Defense Secretary Gates to announce changes to ban on gays in military

By GottaLaff

Incremental steps to end Don't Ask Don't Tell just don't seem like enough. And on top of that, it's always "tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow..."

Yes, I know, I know, but can't we just do this already?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is close to announcing changes in the way the Department of Defense enforces the law that bans openly gay people from serving in the military. [...]

Gates will address “the changes that he is going to be making to the department's policy to provide for a more humane enforcement and application of the law,” Morrell said.

Gates directed the Pentagon’s legal counsel in February to explore ways to relax enforcement of the law commonly known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

"Change. Relax. Provide for more humane enforcement."

Here's a word he didn't use: Repeal.

Let's please use that word a.s.a.p.

"Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It's etched in stone."

By GottaLaff

Period. End of sentence. No two ways about it. Done deal. For suresies. And that's final:

Chip Reid asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs if senators were correct calling the July 2011 date for beginning to withdrawal troops from Afghanistan a "target," meaning there was some wiggle room.

Writes Reid: "After the briefing, Gibbs went to the president for clarification. Gibbs then called me to his office to relate what the president said. The president told him it IS locked in -- there is no flexibility. Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It's etched in stone. Gibbs said he even had the chisel."

And throw away the key, er, etcher. So there.

McChrystal: End of war "Sometime before 2013.”

By GottaLaff

Via Spencer Ackerman: Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican congressman from Colorado, asked Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, "At what point will we begin to draw down?”

According to Coffman, McChrystal responded: “Sometime before 2013.”

How long until he either denies or backtracks? And how long until that quote is twisted, turned, convoluted, wrung out, misinterpreted, hung upside down, pulled inside out, and generally parsed to death by all sides?

Momentum building against Don't Ask, Don't Tell

By GottaLaff

DADT is ridiculous. How ridiculous is it? This ridiculous:

Gays already serve in integrated units. Twenty countries, including our allies Canada, Britain and Israel, allow gays to serve openly, and at times their troops serve with ours in integrated units. Nor is there a ban on openly gay contractors working with the military. Today, the U.S. stands embarrassingly alone in maintaining this costly fiction. [...]

Obama maintains that Congress should overturn the law rather than his doing so by executive order, and he's right. That way, a President Romney or, say, President Palin could not reinstate "don't ask, don't tell" with his or her own stroke of the pen. [...] But this is not 1993. Then, about 44% of Americans favored allowing gays to serve openly; last year, a Washington Post/ABC News poll put that number at 75%. And support is bipartisan: 64% of Republicans support a repeal.

The public is ready. The president should lead, and Congress should act.