Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) struck a nice rhetorical blow last week against the Defense Department's Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy -- the ban on gays in the military. During a hearing with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Ackerman expressed his dismay that the military has continued its practice of firing gay Arabic- and Farsi-speaking translators at the moment when we need them most.

According to news releases, Rep. Ackerman said, "For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are (of) terrorists. ... If the terrorists ever got hold of this information, they'd get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad."

Rep. Ackerman's fanciful image of our Defense secretary fleeing a bunch of gun-toting Islamic lesbians is going to keep me up all night, I'm sure, but the good congressman had a serious proposal for Secretary Rice, too. What if all those vital translators the military got rid of were now hired by the State Department?

The impact of those firings is significant. According to a 2005 report from the federal Government Accountability Office, between 1993 (the year DADT was implemented) and 2005, 322 "service members with important language skills" had been discharged for being gay or lesbian. About one third of those fired had studied either Arabic, Farsi, or Korean. Of the 55 Arabic speakers sent home, at least 22 of them were discharged after the September 11th attacks. I'm sure you remember that one of the reasons our intelligence officials didn't understand what Al Qaeda was planning was that our Arabic translators had a backlog of intercepted messages piling up on their desks.

According to Steve Ralls, Director of Communications for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization that assists targets of DADT, Rice has said that she is seriously considering Rep. Ackerman's suggestion. SLDN is working to compile the resumes of discharged military linguists who would like to be considered for the jobs.

I asked Ralls whether SLDN staff ever expected to be in the employment agency business. "No," he said, "but the servicemembers who have presented themselves for interviews with the State Department have been wanting to put their skills to good use." I bet.

The really ironic thing, says Ralls, is that the Department of Defense could rehire them as civilian linguists to do the very same jobs. Why? Because the entire federal workforce, minus the armed forces, is protected by a nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation.

SLDN is organizing activists around the country to lobby Congress to kill DADT before it kills more of us. The group's annual Lobby Day will be in March. You can find out how to get involved by visiting their website at www.sldn.org.

Given Bush's saber-rattling against Iran and Korea, and the darkness our soldiers are stumbling through in Iraq, wouldn't it be nice to be able to talk to some people over there or at least read their email? Hey, Mr. President, how do you say "axis of evil" in Farsi again?