CNN/AP: 'Don't ask, don't tell' takes highest toll at Missouri base

[DeepModem Mom]

'Don't ask, don't tell' takes highest toll at Missouri base
726 gay military members kicked out nationwide in 2005
Monday, August 14, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Army base in Missouri used the "don't ask, don't tell" policy to kick out more soldiers than any other military installation last year, followed by an Army base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border and a naval base in Virginia.

Sixty people were dismissed last year from Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, according to Defense Department documents shared with The Associated Press by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. That was up from 40 discharges under the policy from the training facility in 2004.

The advocacy group, which advises military personnel on the gay policy, obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke confirmed that the Defense Department provided the information to the advocacy group.

The second-highest number of discharges was at Fort Campbell, a sprawling Army base on the Kentucky-Tennessee line. But the 49 people dismissed there, up from 19 in 2004, also represented the single-biggest increase in discharges anywhere.

It was at Fort Campbell where a soldier, Pfc. Barry Winchell, was bludgeoned to death in 1999 by a fellow soldier who believed Winchell was gay. Gay discharges from the base went up sharply on the heels of that murder but later subsided....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/14/military.gays.ap/index.html

[xchrom]

1. doncha wonder how many of those weren't gay?

[rrasile]

4. how many were gay

That would be one way I'd use to get the hell out. Other then asking, is there a physical test the Army uses. If so who gives the test and who takes it.

[xchrom]

6. i don't disagree -- but the point is that it's a witch hunt.

inaccurate at it's heart.

depends on people saying and making ''statements'' about each other.

not on truth or verifiability.

[LiberalFighter]

7. It wouldn't work if a bushie(GW or any other) gave it

[AllegroRondo]

12. No physical test

Basically there are only two ways that the Army accepts as proof that you are gay.
1 - come out and say it. "commander, I'm gay"
2 - get married to someone of the same sex. "here's my marriage certificate!"

If a soldier says he is gay, there really isnt much more to it. They have to take that claim at face value and discharge him.

[msongs]

2. no nt

[Seedersandleechers]

3. That was also 40 people who didn't have to go to Iraq.

I'm not agreeing with the military-just looking at the bright side.

[Toots]

5. So I take it the gays are telling

because we know the government would never ever ask..:crazy:

[Ian David]

11. I think this is why the army has been pushing to re-classify homosexuality

... as a mental illness.

It is against the law to avoid military service-- or a military draft-- by feigning mental illness.

If being gay is defined as a mental illness-- and the military has been pushing for that-- then people pretending to be gay can be charged under that statute.

I think that push is part of the preparation to institute a military draft, and they don't want everyone to just tell the draft board that they can't serve because they're gay or bisexual.

That's just my personal opinion.

[brentspeak]

8. The "don't ask/don't tell" policy was supposed to prevent

atrocities like the murder of Pfc. Winchell from happening in the first place: give potential psycho killers the "option" of formally accusing another solider/sailor/marine of being gay, and the psychos wouldn't "lose morale" and murder real and imagined gay people.

Time to just scrap the entire "Don't ask/don't tell" policy, and simply make it completely legal for out-of-the-closet gay people to serve in the military.

[Ian David]

10. I don't know why a gay person would WANT to defend a country that denies

...them even the basic human right to marry the person that they love.

If I were gay, I would refuse to serve, on that basis, if I were drafted.

That's my personal opinion.

Failing that, how about taking a page from the WWII playbook?

Remember The Tuskegee Airmen?

Create all-gay regiments of the armed forces, just like we had all-black regiments during WWII.

Let them prove themselves in battle (or at least in translating Arabic terrorist chatter).

Let's hear it for The Fabulous Fightin' 69th!

Then again, the 82nd Airborne is pretty gay already. They've been busted for making gay porn. Two of their members leapt to their death over a cliff in Canada while trying to avoid paying cab-fare after working as exotic dancers in a gay club... Yeah, the 82nd Airborne is pretty darn gay already.

Then again, soldiers discharged under DADT should start their own "Private Contractor" company and earn ten times the money fighting as mercenaries that they would have in the army.

Pinkwater Consulting, the all-gay Private Security Contractor.

[dsc]

13. Registration for the draft started when I was in high school

I had no compunction whatsoever about using being gay to avoid the draft. If figured I had to put up with all the shit about being gay why not get that one good thing.

[kineneb]

9. Klinger, those shoes clash with the dress...

why do I keep thinking of MASH?

...wonder when the soldiers figure out that confessing that they are "gay" means not being sent to foreign countries and getting shot at.

Methinks this policy will have to be re-thought. What if they gave a war and all the soldiers were "gay"? Maybe the generals would have to do the work themselves.


-edited for not enough coffee...