While Defense Secretary Robert Gates took a somewhat neutral stance, saying to "keep the impact it will have on our forces firmly in mind," others, such as Admiral Mike Mullen stated it is "the right thing to do."
On May 10t, 2009, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. John McCain about his views. McCain then sided with the program:
But in all due respect, right now the military is functioning extremely well in very difficult conditions. We have to have an assessment on recruitment, on retention and all the other aspects of the impact on our military if we change the policy. In my view, and I know that a lot of people don’t agree with that, the policy has been working and I think it’s been working well.You can look at one extreme - slavery worked really well for the South, so why should America have changed it's policy regarding slavery?
According to a Think Progress article from last year, don't ask, don't tell "has resulted in the discharge of more than 13,000 military personnel across the services, including approximately 800 with skills deemed 'mission critical,' such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists. According to a 2005 report from the Government Accountability Office, 'the cost of discharging and replacing service members fired because of their sexual orientation during the policy’s first 10 years totaled at least $190.5 million — roughly $20,000 per discharged service member.'"
Maybe McCain is not the fiscal conservative we all thought him to be?!
Read here to see McCain's reversal from a couple years ago, which shows that McCain is only pandering to the tea party...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please share your thoughts and experiences in relation to this post. Remember to be respectful in your posting. Comments that that are deemed inappropriate will be deleted.