Well, as we head into a Senate debate over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, it looks like the Republicans have their talking points all ironed out. As reported by Petey2, Lindsey Graham went on Fox News Sunday and said the push for DADT repeal is “all politics,” while predicting Senate Republicans would be united against repeal. He seemed to be parroting the leader of the anti-repeal crowd, John McCain, who appeared on CNN and made this extraordinary claim:
The fact is, this was a political promise made by an inexperienced President or candidate for Presidency of the United States.
McCain’s painfully obvious bitterness over the 2008 election aside, it seems clear that the GOP – running out of ammo now that the majority of Democrats, Republicans, independents, and service members do not have a problem with gays serving in the military – is going to rally around this “it’s just Obama pushing his politics” talking point. Because we all know how adamant President Obama has been in fighting DADT. The administration waited until the last minute to “push” repeal because that $4.5 million study to determine what we all knew in the first place was so important. Discharges continue. Opportunities to end the policy via the courts have been passed up. Yeah, Obama is clearly 100% devoted to this “political” agenda.
We wish.
But the latest Republican talking point is not in the least bit surprising. Nor is anything else McCain said on CNN surprising. Nor is the fact that the CNN host pretty much let McCain lie without challenging him surprising. This is the DADT debate, in a nutshell. We have one side armed with facts, logic, and reason – not to mention a dedication to civil equality. The other side just lies. Not only do they lie, but they go on national television and lie, completely unchallenged. And the hosts just sit back like what these assholes are saying is completely reasonable, totally legitimate.
Here’s an example of the lies McCain spewed on CNN:
There was no uprising in the military. There were no problems in the military with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ ... It’s called ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ OK? If you don’t ask them, you don’t ask somebody, and they don’t tell.
Bullshit. He’s been called out on this before. But the last time that happened, he freaked out, remember?
John McCain may not care, but the fact is that gay and lesbian service members can be discharged, even if they don’t “tell.” Ask Mike Almy:
During my time in Iraq, the Air Force restricted access to all private email
accounts. As such, we were authorized to use our work email accounts for personal or
morale purposes. Shortly after I left Iraq and had returned to Germany, someone in the
unit that replaced mine did a routine search of our computer files for continuity materials
and found my personal emails, written from a combat zone to family and friends,
including a person I had dated. Some of these emails were forwarded to my
commander. In Iraq, during the height of the insurgency, someone in the Air Force
ordered a search of my private emails solely to determine if I had violated “Don't Ask,
Don't Tell”, and to gather whatever evidence could be used against me.
After my unit had been back in Germany for about six weeks, my commander
called me into his office and demanded I give him an explanation of the emails. I
refused to discuss them because I considered them personal and private. I told him I
would not make a statement until I had first consulted with a lawyer. I was relieved of
my duties, leading nearly 200 Airmen, my security clearance was suspended and part of
my pay was terminated. Even as my commander was relieving me of my duties, he
assured me this was in no way a reflection of my performance or my abilities as an
officer.
Then we have this lie, which McCain also told, unchallenged, on CNN:
The military is at its highest point in recruitment and retention and professionalism and capability, so to somehow allege that this policy has been damaging the military is simply false.
Once again...no! On this, McCain is also full of shit. A study by the Palm Center reports, in great detail, the very real costs of this failed policy. A few excerpts from the study:
According to GAO, 757 troops with “critical occupations” were fired under the policy between fiscal years 1994 and 2003. These included voice interceptors, interrogators, translators, explosive ordnance disposal specialists, signal intelligence analysts, and missile and cryptologic technicians.
[…]
The military has also expelled hundreds of other gay troops with additional needed skills: 268 in intelligence, 57 in combat engineering, 331 in medical treatment, 255 in administration, 292 in transportation, 232 in military police and security, and 420 in supply and logistics
between 1998 and 2003. It also ousted 49 nuclear, biological and chemical warfare experts; 52 missile guidance and control operators; and 150 rocket, missile and other artillery specialists.
According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, an additional 41,000 qualified gay Americans might join the military if the ban were lifted, and an additional 4,000 personnel might remain in uniform each year if they could do so without having to lie about their identities.
