don’t ask don’t tell

Ben Smith has the details:
The White House, I’m told, will today announce that it’s filling the key Pentagon slot for the implementation — or repeal — of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which bars open gays and lesbians from serving in the military.
The appointment of retired Marine General Clifford Stanley as Under Secretary of Defense for [...]

Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.) is before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning for his confirmation hearing to become secretary of the Army. He began by saying his “first priority” is to alleviate the pressures on a “force fatigued by some eight years of uninterrupted combat.” Interestingly, he doesn’t include in his opening statement a [...]

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the National Press Club, is asked about drone strikes and civilian casualties in Afghanistan. “Don’t think in the history of counterinsurgency you can win by killing civilians who live there.” Specifically endorses Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s metric of “the number of Afghan citizens we protect … civilian [...]

Curious choice of words from Defense Secretary Bob Gates yesterday on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He’s talking about how to deal with the law-slash-regulation in advance of attempts to overturn it, as President Obama reiterated was his intention last week:
And so one of the things we’re looking at is is there flexibility in how we [...]

Kevin Drum notes — via Matt Yglesias — that there’s a really overwhelming margin for junking the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law that’s kept out gays out of the military. A recent Gallup poll found that 69 percent of all respondents supported a person’s right to serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation, up [...]