According to Stars and Stripes Magazine Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the Defense Department to speed up the the steps it will take to begin training to begin as soon as possible for the DADT repeal to take affect.
Gates in a Pentagon press conference revealed a three-step plan: finalize changes in related regulations and policies, and get clearer definitions on benefits; prepare training materials for chaplains, lawyers, commanders and troops; and then begin to train servicemembers worldwide.
“We’re trying to get the first two phases of that process done as quickly as possible,” Gates said, adding he has instructed Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Clifford Stanley to accelerate his efforts. “My hope is that it can be done within a matter of a very few weeks so that we can then move on to what is the real challenge, which is providing training to 2.2 million people. And we will do that as expeditiously as we can.”
And in what appears to be news from the Bizarro world. Rabid homophobe Senator John “Grandpa Munster” McCain, DADT’ repeals fiercest opponent in the Senate, now says that he will work to make the DADT repeal work.
McCain signaled that he had made peace with the lame-duck bill to do away with the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian service members, of which he had been an outspoken critic.
“I think I have to do everything I can to make sure that the important moral, retention, recruitment, and battle effectiveness of the military is minimized as much as possible,” McCain said on Fox Business. “It is a law and I have to do whatever I can to help the men and women who are serving particularly in combat cope with this new situation. I will do everything I can to make it work.”
I guess the nurse finally brought Senile, I mean Senator, Grandpa Munster his JELLO so that he’d stop yelling at the imaginary kids on his lawn. Either that or McCain has a dastardly evil anti-gay plan up his short little Napoleon like sleeve.
I think the latter.
The Curse of John McCain is far from over, at least not for 6 more years.