worldtribune.com — After more than three years in their country, the U.S. military still can't understand Iraqis. The Iraq Study Group said the lack of Arabic speakers has hurt U.S. intelligence collection and analysis. The bipartisan panel said the U.S. military and government rely too much on non-U.S. translators, who fail to provide context.
Dec 7, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountDec 8, 2006
The Bush administration let go a few Arabic speakers because they were gay as you can see here:<a class="user" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2479777.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2479777.stm</a>
blackjack75Dec 9, 2006
Maybe they had hundreds of people speaking arabic at the embassy in 2003. But since they could understand what "please leave" meant in arabic, they left.
f3l1xDec 9, 2006
@bitteroldcootThere are plenty of "senior" positions open in the US government where no prior experience in required. The only prerequisite is fluency in Arabic.<a class="user" href="http://www.dc3.mil/dc3/home.htm">http://www.dc3.mil/dc3/home.htm</a>
ahmedomranDec 9, 2006
Babylon was f**ked up??
martalliDec 10, 2006
<a class="user" href="http://www.allied-media.com/Arab-American/Arab%20american%20Demographics.htm">http://www.allied-media.com/Arab-American/Arab%20american%20Demographics.htm</a>There may be as many as 870,000 Arab Americans out of 300 million Americans. Thats 0.87/300mil = 3 out of a 1000 Americans. I'm sure that not al of these folks know Arabic, but it is a huge untapped resource. Someone will instantly comment that we don't want the terrorists doing our tranlsating for us, but you might find it interesting that much if not most Arab Americans are Christians.
aliaclaireDec 11, 2006
I'm currently in the gov't foriegn language program...and it's HARD. 7-8 hours a day of nothing but language for a full year--and boy, does your brain hurt after this.There are a lot of problems with what the gov't want to do in Iraq. First, when they're looking for people to go there, they usually look to FSOs who are former army, NOT Arabic speakers. Second, Arabic takes 1-2 years to learn (2 years for a 3/3, or "working competancy)--compared to six months in French or Spanish, or a year in Russian or Thai. The government can't get enough people to go there, so they keep making the tours shorter--right now, they're one year. Can't get anyone to go in the first place, they're definitly not going to spend 2 years preparing. Third, security never actually lets you talk to people who spek Arabic. You onl get to talked to cleared gov't people who think they speak English (on former experience, they usually don't). The biggest problem is that the FS wants people to take several unaccompnied tours in their career--new in the last 10 years. You have to leave your spouse and family behind, with NOTHING like the support the military gives them--I think the "seperate maintance allowance" is something like $5000. For a year. There's almost no training of how to be in a high danger zone, much less on how to protect yourself. Most dips signed up--no, not to work receptions in Paris!--but to do hard work in countries with bugs and gunshots outside our wallls (btdt, btw), but NOT to have people shooting AT us. If you want to be shot at, you usually join the military. And until State and Defense figure out how to recruit and train a hybred; someone who understands the dangers of war but it willing to learn diplomatic relation skills, it's not going to get better.FWIW, I think the CJTF HOA people out digging wells in the Somali region of Ethiopia are doing a hell of a lot more for our image in Somalia than all of us burocrats sitting around in Addis. They make it so hard for us to get out of our offices! We need MORE peace corps and analysis work in the foreign service, and a lot less reporting on what the prime minister thinks about China's relations with India (from small country in Africa). Most dips are journalists with clearances these days, and the top likes it that way. There are some FABULOUS people who really do amazing work, but it's amazing how hard they make it for us to do that.Hope my boss doesn't read this... :-)
chatty82Dec 25, 2006
Duh, I didn't know anybody knew that Arabic was the language of Iraq. If so, they didn't train the troops about this.....Ask the troops, are there "crazy street signs" in Iraq too? Some of them may have learned in middle school ancient history about ancient Babylon. The ones that went to school, that is. Iraq was the capital of Bablyon on Tigris...duh...the barbarians came to Babylon and had group decisions of juries of more than 12...
vbuczakDec 31, 2006
Look and listen to Bush butchering English...How his followers can even dream of learning another tongue?Every visitors memory after visiting US is: ...they're as fat as ignorant..."
vbuczakDec 31, 2006
very well said.
welcomeuOct 12, 2010
They stay in Iraq too long:) http://security-wire.com/10/how-to-remove-smart-engine-rogue-anti-spyware.html