During today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on repealing the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen for supporting the repeal of DADT without first conducting an exhaustive review of the policy or consulting with Congress.

“And so your statement is one that is clearly biased, without the view of Congress being taken into consideration,” McCain said. “I’m happy to say we still have a Congress of the United States that would have to pass a law to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, despite your efforts to repeal it in many respects by fiat”:

I’m deeply disappointed in your statement…Your statement is ‘question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it.’ It would be far more appropriate, I say with great respect, to determine whether repealing this law is appropriate and what effects it would have on the readiness and effectiveness of the military before deciding on whether we should repeal the law or not and fortunately it is an act of Congress and it requires the agreement of Congress in order to repeal it.

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McCain’s harsh dismissal of Gates and Mullen contradicts his previous commitment to consider repealing the policy at their request. In October of 2006, for instance, McCain explained that he understood the arguments against repealing DADT, but promised that “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.”

But today, McCain refused to “consider seriously” repealing the law, arguing that the Pentagon should not change policies in the middle of two wars. The logic of course, makes little sense, and something McCain himself may have rejected in October of 2006. It’s particularly during times of war, when the military is stretched thin and is asking its members to fight for freedoms in distant lands that it should grant all of its soldiers the right to be who they are. As Mullen put it, “No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

Mullen admitted that the military had not conduced a review of the policy but also said that he hasn’t been any research showing that openly gay members undercut military moral. Instead, Mullen pointed to studies that concluded that ending the policy would not hurt military preparedness and cited personal conversations with nations that have fully integrated their forces. “I have talk talked to several of my counterparts in countries whose militaries allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, and there has been as they have told me, no impact on military effectiveness,” Mullen said. “I have served with homosexuals since 1968,” he added. “Everyone in the military has.”

At the hearing, Gates called for a review of DADT and suggested that it may take up to two years to implement a full repeal. Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) also suggested that this year, “what’s more likely than repeal…is a moratorium” on discharges. “I think [it's] a more likely prospect because of the study,” Levin said.

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Spurred by President Obama’s pledge to “work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country,” the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing this afternoon to unveil the Pentagon’s initial plans to abolish the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy (DADT). Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen are expected to announce that the Defense Department “will not take action to discharge service members whose sexual orientation is revealed by third parties or jilted partners” and establish “a special investigation into how and when to repeal the long-standing 1993 law.” “Their review is expected to look at several sensitive issues, including whether the military should extend marriage and bereavement benefits to the partners of gay soldiers,” the Hill is reporting:

But that upcoming inquiry — and, ultimately, the end of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” ban — could take years to complete, officials have recently suggested…Their inquiry seems to be an attempt to assuage military leaders’ fears that an end to “Don’t ask, don’t tell” could jeopardize the U.S. military during war time. However, activists alike fear an actual repeal may still be years away. The delay seems to be the result of general reluctance among military leaders to end the policy, and trepidation on the part of lawmakers to broach the issue ahead of what is sure to be a tough midterm election year.

While the new standard for DADT investigations could signal “a shift in the military’s focus toward keeping gay troops, reflecting the military’s belief that they are as essential as their heterosexual peers,” the Pentagon’s slow crawl towards repealing the policy suggests that any changes to the law would be incremental — driven by the military’s resistance to change rather than military necessity or consideration.

After all, numerous studies as well as real world experience in Canada, Britain, France and Israel have already concluded that rapid integration “minimizes disruptions to unit cohesion and morale.” A 1993 Rand Corporation report found that “implementing gay service that stated that openly gay service was entirely workable, but that a successful new policy must be “decided upon and implemented as quickly as possible” to avoid anxiety and uncertainty in the field. It said it was crucial “to convey a new policy that ends discrimination as simply as possible and to impose the minimum of changes on personnel.”

Last year, a RAND survey of military personnel who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan “found that having a gay or lesbian colleague in their unit had no significant impact on their unit’s cohesion or readiness.” “Service members said the most important factors for unit cohesion and readiness were the quality of their officers, training and equipment,” not their sexual orientation. “Serving with another service member who was gay or lesbian was not a significant factor that affected unit cohesion or readiness to fight,” the study found.

As John Aravosis notes, “There is no reason the White House can’t work with the Congress to repeal the ban this year, and simply delay implementation of the repeal until next year when the “study” is done.”

Ideally, the Pentagon could conduct its review while simultaneously dismantling the policy. The committee should pressure the Pentagon to expedite the review process and can even require the reviewers to produce bimonthly progress reports. A review that’s concurrent with the repeal process would prevent the military brass from dragging its feet and meet the President’s goal of repealing DADT before the end of the year. In today’s POLITICO, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) suggested that the military should be “sensitive to any complications of this policy shift” and urged “those who favor change not to mistake deliberation for undue delay.”