Since the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy went into effect, the Pentagon has dismissed more than 11,000 servicemembers, many of whom have key specialty skills such as training in medicine and language. At a time when the military faces a readiness crisis, the Pentagon cannot afford to dismiss two service members a day as it is doing under the current policy.

Today, Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA) reintroduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, a bill that would allow gays to serve openly in the military. Joining Meehan at a press conference today was retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, the first American soldier to be seriously wounded in Iraq. A gay man, Alva did not admit his sexual orientation until he retired from the military, but Alva has since become a strong advocate for repealing the policy. Good Morning America told his story this morning.

Watch it:

In an interview not included in the televised report, Alva told ABC News about how his old Marine buddies took the news that he was gay:

“I told tons of people,” he said, with a laugh. “A lot of my friends, my buddies, my closest Marines, people I had served in combat with. Straight guys, married, with children and everything, three of them which I have become their sons’ godfather now. Everybody was just respectful and was just like ordinary. ‘That’s it? That’s your big news?’”

Alva says that while anti-gay language wasn’t exactly unheard of in the Marines, generally he thinks troops are ready for gays and lesbians to serve openly.

“Being on the front lines and serving with the people who even actually knew that I was gay, you know, that was never a factor. We were there to do a job. We were [there] to do a mission. I don’t think people would have a hard time with it because they know that the person right next to them is going to be there to protect them, in our terms, ‘have their back.’”

Learn more about the effort to lift the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy here.

VoteVets.org has teamed up with Gen. Wesley Clark to promote a new campaign warning against a military strike on Iran. StopIranWar.com is calling on Americans to build political pressure on U.S. policymakers to work with our allies and use every diplomatic, political, and economic option at our disposal to deal with Iran.

In a web-ad released today, Clark warns, “We’re approaching the last moments in which the administration can change its policy and head off a looming confrontation with Iran.” Watch it:

Take action here.

Also today, the Center for American Progress released a progressive strategy to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem: “Contain and Engage.”

Rather than pursue the faint hope that coercive measures will force Iran’s capitulation, our contain-and-engage strategy couples the pressures created by sanctions, diplomatic isolation and investment freezes with practical compromises and realizable security assurances to encourage Iran onto a verifiable, non-nuclear weapons path.

Read the full report HERE.

Transcript: Read more

The television show 24 has become a foreign policy guide for the right wing. Numerous conservative pundits have cited 24 as a sanction for harsh interrogation practices. In September, Laura Ingraham stated, “The average American out there loves the show 24. … In my mind that’s close to a national referendum that it’s OK to use tough tactics against high-level Al Qaeda operatives as we’re going to get.”

Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan recently told the 24 producers that he was concerned that the show’s promotion of illegal torture “was having a damaging effect on young troops.” In a new interview with Newsweek, former U.S. Army specialist Tony Lagouranis, who left the military with an honorable discharge in 2005, confirms Finnegans fears — that U.S. soldiers did take cues from 24 to torture prisoners:

Interrogators didn’t have guidance from the military on what to do because we were told that the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply any more. So our training was obsolete, and we were encouraged to be creative. We turned to television and movies to look for ways of interrogating. I can say that I saw that with myself, also. I would adopt the posture of the television or movie interrogator, thinking that establishing that simple power arrangement, establishing absolute power over the detainee, would force him to break. …

[We adopted mock] executions and mock electrocution, stress positions, isolation, hypothermia. Threatening to execute family members or rape detainees’ wives and things like that.

Lagouranis has teamed up with Human Rights First to advocate against torture, noting that what is seen on 24 “is not an effective technique for gaining intelligence.” Kiefer Sutherland, the actor who stars as Jack Bauer, has also said that the torture techniques employed in the show are not effective ways to get information in real life. He recently agreed to speak with cadets at the West Point military academy to teach them that torture is wrong.

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