Gates: DADT repeal needs to happen before new Congress is seated
No sh*t, Bob. This is what the Secretary of Defenses said about the upcoming lame duke session.
“I would like to see the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ but I’m not sure what the prospects for that are. And we’ll just have to see.”
— to reporters aboard a U.S. military aircraft shortly before landing in Australia for annual bilateral talks.
He sure hasn’t been urgent about the matter until the whole political house of cards fell down last week, and of course the remote chance of passage makes it easy to say this now.
Unless the lame-duck Congress acts, the repeal effort is considered dead for now.
The current, Democratic-controlled Congress has not acted to lift the ban, which President Barack Obama promised to eliminate. In his postelection news conference Wednesday, Obama said there would be time to repeal the ban in December or early January, after the military completes a study of the effects of repeal on the front lines and at home.
With Republicans taking control of the House in January, and with larger margins in the Senate, supporters of lifting the ban predict it will be much more difficult.
Meanwhile, there wasn’t any comment from the President; he was hard at work abroad…
