The Department of Defense announced yesterday that 26 recommendations from the investigation of the Fort Hood massacre would be implemented in the “near term.”  Some articles have focused on the decision to implement a DoD-wide privately owned weapon policy, but a more interesting policy change is about Chaplains (as was the related portion of the original report).

The DoD will implement a policy that “reviews” Chaplain endorsing agencies:

The Department will [include] periodic reviews of religious organizations seeking to endorse religoius ministry professionals as military chaplains.

It is not uncommon for the military to find “issues” unrelated to an original incident during an investigation, nor is it unusual for the military to attempt to fix those identified problems.  It is somewhat unusual in this high-profile case for the military to seemingly emphasize something that, according to public knowledge, had nothing to do with the massacre.  According to public information, no Chaplain or Chaplain endorsing agency had anything to do with the shooting at Fort Hood.

Interestingly, the currently approved recommendations omit the controversial finding that the military has no guidelines with which to identify “normal” religious behavior.