SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Brian Muller, an Army bomb squad team leader who served on a security detail for President Bush, said he was dismissed from duty after deciding to tell his commander he’s gay.

“I didn’t do it to get out of a war – I already served in a war,” Muller, 25, said in an interview. “After putting my life on the line in the war, the idea that I was fighting for the freedoms of so many other people that I couldn’t myself enjoy was almost unbearable.”

The exodus of soldiers like Muller continues even as concerns grow about military troop strength, according to a new study. Some 770 people were discharged for their sexual orientation last year under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The figure, however, is significantly lower than the record 1,227 discharges in 2001 – just before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was adopted in 1994, nearly 10,000 military personnel have been discharged – including linguists, nuclear warfare experts and other key specialists.

The statistics, obtained from the Defense Manpower Data Center and analyzed by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California at Santa Barbara, offers a detailed profile of those discharged, including job specialty, rank and years spent in the service.

“The justification for the policy is that allowing gays and lesbians to serve would undermine military readiness,” said Aaron Belkin, author of the study. “For the first time, we can see how it has impacted every corner of the military and goes to the heart of the military readiness argument.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation private and do not engage in “homosexual acts”.

The study, which analyzed discharges between 1998 and 2003, found the majority of those let go under “don’t ask, don’t tell” were active duty enlisted personnel in the early stages of their careers.

Of the nearly 6,300 people discharged during that six-year period, only 75 were officers. Seventy-one percent of those discharged were men.

The study found that the Army, the largest of the services, was responsible for about 41 percent of all discharges. About 27 percent of the discharges came from the Navy, 22 percent from the Air Force and nine percent from the Marines.

Hundreds of those discharged held high-level job specialties that required years of training and expertise, including 90 nuclear power engineers, 150 rocket and missile specialists and 49 nuclear, chemical and biological warfare specialists.

Eighty-eight linguists were discharged, including at least seven Arab language specialists.

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, a conservative advocacy group that opposes gays and lesbians serving in the military, said the loss of gays and lesbians serving in specialized areas is irrelevant because they never should have been in those jobs in the first place.

“We need to defend the law, and the law says that homosexuality is incompatible with military service,” Donnelly said. “There is no shortage of people in the military, and we do not need people who identify themselves as homosexual.”

There are currently about 1.5 million people serving in active duty in the military, and another 1 million in the Reserves.