Last year, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos became the face of the opposition to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, going so far as to argue that if Congress lifted the ban against open service and allowed gays to serve without hiding their sexual orientation, the Marines could be so distracted that they would die in the line of duty. But since President Obama signed repeal legislation on December 22, Amos has moderated his rhetoric and has even taken part in a video asking Marines to respect and accommodate the policy change.

Today, AOL’s Andrea Stone reports that Amos is further distancing himself from his past criticisms, telling reporters that repeal has not created the kind of disruptions that he (and many Republicans) had predicted:

“I haven’t had any indication yet at all, not at all,” Gen. James Amos told reporters when asked if he expected the mass exodus of troops that Sen. John McCain and other critics predicted if the ban was lifted.

Amos was visiting troops in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province when President Barack Obama signed the repeal in late December. He said he addressed some 12,000 Marines about the change and “everyone said, ‘Sir, we got it. We’re going to do this thing.‘”

Amos also said that the Marines have already started preparing the force for implementing repeal. The “training of military lawyers, counselors and chaplains began Feb. 7,” he said, noting that “the service’s three-star generals and their spouses underwent a training session recently in New Orleans.” He “expects all leaders down to company commanders and platoon sergeants to have been briefed by the middle of next month.”

Amos’s comments about the rather smooth process following repeal undermines the warnings of McCain and other Republicans, who cherry picked statistics from the Pentagon’s study of the policy to argue that hundreds of thousands would leave the force if the policy is lifted. McCain, for instance, urged against a “rush to repeal” and said that 12 percent of the military would leave the service if the policy were changed.

Last year, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos became the face of the opposition to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, going so far as to argue that if Congress lifted the ban against open service and allowed gays to serve without hiding their sexual orientation, the Marines could be so distracted that they would die in the line of duty. But since President Obama signed repeal legislation on December 22, Amos has moderated his rhetoric and has now taken part in a video asking Marines to respect and accommodate the policy change:

AMOS: Above all else we are loyal to the Constitution, our Commander in Chief, Congress, our chain of command and the American people….I want to be clear to all Marines. We will step out smartly to faithfully implement this new law. It’s important that we value the diversity, background, culture and skills of all Marines bring to the service of our nation. As we implement repeal, I want leaders at all leaders to re-emphasize the important of maintaining dignity and respect for one another throughout our force.

Watch it:

Last week, in a sign that the Defense Department is moving to accelerate the process for certifying the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates instructed the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to prepare a plan “to facilitate the timely and orderly realization” of certification by February 4, 2011. Significantly, DOD announced that it would not recognize the partners of gay servicemembers or establish a new non-discrimination policy across the armed forces.

Still, Amos’ support for an orderly implementation — the General did always stress that he would work to change the policy in an orderly fashion should Congress vote for repeal — takes the wind out of the sails of several conservative lawmakers who clung on to Amos’ remarks as a reason to preserve the policy and are now trying to slow-walk the certification process. In fact, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (R-CA) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (D-CA) both cited Amos as a reason to oppose repeal and are now backing legislation to add the service chiefs to the certification process.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos — who has opposed repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — said that if Congress lifts the ban against open service and allows gays to serve without hiding their sexual orientation, the Marines could be so distracted that they would die in the line of duty. “I don’t want to lose any Marines to distraction. I don’t want to have any Marines that I’m visiting at Bethesda (hospital) with no legs,” he said, adding “mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines’ lives. That’s the currency of this fight.”

The following day, as the House of Representatives took up the measure to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Republicans clung on to Amos’ remarks as a reason to preserve the policy. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the lead opponent of repeal in the Senate, even referenced his remarks in a radio interview:

- REP. DUNCAN HUNTER JR. (R-CA): Let me just start out by quoting Gen. Amos a couple of days ago, who is the Commandant of the Marine Corps on this issue…

- REP. BUCK McKEON (R-CA): Just yesterday, Gen. Amos made clear just how strongly he feels about the threat that he feels repeal poses to Marines in combat…

- REP. PHIL GINGREY (R-GA): The Marine Corps Commandant state that repealing the 17-year-old ban could endanger troops and cost lives.

- SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): The Commandant of the Marine Corps is unalterably opposed to repeal. He again made a statement yesterday that it could cost the lives of Marines.

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Amanda Terkel reported that McKeon went even a step further during a press availability yesterday afternoon, saying that he applauded Amos “because he has the concerns of every Marine on his mind, and he represents…240,000 Marines.” “I applaud him for his courage to speak up, and if I were a Marine out there in the front, I would sure feel good about my commander, however I felt on the issue, because he’s looking out for them, and I think that’s his constitutional responsibility, but it’s a hard thing to do,” he said.

On Wednesday, Staff Sgt. Eric Alva — a gay Marine who lost his leg in Iraq and became the first Marine to be seriously injured in the war — took issue with Amos’ remarks, saying “He pretty much spit on me, my Purple Heart, and my 13 years of service.” “I wish Obama would invite [Amos] to the White House and fire his ass on the spot,” Alva told Andrew Harmon of The Advocate.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to directly condemn the Marine Commandant’s suggestion that repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would have the effect of killing Marines in the line of duty, saying simply that the Commandant’s views are “well known.” Earlier today, Gen. James Amos — who has publicly opposed lifting the ban — said in the context of repealing the policy, “I don’t want to lose any Marines to distraction. I don’t want to have any Marines that I’m visiting at Bethesda (hospital) with no legs.”

Pressed by the Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld on whether Obama was worried about having his own appointee “constantly raising opposition to his own stated belief the the policy needed to be changed,” Gibbs simply reiterated the administration’s talking point on the issue:

GIBBS: I think the President’s views and the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff’s views and the Secretary of Defense’s views are fairly well known. I think the President as Commander in Chief has a strong viewpoint. I think backed up by the survey conducted by the Pentagon as to the attitude of the men and women in our military that this can be done in a way that strengthens our national security, preserves the best fighting force in the world, and most importantly, does away with a policy that he doesn’t think is just.

ELEVELD: I mean, the Commandant is continually challenging the assumptions of the Commander in Chief…

GIBBS: No, I mean, look, I think their views are very well known, just as the Commander in Chief’s views are very well known. I think if you look at the Commander in Chief, the head of the Pentagon, and the head of the Joint Chiefs, you’ll find unanimity in the belief that it’s time to do away with this policy and that’s exactly what the President is working to do.

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Conversely, repeal advocates have strongly condemned Amos’ statement. “General Amos needs to fall in line and salute or resign now,” Aubrey Sarvis, Army veteran and executive director for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said in a statement. “He implied that repeal will lead to Marines losing their legs in combat. Those fear tactics are not in the interest of any service member.” Alexander Nicholson of Servicemebers United also noted that Amos’ comment “reflects very poorly on DOD and on the administration.”

Speaking to reporters this afternoon, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos — who has opposed repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — suggested that if Congress lifts the ban against open service and allows gays to serve without hiding their sexual orientation, the Marines could be so distracted that they would die in the line of duty:

The chief of the US Marine Corps said Tuesday that ending a ban on openly gay troops in the military could jeopardize the lives of Marines in combat by undermining closely knit units.

General James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps and an opponent of lifting the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” prohibition, cited a Pentagon study saying Marines fighting in Afghanistan were worried that permitting gays to serve openly could disrupt “unit cohesion.”

“When your life hangs on a line, on the intuitive behavior of the young man… who sits to your right and your left, you don’t want anything distracting you,” Amos told reporters at the Pentagon.

“I don’t want to lose any Marines to distraction. I don’t want to have any Marines that I’m visiting at Bethesda (hospital) with no legs,” he said.

He added that “mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines’ lives. That’s the currency of this fight.”

His comments were the toughest yet on the issue, after he testified at a congressional hearing that he opposed lifting the ban at a time of war.

Amos said Marines fighting in Afghanistan sent a “very strong message” in the Pentagon’s recent study, expressing opposition to the repealing the ban in an survey.

“I have to listen to that,” he said.

The study did reveal that Marines are most opposed to repealing the measure, but nowhere did it suggest that the distraction of gay servicemembers would have the effect of killing their straight counterparts. What it found was that 47.2% of Marines said a repeal of DADT would have a negative impact and were more likely to say their morale would be negatively affected by repeal than other Service members. Ninety-two percent of servicemembers also said they were fine with working with their gay colleagues, including 84% in Marine combat arms units.

As the study’s co-chairs explained during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, the negative findings were not insurmountable, and that with the proper leadership and communication, the policy could be repealed without undermining unit cohesion. In fact, both Gates and Mullen argued that if Congress doesn’t move forward with repeal, the courts will likely rule the policy unconstitutional and force the military to end the ban without providing any time for a smooth implementation process.

The study’s co-chairs also explained that the Marines’ more negative reaction was partly the result of their relative inexperience with gay servicemembers. Here is how Army Gen. Carter F. Ham put it to me shortly after the report was released:

One of the factors that causes a difference in the Army and the Marine Corps combat arms responses when compared to the overall responses is that we find in those two communities, Army and Marine Corps combat arms, — and this is probably unsurprising — that those communities have lower rates of actual experience of having served alongside a gay or lesbian servicemember. They’re all male organizations. They are the youngest communities, if you will, within the military. So you know, it’s not really surprising that they have less actual experience serving with gay and lesbian servicemembers. We did find in the survey that there is a difference between servicemembers who have and those who have not served with gay and lesbian servicemembers. And I think this may be one of the significant contributors to the differences between combat arms responses and the force overall.

Amos should not be worried about the “distraction” of gay servicemembers. The real distraction is a policy which denies gay Marines the right to confide in their straight comrades as they’re dealing with the difficulties of deployment.

This week, Cindy McCain caused a stir when she seemingly broke with her husband, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), on the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy when she appeared in an ad calling for repealing the ban on gays serving openly. As the ranking GOP member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. McCain has led Republican opposition to repealing DADT, so his wife’s high-profile call for repeal was noteworthy, especially considering that the Senate may take up the policy during the lame duck session of Congress, which begins tomorrow.

Cindy McCain later walked back her stance, saying she actually supports her husband’s position on DADT, which has for years been that he will “defer to our military commanders.” McCain has always said he will reconsider his stance on DADT “the day that the leadership of the military comes to [me]” and says it should be overturned. Yet, when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to McCain in February announcing they were in favor of repealing DADT, McCain invented a new condition — the completion of a study the Pentagon is conducting looking into the repercussions of repealing DADT.

Last month, reports surfaced that the study had found that a majority of American servicemembers would not object to serving alongside openly gay troops. Then this week, sources familiar with the study, which is to be released in December, told the Washington Post that the study had concluded that repealing DADT will not disrupt the military during a time of war. But appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press today, McCain yet again moved the goal posts, deploying his latest stumbling block to repeal. The problem? The study McCain demanded is now not good enough:

MR. GREGORY: That said, seven in 10 members of the military think it would be just fine to have it lifted.

SEN. McCAIN: Yeah. You and I have not seen that study. And this study was directed at how to implement the repeal, not whether the repeal should take place or not. But, very importantly, we have people like the commandant of the Marine Corps, the three other–all four service chiefs are saying we need a thorough and complete study of the effects–not how to implement a repeal, but the effects on morale and battle effectiveness. That’s what I want. And once we get this study, we need to have hearings, and we need to examine it, and we need to look at whether it’s the kind of study that we wanted. It isn’t, in my view, because I wanted a study to determine the effects of the repeal on battle effectiveness and morale. What this study is, is designed to do is, is to find out how the repeal could be implemented. Those are two very different aspects of this issue.

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“McCain seems to be saying he wants a do-over because he doesn’t like the findings and recommendations in the Pentagon report going to Secretary Gates,” the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a gay rights legal group which works to end DADT, said in a statement responding to McCain today. “In other words, McCain is telling the Pentagon: Keep working until you produce the outcome I’m looking for.”

