So the Republican Party claims to be the "pro-military" party, right? Well, how do they explain qualified medics getting the boot
because they're gay?
Hundreds of officers and health care professionals have been discharged in the past 10 years under the Pentagon's policy on gays, a loss that while relatively small in numbers involves troops who are expensive for the military to educate and train.
The 350 or so affected are a tiny fraction of the 1.4 million members of the uniformed services and about 3.5 percent of the more than 10,000 people discharged under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy since its inception in 1994.
But many were military school graduates or service members who went to medical school at the taxpayers' expense - troops not as easily replaced by a nation at war that is struggling to fill its enlistment quotas.
Even opponents of "don't ask, don't tell" acknowledge only a small number of medics are affected. But the risk is still far too great for a military already stretched very thin.
The policy is especially ridiculous when you consider that it actually costs more to give gays--soldiers and medics alike--the boot than to let them stay in.
Early last year the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated it cost the Pentagon nearly $200 million to recruit and train replacements for the nearly 9,500 troops that had to leave the military because of the policy. The losses included hundreds of highly skilled troops, including translators, between 1994 through 2003.
And when you consider how many of our troops may have died due to a lack of qualified doctors, you have to wonder why in the world the House won't even consider Marty Meehan's Military Readiness Act. It now has 107 cosponsors, including Republicans Illena Ros-Lethinen, Jim Kolbe and Wayne Gilchrest.
Remind me again who the pro-military party is supposed to be?