I am so tired of hearing the news media go on and on about Sibel Edmonds.

Oh, wait...that's my imagination, isn't it? They dont' talk about her much at all. However, on July 29, CBS did report what should have been the biggest story of the week: The FBI has confirmed that Edmonds was fired at least "in part" for being a whistle-blower. Edmonds, you'll recall, charged that right after the attacks of September 11, the FBI unit that did translation work deliberately slowed down the job. This happened, Edmonds said, in order to create a backlog that might gain the unit more money and staff.

According to Edmonds, her life and the lives of her family were threatened by a Turkish translator with whom she worked, Jan Dickerson, and that Dickerson omitted key information from her reports. Even more interesting is the fact that Dickerson worked for an organization that was being investigated by the FBI, and the FBI didn't even know it. The level of incompetence here is so dramatic, it is hard for us to believe.

Of course, botched translations by an enemy of the United States who happened to be working for the FBI, and translations slowed down by bureaucratic interests are only part of the translation mess. Right after the attacks, the FBI was looking under rocks for people who could read and speak Arabic. For some reason, it had never before occurred to them that such employees would be useful. The U.S. Army did have some good ones, but they were fired because they were gay.

Feel safer now?