News Tuesday: Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!

Over in the US, the 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy for homosexual men and women in the miltary has been taken quite literally by the government, according to the Centre for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military (CSSM).

They point out that despite the fact that the military desperately needs translators, the US military has discharged 'at least 322 service members with skills in Arabic, Farsi, Korean and other critical languages over the last 10 years because of the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces'.

What's more, the Government Accountability Office says the cost of recruiting and training personnel to replace all 9,488 service members separated under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy would be at least $190 million, if each was replaced one for one with a new trained recruit. The total does not include costs for the Marine Corps, Coast Guard or the reserve components.

So a big salute for Democrat Representative Gary Ackerman (in the vid below), who slammed the U.S. military’s ban on gay servicemembers at the State Department’s 2008 budget hearing. In an hilarious tongue-in-cheek speech, Ackerman wondered why the Pentagon “seems more afraid of gay people than they are [of] terrorists,” and that if the terrorists were smart, “they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.” Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, could only reply meekly that she would look into the situation.