Out Massachusetts lawmaker Barney Frank thinks Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ proposed year-long review of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell policy” is nothing but a delay.  Rep. Frank told Michelangelo Signorile in a radio interview on Friday that if Congress has any hope of repealing DADT in 2010 – as Obama has instructed – then the review needs to be shortened.

“As quickly as we can do this it will be toward the end of the year,” Frank shouted to Signorile, “so Gates has plenty of time to study whatever the hell he wants to study.”

Frank also went after Sen. John McCain in the interview, who has joined ranks with popular Republican opinion that lifting the policy could disrupt unit cohesion as we engage in two wars.

“And that John McCain…I think the last vestiges that John McCain is an independent guy ready to resist the right wing should be buried,” said Frank.

The Hill reports:

President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union address he backs a repeal of the policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen also said be backs ending the policy at a hearing on Capitol Hill this week because it is “the right thing to do.”

Gates also said he backs a repeal, but he announced a year-long Pentagon review of the policy this week intended to intended to identify how the military would implement the policy without disrupting unit cohesion.

The move answers Republican complaints that lifting the ban on openly gay service members could ruin the camaraderie among soldiers in the field. Some Republicans have also said that now is the wrong time to nix “Don’t ask, don’t tell” because the military is engaged in two wars.