- Contrary to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, Copas's superiors asked him directly on three different occasions about his sexuality. (Superiors also asked about the sexuality of his acquaintances and -- here's a kicker -- inquired whether Copas participated in community theater.)
- Copas never publicly declared his homosexuality before his discharge.
- The military dismissed 726 soldiers under it's anti-homosexual policy in 2005, an 11 percent increase over such discharges in 2004 and the first increase in such discharges since 2001.
- Since Bill Clinton imposed the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, the military has dismissed 300 gay and lesbian soldiers with critical language skills, including 55 soldiers proficient in Arabic. (Samuel Freedman, in a 2004 NYT article, cites US Department of Education statistics that in 2003, of 1.8 million graduates of American colleges and universities, 22 took degrees in Arabic. See also this Newsweek article on the difficulty of finding really good Arabic speakers to work for the feds.)
So is the Pentagon telling us that homosexuals are a greater threat to this country than Islamic fundamentalists? Or is the Pentagon telling us that while the President can overlook the portions of laws he doesn't like, or that the feds can ignore the 4th Amendment in searching our phone and library records and even our homes without probable cause or warrants, the military can't make any exceptions to its (unconstitutional) policy on homosexuals in uniform for the sake of national security?
