AKA William

Yesterday, during the Senate Armed Services Committee DADT hearing, General John Sheehan, a former NATO commander and senior Marine officer, testified against a repeal of DADT. And his testimony was shocking, offensive, and it reminded me a whole lot of the embarrassing anti-marriage-equality testimony offered up the “expert” during the Prop 8 trial.

Sheehan’s outdated view of the world was pretty much summed up when, after being asked by Sen. Roland Burris whether he had ever led black soldiers, Sheehan responded that he had commanded “hispanics, blacks, whites, and Orientals.” Yes, he said Orientals.

It’s one thing to be outdated and outmoded — it’s another thing to use that outdated information to spread incomprehensible lies about gay people. And that’s what Sheehan did.

In an exchange between Sen. Levin and Gen. Sheehan, the former marine explained that the Srebenica massacre in 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces overran Dutch UN soldiers in Srebrenica and subsequently massacred more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys, was due to gays in the military. Here is an excerpt of the exchange:

SHEEHAN: “That [Srebrenica] was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II.”
LEVIN: “And did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?”
SHEEHAN: “It was a combination …”
LEVIN: “Did they tell you [that gay soldiers were to blame], that is my question.”
SHEEHAN: “Yes.”
LEVIN: “They did?”
SHEEHAN: “They included that as part of the problem.”

Sen. Carl Levin immediately took exception to the statement and offered a rebuke. And the Dutch have also responded angrily to Sheehan’s claim. The AP reports:

The Dutch Defence Ministry issued a statement calling Sheehan’s claims “absolute nonsense” and adding that gay Dutch soldiers routinely cooperate with the U.S. military in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Renee Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to the United States, said in a statement, “I couldn’t disagree more” with Sheehan, adding there was no evidence of his claims in the extensive record of research on Srebrenica.

Dutch press agency ANP quoted the head of the military union AFMP, Wim van den Burg, as saying Sheehan’s comments were “ridiculous” and “out of the realm of fiction.”

The General also went on to say that male-on-male rape is more frequent than male-on-female sexual assault, and that sexual attraction between soldiers of the opposite sex wasn’t really a problem.

And as archaic, embarrassing, and infuriating as Sheehan’s statements are, they are also dangerous — he implied that gays in the military were responsible for the deaths of 7000 people. Jaw-dropping.

h/t Daily Kos