Terror war still short on linguists

The effort to produce more speakers of Arabic and other languages of the Islamic world is needed because many Americans fluent in these languages have difficulty getting security clearances if they have relatives in the region. Producing a "homegrown" speaker of Arabic, with its different alphabet and many dialects, can take 10 years, says professor John Walbridge of the University of Indiana, "if you apply yourself." (Related story: Muslim world isn't big with U.S. students)
No government agency coordinates this effort, and there are no readily available statistics on how many students get federal money intended to produce more speakers of Arabic, Urdu and other strategic languages and more experts on the Islamic world.