McCain restates support for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell despite growing opposition to policy on gays in the military
A spokesman for John McCain said on Tuesday evening that the Republican senator opposes allowing gays to serve openly in the military, despite increasing political support for repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
At Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen said he believes gays should be allowed to serve in the military. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has appointed a team at the Pentagon that will have until the end of this year to study a possible repeal.
“Speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do,” Mullen said.
McCain responded that he was “disappointed” in Mullen’s testimony and said now is not the time to overturn the policy. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported McCain has shifted his stance, since Mullen is a part of military leadership and has voiced support for repealing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan pointed out that Mullen repeatedly emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of the military leadership during Tuesday’s hearing. She said McCain’s stance remains unchanged and that until the Pentagon team finishes its policy review there will be no official recommendation from military leadership.
“Sen. McCain believes that DADT works. But if the military leadership decided that it would be beneficial to repeal DADT, he would obviously listen to leadership,” Buchanan said. “He respects Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates, but would like to withhold judgment on the repeal by waiting for the conclusion from policy review.”
She noted that Secretary Gates is a member of the Obama administration, which made repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell an important part of their political platform.
“Repealing the policy is their goal, but it was also their goal to close Guantanamo and that has yet to happen,” Buchanan said. Gates has said it will take as long as two years before any action is taken to change the policy.
If the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell review finds that repealing the policy would be advantageous to the military, Buchanan said McCain would consider it. But first the military must address a host of concerns through the upcoming series of hearings and discussions.
“It’s a moot point, we haven’t even gotten to that state yet,” Buchanan said. “At this point he’s not going to chance his stance based on one admiral who was speaking as individual, not on behalf of military as whole.
McCain has maintained for years that though the policy may be distasteful, it works. In 2006 he said he is open to re-examining that stance if he asked to do so by the military:
“I understand the opposition to it, and I’ve had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.”
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As a Nam vet, I believe homosexuals should be allowed in the military if they can pass a physical and survive boot-camp.
Seems that we have forgotten history. Both the Greeks and Romans allowed homosexual within the military. Seems the generals thought they would fight harder. That’s not necessarily true today, yet these guys and gals can be and probably are just as loyal and patriotic as anyone else.
To me denying them the right to serve is un American. I have not found any reference to homosexuals in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or Amendments. Let ‘em serve.
Where is the evidence that Greeks and Romans had gays in their army? And look at McAmnesty, McFiengold. He does not want to focus on key issues such as
debt and empire and big government, but pocks his nose in this silly argument of dont ask dont tell.
Such odd commentary in very little is said about the basics of what a military is and what it’s purpose is.
A military is not a social project, a political payback, a religion, a sexual intercourse of acts. A military is a cohesive unit which has one purpose and that is to kill and destroy. A military serves no other purpose than that.
Anything which interferes with that purpose is as guilty of treason to any nation as a murderer is in taking breath from someone else in suffocating them.
I have noticed the trump cards of “having served in the military” or “Truman integrated the military”, but why is it that never the twain has met?
Let us speak to the US integrated sexual military in it’s reality in 2010 from existential experience.
When President Bush 41 announced the liberation of Kuwait, numerous female soldiers who signed up for the military as a career turned up pregnant, and most overseas were pregnant not by their husbands as their “shooting themselves in the foot”.
For those who served in Truman’s time, historically the white Soldier would note that the “colored” would hang back on missions to allow the white to take the hit.
In Iraq, the female National Guard members have a notorious reputation for being Suzi Rotten Crotches. I know of one female who bedded dozens of men in her company.
I can point to Air Force married females who picked up black male officers in slumming.
The list can continue in examples of drunkenness to doping, but as each of these situations was introduced into the military, it’s units were weakened and it took greater effort for real Soldiers to take up the slack for the people who think that the military is their Obama liberal experiment in gratification.
Where does this all end in Obamanism? I read of listing all people who serve as Patriots when nothing is further from the fact. There are military codes and if any are violated that makes one a sloven wearer of a uniform disgracing it and not a United States Soldier.
Mr. Obama now has the US military not being able to raise it’s rifles at terrorists unless the terrorists raise their weapons first. Surprise searches are not allowed in Afghanistan so as not to upset terrorists.
This is the graduated US military which now serves terrorists sympathies. Now Mr. Obama wishes to usher in homosexual behavior as political payback as he paid back Syria for their assistance in his 2008 election to the White House.
Does America want a military with homosexuals who suffer from aids suicide? Homosexuals who believe joining an armed body will psychologically make them belong to America? Does America want a military where sex is the basis in combat units where one gay group will take care of their own due to affections and a straight group will take care of their own in not being gay?
Has Nidal Hasan in being Muslim first not exposed a problem in placing a minority into a majority situation? It is bogus to ignore the racial problems of the Civil War, the Indian Wars, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.
Let us visit the white possibilty of a certain infamous Soldier in Afghanistan whose family could not leave his heroic death to history and kept digging until it was found this unlikeable person was yelling at fellow Soldiers profane things before American bullets found their way into him, in a battle which did not occur and a cover up ensued for Pat Tillman.
Combat units require discipline and a united purpose of military. Whenever anything is allowed in to disrupt that, the US military ends up having wounded and dead Soldiers for liberals to count or not count depending on if Obama is in the White House or not.
No one has asked why Obama is putting forward a plan which will kill gay people as no one has asked why he has made Afghanistan a kill zone for US Soldiers.
Homosexuals demanding to be known by a sex act first, instead of being American first is the first red light in this that this is disruptive and deadly to themselves and all Americans.
The US military must be protected from all outside bias and prejudices or it will fail at it’s mission in protecting Americans who in deluded measure think the US military is some social experiment to promote an agenda.
The place to deal with racial issues is at a Martin King venue, not Korea or Vietnam. The place to have sex is in a marriage and not in combat.
A Soldier is trained to kill, and there is no other purpose.
Reality of purpose must be the deciding issue and the US military must be kept on this purpose or Ahmadinejad in Islam is going to be lopping off the heads of both gays and straights with nuclear knives.
That is the point in all of this.
Its only a social experiment because people like you have made it that way. If this was not made a big deal in the first place than it wouldnt look like a social experiment today, just like it wouldnt have looked like a social experiment when we let black serve in the military. You speak in absolutes which those in the Republican party have been doing for a long time to no avail. when you say “Anything which interferes with that purpose is as guilty of treason to any nation as a murderer is in taking breath from someone else in suffocating them”, I ask you why you would say such a thing? I went to New Orleans when the levees broke, there are serviceman in Haiti right now, you dont know what you are talking about and that statement is just plain ignorance. Also when you say “Does America want a military with homosexuals who suffer from aids suicide? Homosexuals who believe joining an armed body will psychologically make them belong to America?
Youre implying that all gays have aids and while I will give you that is a stigma the way you put it they are ticking timebombs. And the second statement about how joining the armed forces will make them belong to America makes me think you dont believe they are Americans. I dont like to say this because usually the left points fingers and name calls but I believe you are a bigot. I dont know why you brought up Pat Tillman but that cover up was done under the Bush administration so liberals arent the only one to blame for this however once again that has nothing to do with the context of what you are trying to say. One more thing, bring me the facts of how white soldiers did all the work while the black soldiers sat back and did nothing, there is something very uneasy about the things you are saying and I think you need help.
First, learn how to write better. Then STFU.
Intelligent response.