For months, she and supporters within the Pentagon battled Army bureaucracy to get the interpreters better pay and benefits. She worked to reduce the required time they spend in a war zone from two years to one, just like other soldiers.
Still, Stahl faced a mutiny.
"Suddenly, all these people wanted to quit,'" she recalled. Nine recruits either quit or were dropped during the program's first year.
Those who remained struggled with military protocol and insensitive comments and jibes.
Saeed, a 35-year-old Morocco native, recalls a motivational speech for the recruits in which a sergeant pledged, "We're going to go to Iraq and kill those guys who worship Allah."
Officials enforce a "zero tolerance" rule for taunts about religion, and after Saeed sent a letter of complaint to his superiors, the sergeant was brought forward to apologize to the 09 Limas. "There was an immediate response," Saeed said. "That made me feel good."
One day, as 09 Limas entered the mess hall, a civilian cook shouted, "Here comes the Taliban!"
Tarik and others went to Stahl. "You lied to us," he recalled telling his commander. "We want out of here."
The civilian cook was fired, even though the recruits later tried to save the man's job. "We were risking so much to go to Iraq," Tarik said. "Such insults made us wonder why we bothered."
Slowly, however, the 09 Lima recruits bonded as a unit. Stahl has attended five 09 Lima graduation ceremonies, where the new interpreters recite their military oaths in both English and their native language. Many call her from Iraq to check on pay issues or just say hello.
But for those still at Ft. Jackson, anxiety builds as the dates for shipping off to Iraq loom closer.
"Everyone's afraid to die," one Morocco native says. "What terrifies me more is being tortured before they kill me."
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Sief, a 09 Lima from Sudan, has felt the enemy's hatred like a hand gripping his throat.
During a recent Baghdad stint, he assisted in interrogations of suspected insurgents. The detainees were always handcuffed, and Sief was glad.
"You're asking precise questions and this man is talking at you and spitting at your face," said the 42-year-old, who lives in Lincoln, Neb. "You can read the anger in his eyes. You can see the hatred."
Jihad, a Jordan native who grew up in San Francisco, came to terms with being targeted by terrorists. "I told a buddy that if we ever got ambushed and he saw me getting kidnapped, I wanted him to shoot me," the 09 Lima said. "I didn't want to go through the torture."
