentagon’s data shines a bright light on the hypocrisy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’. When military leaders need the talent, skills and qualifications of gay personnel, dismissals decline. Then, during peacetime, the dismissal rate climbs again. The Pentagon’s own data shows that, during times of war, when unit cohesion is most important, fewer gay troops are dismissed. In fact, lesbian and gay Americans are making important contributions to our national security. The ban on their service, and not their service itself, is what erodes cohesion most.
Word. But, as we said yesterday, logic + military = incompatible…