But Mother Jones points out, the defense authorization bill has about 3,500 other provisions — many of them important changes to the agenda for the Department of Defense.

It’s worth reading the full list, but here are a few notable provisions:

Revamping US Military and Foreign Policy

• No permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
• Report on long-term costs of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
• National Military Strategic Plan to Counter Iran.

Anti-Corruption

• Standards and certification for private security contractors.
• Inclusion of bribery in disclosure requirements of the Federal awardee performance and integrity information system.

Environmental Progress

• Report identifying hybrid or electric propulsion systems and other fuel-saving technologies for incorporation into tactical motor vehicles.

Senators said they will have to eventually pass the bill — it just may be in a lame duck session. The Senate has passed a defense authorization bill for the past 48 years.

“We have to proceed to consider the defense authorization bill, because our military needs it,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said yesterday. “We need it for authorization of critical military equipment for our troops to fight on our behalf. … We’ve got to take this bill up, it’s our national responsibility.”

It’s unlikely Harry Reid would again attempt to attach the DREAM Act to the bill, but the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell amendment will be an issue in the future. It was added by the Senate Armed Services Committee and is already a part of the defense authorization bill.

That does not mean the repeal would kill the bill in the future, though. Under different debate rules, Republicans could offer an amendment striking the repeal from the defense authorization bill. And it could find additional support: Some Republicans, such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) have said they would vote in support of the repeal, even though they voted to filibuster the bill moving to the Senate floor yesterday.

Efforts to add the DREAM Act to the defense authorization bill failed Tuesday when Republicans filibustered the bill. (Mark Samala/ZUMApress.com)

Senate Republicans filibustered the defense authorization bill Tuesday afternoon, ending a push by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to pass the DREAM Act, which would provide legal status to some undocumented immigrants in exchange for school or military service, and a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as amendments to the legislation.

The defense authorization bill has been passed for the past 48 consecutive years. It failed to move to the Senate floor today in a 56-43 vote, with no “yea” votes by Republicans.

The main argument marshaled against continuing with the defense bill was that both a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal and the DREAM Act have too little relevance to defense. But both proposals have major implications for those who serve — or wish to serve — in the military. A repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, without fear their sexual orientation would lead to discharge from the military. The DREAM Act would allow illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to earn legal status by serving in the military or attending two years of college, providing what many have said would be a needed boost for military recruitment.

After the filibuster, Reid said he will continue to push for the DREAM Act, which was originally proposed in 2001 by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) — who voted against bringing the defense authorization bill to the floor today. The DREAM Act has come up several times since 2001 but only went to a vote as a standalone bill once, in 2007. Although he did not specify a timeline, Reid said today the act is not dead.

“We’re going to vote on the DREAM Act, it’s just a question of when,” Reid said after the filibuster. “This isn’t the end of this. We’re going to continue to move on.”

The vote was a major disappointment to immigration reform advocates and GLBT rights supporters. Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said in a statement the senators “who led and supported the filibuster effort should be ashamed.”

Mary Giovagnoli, director of Immigration Policy Center, told TWI the vote showed “a lack of leadership” by Republican senators. “This was clearly putting procedural wrangling and partisan politics over social issues that are clearly something the American public wants action on,” she said.

Democrats needed at least one Republican to vote to move forward with the bill to stop a Republican filibuster. But procedural squabbles deterred Republicans from voting for the legislation, arguing that Reid was denying them the chance to amend the bill.

Reid previously said he would allow only three amendments: a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; the DREAM Act; and an amendment to ban the practice of placing “secret holds” on presidential nominees.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeatedly quoted a floor statement by Reid last Thursday, when Reid said he was “willing to work with Republicans on a process that will permit the Senate to consider these matters and complete the bill as soon as possible.”

But Republicans argued the short timetable before a pre-election recess would prevent them from adding enough amendments. Two moderate Republicans who Democrat leaders hoped would vote for moving forward with the bill, Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, decided to vote against cloture for this reason.

