The nation’s top two military officials told a Senate hearing this morning that they support repeal of the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, but said they’ll need another year of study before they could recommend ways to implement a repeal.
“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, New York Times reports.
[see video clip of hearing statements at end of post]
He stressed, however, that in endorsing a repeal of the policy he was “speaking for myself and myself only”, Washington Post reports.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the committee in his opening statement, “I fully support the president's decision. The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it. We’ve received our orders from the commander in chief and are moving out accordingly.”
But he told the committee, “If legislation is passed repealing ‘don't ask don't tell', we would feel it very important that we be given some period of time for that implementation, at least a year," Reuters reports.
In his prepared remarks, Mullen said, “The chiefs and I are in complete agreement with the approach that Sec. Gates has outlined. We believe that any implementation plan for a policy permitting gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces must be carefully derived, sufficiently thorough, and thoughtfully executed.”
In a statement issued after the hearing, Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a DADT-repeal advocacy group, applauded Gates and especially Mullen for their statements to the committee, saying they have “laid out a roadmap for full repeal” of DADT.
But Sarvis said a one-year study period is “too long and unnecessary”. He said the process of repeal “must have finality”. He recommended that Congress immediately act on repeal legislation rather than waiting for another year.
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