Hero, Patriot, Warrior, Fighter Pilot, Gay and Fired.

Not a Wimp. I don't care if it's a gay or straight person bombing the shit out of the bad guys and saving the lives of good people. But casting out highly trained and educated soldiers is the result of a policy which people have long thought of as "innocuous," the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT).

"Lt. Colonel Victor Fehrenbach has served honorably for 18 years in the Air Force as an F-15E Aviator. He was hand-picked to protect the Washington, D.C. airspace after 9/11. He flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, targeting the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Lt. Col. Fehrenbach has only been an asset to the United States Air Force, not a detriment to unit cohesion, morale, or good order."

and from the Air Force News:

"Born into an Air Force family — his father was a navigator and retired as a lieutenant colonel and his mother worked as a nurse — Fehrenbach maintains he has been discreet about his sexual orientation; his parents didn’t know was gay until mid-May, just before he went public in hopes of spurring a change to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law.

A year ago, though, his career came to a standstill when officials notified him that a civilian acquaintance had identified him as gay.

Fehrenbach’s experience as an instructor-level weapons systems officer included time in both the F-15E Strike Eagle and the EF-111 Raven. Missions took him over Baghdad during the 2003 invasion, above Afghanistan in 2002 and into the Balkans for Operation Allied Force in 1999. He has 2,180 flying hours, nine Air Medals — one for heroism — and five Air Force Commendation Medals."

To read more about him, and sign a petition, go here.

Not your mother's Oldsmobile: One badass jet

From Fine Politics, Noalzumi writes:

"Lt. Col. Fehrenbach is a very rare individual, an F-15E weapons systems officer (WSO, or “back-seater”). The F-15E is one of the most capable fighter-bombers in the world today, and is one of the reasons American forces were so successful over Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq again (at least at first). It’s also very sophisticated, and the tactics the pilots have to learn and the training they have to undergo are equally so. When it’s claimed that the Air Force has invested $25 million in this man, that’s totally believable. Those guys train virtually all the time. And the fact is, not everybody can do that job. A good WSO needs tech-savvy, good reflexes, situational awareness, etc. Not to mention the gobs of combat experience the man has by now, that he was passing into others, knowledge that could very well save his student’s lives one day.

This is the cost of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Lt. Col. Fehrenbach has incalculable value to this country, is almost literally irreplaceable, and the rules say, “Get rid of him.”

Though I'm not a watcher of Maddow, she did interview the colonel.

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This is progress? WIMP