“I will defend the right of my colleagues to offer amendments on this issue and other issues that are being brought up in connection with the defense authorization bill,” Collins said this morning. “They need to have a civil, fair and open debate on the Senate floor.”

To that end, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed a motion to move to debating the bill only if Democrats would agree that none of the first 20 amendments would relate to immigration — effectively killing off the chance that Reid could add the DREAM Act to the defense authorization bill. He also tried to get Reid to agree to allow Republicans and Democrats to offer amendments in an alternating order. “We should start work on this bill and tackle the unrelated issues later,” McConnell said. Reid objected and brought the bill to a vote.

Many Republicans’ arguments against moving the bill to the floor were rooted in their opposition to a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal or to the DREAM Act. Some Republicans also argued a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would be inappropriate, because the Department of Defense has not yet completed its review of how the policy would impact the military. The proposed amendment would have remained pending until review was completed and submitted to the president, secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Opponents of the DREAM Act also relied on the argument that it did not belong in the defense authorization bill to begin with. “We’ve opposed the DREAM Act on its merits and we were certainly opposed to the use of the military authorization bill as a vehicle to reward people who are in the country illegally,” Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the pro-enforcement group FAIR, told TWI after the vote.

But the DREAM Act has supporters in the defense community. The Department of Defense’s Strategic Plan for the 2010 to 2012 fiscal years recommends passage of the DREAM Act as a way to help the military “shape and maintain a mission-ready All Volunteer Force.”

Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a retired general, encouraged Republicans to vote for the DREAM Act during an appearance on Meet the Press Sunday. “We can’t be anti-immigration,” Powell said. “Immigrants are fueling this country. Without immigrants, America would be like Europe or Japan with an aging population and no young people coming in to take care of it. We have to educate our immigrants. The DREAM Act is one way to do that.”

Moving forward, immigrant rights advocates said they will continue to pressure Senators to support the DREAM Act, whether it be as a standalone bill or an amendment to another piece of legislation.

“This isn’t lost,” Juan Escalante, a spokesperson for The DREAM is Coming, told TWI. “We’re going to push Senator Reid to make sure the DREAM Act happens in another way.”

Gen. David Petraeus testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. (Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com)

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday on strategy for the war in Afghanistan, a discussion of the Obama administration’s approach to securing the southern Afghan city of Kandahar — a crucial test for the escalated war — was overshadowed by a partisan dispute over the meaning of the administration’s July 2011 “inflection point” for transferring security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

[Security1] Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, and Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, two architects of the administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, told incredulous Republican senators on the committee that the rate of troop reductions after July 2011 will be “determined by conditions” on the ground, a formulation repeated by Petraeus at least five times during the three-hour hearing. Both Petraeus and Flournoy expressed confidence that the Afghan government understands the American desire for a “long-term relationship” with Afghanistan long after the United States withdraws the bulk of its troops, providing specific commitments to Afghan security, governance and economic development over the “next five to ten years,” as Flournoy put it.

But several Republicans on the panel expressed dismay that the administration set a date to begin security transfers, and argued that establishing it created confusion in the region over the United States’ commitment to waging the war, including within Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said it was unwise for the administration to leave the impression, in the reported words of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, that the date is “etched in stone,” since McCain said Afghan government officials have told him the date makes them doubt the administration’s resolve.

Yet Petraeus affirmed that “July 2011 is etched in stone.” Prompted by a question from Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), he reiterated that “July 2011 is the point at which, again, the term ‘responsible drawdown’ of the surge forces begins at a rate to be determined by the conditions” on the ground. The date itself won’t prompt the U.S. to “race for the exist,” Petraeus said, pointing to Obama’s West Point declaration that success in Afghanistan is a “vital national security interest,” a phraseology that Petraeus said signaled steadfastness to the military.

That still didn’t satisfy several Republicans. Late in the hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) walked out of the room after declaring himself “confused” by the date and the officials’ explanation of it. “I doubt that the enemy is certain,” he said, leaving before Flournoy could respond to his point.

