"Leadership" in the Marines

Via Joe.My.God. (and not a few other sources), a report on the latest horseshit from Gen. James Amos, Commandant of the U.S. Marines.

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."

Ya wanna do some parsing? How about this interpretation:

"The Marines under my command are not mature enough nor dedicated enough to accomplish their missions. Nor are they capable of concentrating on the mission at hand. Their training isn't good enough to insure that they can perform their duties. And I am not a strong enough leader to implement a change in this policy."

That's what it sounds like to me.

At this point, taking this at face value would be a serious mistake. And I'm not the only one calling him on it:

Servicemembers United executive director Alex Nicholson, meanwhile, said in a statement that Amos's "commentary is moving from the realm of reasonable disagreement in the provision of professional military advice to hysteria-inducing absurdity on this topic that reflects very poorly on DOD and on the administration."

The commander-in-chief should have already had this joker's balls nailed above the door of the Oval Office.