[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by helbent4

Lee,

I would have to agree about the negative effects of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) on the US military, especially in light of the real costs involved. The Government Accountability Office determined that between 2004 and 2009 alone, DADT cost the US military $193 million dollars to carry out in just five of the seventeen years of its existence.

Think about it... this was money that did not go towards funding a single weapon, buying a single round of ammunition up-armour a single Humvee or buy a single set of body armour. It was a policy that by design did not save one American life (other than perhaps the soldiers that were forced to quit and return home). Not a single dollar went directly or indirectly towards making the United States or the rest of the world any safer. It did not kill a single Irqqi insurgent, Saddam Fedayeen, Taliban, al Qaeda member. Crucial technicians, translators and intelligence officers (among others) were removed from their positions, the funding to train them going completely to waste. Indeed, most of the cost of DADT was towards training replacements, but by the same token it would seem more valuable for those funds to go towards adding thousands of additional trained personnel.

Tony

I always thought Don't Ask, Don't Tell was one of the dumber moments in US military history. What somebody does to another consenting adult, off-base, is no one else's business. But I guess it was just a means of taking attention from the hijinks that the brass was pulling...a base commander taking advantage of his position to get the wives of his subordinate officers to have sex with him? Another general flying his mistress on military aircraft? A officer responsible for nuclear weapons disobeying orders so that she can have an affair with an enlisted airwoman's husband? Perhaps the service needs to add more saltpeter to the rations!