Soldiers speak up
Should you still care very much about the story that broke two weeks ago about Arabic translators being kicked out of the armed forces because they're gay, click over to Tom Tomorrow's blog. He mentioned it in a cartoon, and got some mail from a few cogs in the great killing machine that is our military.

One self-described soldier's take:

More interesting to me is the fact that we only know that two soldiers were actually gay. The other seven all told the commander that they were. Teling your commander you are gay is the easiest way to get out of the Army. After the murder of the gay soldier at Fort Campbell, commanders want to get gay people out as quickly as possible so that they don't get killed. If you tell your commander you are gay, you will get discharged (honorably) in 72 hours. In comparison, my friend is so injured that he hasn't been able to carry a weapon, march, run, or do any exercises for over two years, and he will not be discharged for another 3 months. I suspect that they realized "Oh shit! I'm going to Iraq to get gassed and die!" and decided to get out ASAP.

So any potato peeling sailor who wants to ditch out on his seven year tour can just wake up with a case of the gays and get an honorable discharge. Nice to know something good is coming out of this jackass policy.