President Bill Clinton signed into law the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. The law, which has resulted in nearly 10,000 discharges to date, bans openly gay people from serving in the armed forces, requires those who do serve to conceal their sexual orientation and avoid homosexual conduct, and prohibits military personnel from being asked about their sexual orientation.

last fall, that the Army fired nine gay Arabic-language translators at a time when national security experts were worrying about a dire shortage of intelligence personnel capable of translating Arabic.
the Pentagon acknowledged that the military has hired many translators since 9/11 without full background checks. The result? At least three translators now face espionage charges, and the military faces yet another intelligence imbroglio. In short, the government is drastically lowering its standards for critical intelligence agents while throwing out highly competent ones just because they are gay.

Air Force One then left Texas for Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where Mr. Bush switched to another Air Force One, a refueled 747. The group picked up a few more reporters, bringing the total number of journalists on the trip, including camera crews, to 13.
Those on the trip to Baghdad included Ms. Rice, Mr. Card, Mr. Bartlett, the White House doctor, Dr. Richard A. Tubb, and Joe Hagin, the White House deputy chief of staff.
mred - i dont think i actually saw how many journos there 'were'.


Along for the ride are wire service writers from The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg, a newspaper pool reporter, photographers from Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, Time magazine and Newsweek magazine, and a correspondent, producer and two-person crew from Fox News. / Other journalists join the group at Andrews AFB.
• 11:06 p.m. EST: Air Force One takes off from Andrews AFB. The senior staff aboard are National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, Bartlett and Hagin. There are 13 members of the press aboard.
mred - thats 13 people *b4* Andrews?


Growing tensions over world trade worry me. The steady trickle of U.S. protectionist moves, against everything from steel to Chinese bras, hasn't yet become a torrent. But there's a definite sense that the grown-ups have left the building.