To fill recruitment shortfalls as the wars in the Middle East wore on, the Pentagon in 2004 began issuing mandatory recalls to thousands of troops for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s recalls targeted specialists with needed skills in intelligence, engineering, medicine, administration, transportation, and security, the very same areas that were being drained by the discharge of capable gay and lesbian troops. The military could have avoided these involuntary recalls if it had not previously expelled competent gay troops in the very same fields: from 1998-2003 the military recalled 72 soldiers in communication and navigation but expelled 115 gay troops in that category; 33 in operational intelligence but expelled 50 gays; 33 in combat operations control but expelled 106.
Since DADT was implemented, more than two thousand high schools have sought to deny military recruiters access to students or student information largely as a result of opposition to the discriminatory
policy. The Pentagon acknowledged that in just one year, high schools barred military officials from recruiting on campus more than 19,000 times. The military’s constrained ability to recruit on campuses made it
harder to fill shortfalls, and contributed to the reduced standards of incoming troops.
In February 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that found that during its first ten years, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy cost the military $190.5 million: $95.4 million to recruit replacements for service members separated under the policy and $95.1 million to train them.
[…]
In response to the GAO report, the Palm Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara organized a Blue Ribbon Commission to study the GAO’s report. The Commission comprised high-level military officials
and academic experts in military affairs and finance. The Commission found that errors in GAO’s methodology, including its failure to include length-of-training data and its misrepresentation of cost-of-training data, led
to both over- and under-estimations of the total cost of implementing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” When these over and under-estimations were reconciled, the Commission found that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy cost the Pentagon at least $363.8 million to implement during its first ten years, or 91 percent more than originally reported by GAO. Because the Commission used conservative assumptions, even these finding should be seen as a lower-bound estimate.
According to a 1992 GAO report, there were 16,919 discharges for homosexual conduct between 1980 and 1990, with replacement costs totaling $498,555,244. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has applied those annualized costs to the Pentagon’s discharge figures for 1991, 1992, and 1993, thereby bringing the total cost of replacing lost troops between 1980 and 1993 to over $567 million. That puts the total cost of enforcing the policy since 1980, when President Carter’s service-wide gay ban went into effect, at over $1 billion, keeping in mind that this figure is certainly an underestimation, since, as the GAO report points out, the calculations do not include several relevant administrative and legal costs of enforcing the policy.
Yet, in spite of all of that, John McCain still claims DADT “is working.” Watch the whole video clip for yourself (Warning – Watching may cause a strong urge to punch/throw your monitor/laptop):
I’d like to see his rant as nothing more than the homophobic ramblings of a bitter Presidential hopeful, but it’s safe to say he has most Senate Republicans behind him. These people were never interested in lifting a discriminatory policy. But they’re obviously also not interested in facts. All they’re interested in is keeping DADT in place, regardless of the tangible harm it causes, regardless of the wishes of military leadership, regardless of what the American people want, regardless of the fact that the members of the military themselves overwhelmingly don't care about the sexual orientation of their fellow soldiers.
John McCain and his anti-gay posse seem to be a lost cause. It appears that the only hope for the repeal of DADT lies in a handful of Senate Republicans not yet (visibly, at least) kicked into line by McCain (and a few key Democrats). Let’s keep the pressure on:
Harry Reid (D-NV)
(202) 224-3542
Susan Collins (R-ME)
(202) 224-2523
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
202-224-5344
John Ensign (R-NV)
(202) 224-6244
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
(202) 224-6665
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
(202) 224-3324
Richard Lugar (R-IN)
(202) 224-4814
Kit Bond (R-MO)
(202) 224-5721
Scott Brown (R-MA)
(202) 224-4543
George Voinovich (R-OH)
(202) 224-3353
Mark Kirk (R-IL)
202-225-4835
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
(202) 224-2353
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
(202) 224-4843
Evan Bayh (D-IN)
202-224-5623
Jim Webb (D-VA)
202-224-4024
Joe Manchin (D-WV)
202-224-3954