House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) urged the State Department Monday to hire homosexual military translators discharged under the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“We are writing to urge the Department of State to take a specific step — the hiring of our unfairly dismissed, language-qualified soldiers — so our nation might salvage something positive from the lamentable results of this benighted policy,” Lantos and Ackerman wrote in a strongly worded letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.

The lawmakers went on to call “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” which was put into place under President Clinton, “one of the most regressive, counter-productive policies we could ever imagine.” They cited a recent Government Accountability Office report that said 300 soldiers with critical language skills, including Persian and Arabic, have been dismissed under the policy.

The lawmakers also highlighted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s February testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in which she referred to such translators as “critical to fighting the war on terror.”

Lantos and Ackerman, pointing to the 9/11 Commission report to support their case, said “under-investment in critical foreign languages presents an urgent and immediate threat to our national security, a threat that cannot be ignored while we train new foreign-language experts.”

The lawmakers also argued that the dismissal of translators under “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is fiscally irresponsible. Many soldiers who have been dismissed under the policy, they wrote, have gone to work for contractors who “then offer their translation services back to” the government at a heftier price.

“Thus,” the congressmen said, “the taxpayer is compelled to pay for these essential series not once, but twice.”