I apologize this diary will be brief, but I'm just in shock at what I've just heard watching the webcast of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Don't Ask, Don't Tell that started at 9 AM this morning and is still going on as of this writing. At the hearing the committee is taking testimony from two military personnel that were recently discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy testifying for repeal and a former marine general who retired 13 years ago against repeal of the ban.
Under questioning, the general, John Sheehan said that European powers letting gays into their militaries was to blame for the Serb massacre of thousands of Bosnians at Srebrenica in 1995. He claimed that this "socialization" of the militaries of the European powers including allowing "open homosexuals" to serve makes European militaries unsuitable to fight real wars anymore and even said under oath that a Dutch commander even told him such. He also bought up an incident from Vietnam as proof the military of today can't handle openly gay and lesbian people from serving.
McCain is of course being despicable defending the ban, but Lieberman is delivering quite the slap down on Sheehan. I'll keep an eye out for the transcript when it becomes available, but the notion that the Dutch permitting gays in the military was why the Serbs were able to overcome their peacekeepers and massacre 25,000+ civilian Bosnians at Srebrenica is just beyond the pale and completely unsubstantiated from all the investigations in this well investigated act of genocide.
Update [2010-3-18 13:0:58 by craigkg]: Chairman Levin just delivered a rebuke of Sheehan on his Srebrenica statement. I'm capturing video now, so I'll get it trimmed and re-encoded to get it on YouTube in a bit and post it here.
Update [2010-3-18 13:0:58 by craigkg]: Here is the video of Chairman Levin's rebuke of Sheehan's Srebrenica statement made by Levin at the close of the hearing:
Update [2010-3-18 15:22:48 by craigkg]: Here is the exchange earlier in the hearing where Sheehan attributes the massacre to gays in the Dutch military: