Mike Levin: “the amendment before us goes beyond the amendment which we considered yesterday. Yesterday, there was a debate on an…”

“the amendment before us goes beyond the amendment which we considered yesterday. Yesterday, there was a debate on an amendment of Senator Brownback which related to the question of barracks. The amendment before us today revisits that issue, and I will come to that in a moment. It goes beyond that to require segregated training for our recruits. This is not a pure revisit of yesterday's amendment that was offered by the Senator from Kansas. We are now talking about both the barracks issue and the requirement in the Byrd amendment for segregated training. Now, our top uniformed officials have written us strongly opposing this amendment. In a moment I am going to read from the letter of the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Reimer, who wrote to Strom Thurmond, our great chairman, on May 19, about this issue. But before I quote from his letter, I want to emphasize that what we are being told here is not a matter of political correctness; this is a question of a commander's responsibilities that General Reimer is talking to us about. And this is what General Reimer wrote: The company commanders of the training companies are responsible for everything their units do or fail to do. Segregating their units-- Segregating their units-- into gender-unique platoons for training and billeting the soldiers by gender in separate buildings will degrade the commander's ability to command and control his or her unit.…”