A reader writes:
Having been an army linguist, allow me to set the record straight:
1) There is no shortage of individuals who want to become linguists. Linguists are better paid (we got an extra $100+ a month per language for being linguists). We had far better living conditions, and were generally treated as mini-officers in many circles, as most of us were highly skilled, educated, and generally quite intelligent. Furthermore, linguists are given Top Secret clearances, which do wonders for post-service employment potential. The life style and perks for linguists in the army can’t be beat.
2) Depending on one’s DLAB score (Defense Language Aptitude Battery), one is thrown into a suitable language program. Languages come in five levels with languages such as Swahili in level I, Chinese, Arabic, Russian in level IV, with English being the only level V language. All candidates for the linguist program are sent to DLI (the Defense Language Institute) in Monterey California for six to fourteen months depending on the difficulty of their language. Arabic linguists take about twelve months to train. To be fair to Snow, the fail rate at DLI is about 50 to 75% per class, so one really can’t claim that they program can be sped up. And the student to teacher ratio is about one to eight, so it’s well staffed. After DLI, graduates of the language portion of training are sent to Goodfellow Airforce Base (a joint service base) where they spend three months learning the secret side of their craft. In total, we’re talking about 15 months to train an Arabic linguist. That is, if the military really wanted to, they could have flooded the streets of Iraq with Arabic linguists by 2004.
That is: if we had had a halfway competent defense secretary and halfway competent president. We had neither. You want to know who lost Iraq? Bush. Period.
The Dish 