Despite what McCain might think, the military has confidence in the quality of its study. Even the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Amos, to whom McCain refers during the Meet the Press interview, disagrees with McCain on the study. In September, during Amos’ confirmation hearings, McCain tried to get Amos to cast doubt on the study. But Amos rebuffed McCain, saying he was confident in it. And despite the fact that he personally opposes repealing DADT, Amos expressed no reservations about enforcing a new policy, saying, “If this policy is changed. The last thing you’re going to see your Marine Corps do is try to step in and push it aside. That will simply not be the case.”

Gen. James Amos, the new commandant of the Marine Corps, told reporters on Saturday “that he was concerned about a possible loss of unit cohesion and combat readiness if the ban is overturned“:

“There’s risk involved; I’m trying to determine how to measure that risk,” Gen. James Amos said. “This is not a social thing. This is combat effectiveness. That’s what the country pays its Marines to do.” [...]

Amos said the policy’s repeal may have unique consequences for the Marines, which is exempt from a Defense Department rule for troops to have private living quarters except at basic training or officer candidate schools. The Marines puts two people in each room to promote a sense of unity.

“There is nothing more intimate than young men and young women – and when you talk of infantry, we’re talking our young men – laying out, sleeping alongside of one another and sharing death, fear and loss of brothers,” he said. “I don’t know what the effect of that will be on cohesion. I mean, that’s what we’re looking at. It’s unit cohesion, it’s combat effectiveness.”

Amos registered his personal opposition to repealing the ban during his confirmation hearing in September, but stressed that the Pentagon’s review of the policy would inform the military about how best to implement a repeal and allow the Marines Corp to change the policy “smartly.”

Countering Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) argument that the Pentagon’s study won’t tell military leaders if repeal would undermine military effectiveness, Amos insisted that “at the end of the day, when all of this information comes to whoever is the 35th Commandant of the Marine Corps in December….will be able to give his best military advise on that.” “If this policy is changed. The last thing you’re going to see your Marine Corps do is try to step in and push it aside. That will simply not be the case,” Amos added. “There will be issues, we’re going to work through them.”

He also said, “If you step away from the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell there are lots of things that go on today in the American military that the average Marine out there might not agree with. But the one thing we have in the Marine Corp is we got discipline and we got leadership and those are the two things that are I think the one thing that’s going to carry they day for us should the law get changed.”

Significantly, many foreign military leaders raised so-called “proximity” issue — which was echoed by Amos’ predecessor Gen. Conway — before allowing open service within their forces. Once gays were allowed to serve openly, however, they found that “the presence of gay peers has no bearing on unit social cohesion.”

As the Senate prepares to vote on cloture for the Defense Authorization Bill, Senators from both sides of the aisle used Gen. James Amos’ confirmation hearings to become the Marine Corps’ 35th Commandant, to pepper Amos about repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Amos admitted that he personally opposes repealing DADT, but stressed that the Pentagon’s review of the policy would inform the military about how best to implement a repeal and allow the Marines Corp to change the policy “smartly.”

During one particularly heated exchange with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Amos rebuffed the GOP’s argument that those who disagree with repeal would be silenced or chased out of the service:

SESSIONS: I want to know if you think it’s appropriate leadership position of the military if this policy is adopted to not allow people to have different views and for them to get out of the military.

AMOS: If you step away from the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell there are lots of things that go on today in the American military that the average Marine out there might not agree with. But the one thing we have in the Marine Corp is we got discipline and we got leadership and those are the two things that are I think the one thing that’s going to carry they day for us should the law get changed. But there has never been a gag order, and I don’t anticipate one being put on the Marines. …I don’t see that that would be an issue….We have plenty of marines out there when marines disagree, and they disagree vocally.

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Amos also countered Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) argument that the Pentagon’s study won’t tell military leaders if repeal would undermine military effectiveness, insisting that “at the end of the day, when all of this information comes to whoever is the 35th Commandant of the Marine Corps in December….will be able to give his best military advise on that.”

“If this policy is changed. The last thing you’re going to see your Marine Corps do is try to step in and push it aside. That will simply not be the case,” Amos said. “There will be issues, we’re going to work through them.”