Not only are the lives of over 10,000 Americans destroyed by "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", it's costing the American taxpayer plenty. From AP via Army Times:
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.Good question. Clearly the answer for Republicans is that bigotry is worth more than human lives.
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.
"You don't just go out on the street tomorrow and pluck someone from the general population who has an Air Force education, someone trained as a physician, someone who bleeds Air Force blue, who is willing to serve, and that you can put in Iraq tomorrow," said Beth Schissel, who graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1989 and went on to medical school.
Schissel was forced out of the military after she acknowledged that she was gay.
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"What advantage is the military getting by firing brain surgeons at the very time our wounded soldiers aren't receiving the medical care they need?" said Aaron Belkin, associate professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
