The FOX Disconnect, or, I Forgot to Check the Archives!
Reported by Marie Therese - June 22, 2004 -
In the news break during tonight's O'Reilly Factor (8:34 PM ET), Laurie Dhue reported the following:
"Our national security is apparently lacking some bigtime language skills. During a conference in Maryland, a shortage of linguists was cited as our most pressing security need. The Pentagon, CIA and other agencies say they need people fluent in Arabic and other so-called exotic languages to translate material obtained by satellites, bugging and spies."
Comment: Gee, Laurie, get with it! The reason we are so horribly short on translators is this: The military fires them if they're gay!
Since instituting the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in 1993, approximately 10,000 gay and lesbian military personnel have been discharged. Since 2001, FORTY LINGUISTS have been kicked out for being gay or lesbian. Of those, NINE were specifically being trained in Arabic.
Apparently, the war on gays and lesbians is more important than the war on terror!
Fox News' own archives reveals that this very topic was discussed on The O'Reilly Factor on June 18, 2003 in an interview between Bill O'Reilly and Aaron Belkin.
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW
BELKIN: Why get rid of the ban? Because the ban is undermining national security and it's causing a tremendous brain drain, a talent loss, when we fire Arabic linguists, wasting of money, driving a wedge between the military and civil society. So there are a lot of reasons.
O'REILLY: OK. Now I agree with you that the Arab linguist thing was bad, and I wish that had not happened, but I disagree with you in the sense that the military's being harmed by it, and I'll tell you why.
We saw a very effective military machine in Iraq, and we saw a military machine comprised mostly of young men from working-class backgrounds, many of them from traditional homes in the country in the South and the Midwest who had been raised to look askance at homosexuality, OK? That's what comprises the bulk of our troops. This isn't Canada here.
So it seems to me that the best policy is the one we have in place where this issue just doesn't come up, and, if somebody suspects, nobody cares. Mature people will live and let live. But to lift the ban, you open then the door of having maybe a flamboyant homosexual, you know, create conflict within the unit, and I see that as a detriment, sir, I have to tell you.
FOX News should have checked its own archives before airing this particular news story.
In keeping with their claims to be "fair and balanced", the report should have noted that the Bush Administration wants linguists but only if they are heterosexual.