Addressing a different aspect of the meaning of July 2011, both Petraeus and Flournoy said it was “not the intention” or “expectation” to send any additional troops to Afghanistan after the date passes. But Petraeus said he considered it part of his “responsibility to the troopers” not to explicitly rule out recommending reinforcements should circumstances warrant. He said that “despite the losses, despite the setbacks,” the trajectory of the war effort was “upward,” describing counterinsurgency campaigns as a “roller coaster” instead of a glide path, a point echoed by Flournoy. Petraeus pointed to an affirmation Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the war, made to the committee after Obama’s most recent 30,000-troop increase that sufficient forces existed in Afghanistan to break the Taliban’s momentum by July 2011, and Petraeus expressed confidence that the mission would succeed.

Faith in the strategy, Petraeus added, came from the performance of President Hamid Karzai. He and Flournoy rejected a New York Times account last week, based heavily on a cashiered member of Karzai’s government, that Karzai had lost confidence in U.S. will to fight the Taliban. They pointed to remarks Karzai made on Sunday to a Kandahar shura that pledged support for the ongoing “rising tide of security” in the city and earned popular affirmation for impending military operations. But that was as deeply as senators probed the two senior officials on the war and governance strategy for what McChrystal has described as a crucial operation.

Apparently seeing a political opportunity, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), a reluctant supporter of Obama’s tripling of troop levels in Afghanistan, quickly distributed a printed statement to reporters at the hearing that highlighted Petraeus’s unwillingness to break with the administration over the impending troop reductions that will follow July 2011. “I am glad to hear Gen. Petraeus express his support for the decision to begin troop reductions in Afghanistan in July 2011,” it read. “I strongly believe it is essential for success in Afghanistan that everyone understand the urgency with which the Afghans need to take responsibility for their own security.”

The hearing Wednesday was a continuation of a Tuesday session in which Petraeus took ill, briefly losing consciousness from what he described as dehydration.

“I think we are all concerned,” said Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee who visited Afghanistan last month.

“The hearing is an attempt to find out what is going on in Kandahar,” said a Senate Armed Services Committee aide, adding that Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the panel’s chairman, “is particularly focused on whether there has been a change in strategy or timetable for the Kandahar campaign.”

The Times:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, said last week that operations in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar “will happen more slowly than we originally anticipated.”

Other military officers, were more pessimistic. “If anybody thinks Kandahar will be solved this year,” a senior military officer said, “they are kidding themselves.”

As a result, some inside the administration are already looking ahead to next year. “There are people who always want to rethink the strategy,” said a senior administration official. He, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

But notice that Ben Rhodes, one of Obama’s closest foreign policy advisers, told the Post that the president is “confident of the approach we have in place and in General McChrystal’s implementation of the strategy.” And note that Rhodes took ownership of the strategy rather than saying it was McChrystal’s strategy. If he had, it would be rhetorically easier to cast that strategy aside.

Not testifying is anyone from the diplomatic or development or rule-of-law fields (although one of Flournoy’s advisers, Rosa Brooks, can help her out on that latter concern). Which may be jurisdictional, given that this is an armed services committee hearing, but it’s also problematic from the point of view of a war strategy that’s overwhelmingly focused on civilian concerns like legitimacy and capable governance and, now, peace-process outreach to insurgent groups. The already-underway “process” in Kandahar explicitly judges civilian attitudes to be decisive.

And this round of testimony occurs in the shadow of Afghan President Hamid Karzai forcing aside two of his security-sector ministers, Interior Minister Haneef Atmar and intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, whom the U.S. held in high esteem.

But if you’d rather not wait for Flournoy and Petraeus to give their take on the situation, check out Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (PDF). “For the first time in a war lasting more than eight years, there is some practical prospect of victory,” Cordesman writes. But:

It is still far from clear that the mission can be accomplished:

1. The Ability of the Insurgent Threat to Adapt and Respond.The insurgent threat may still be relatively small and unpopular, but it has expanded into a near power vacuum in many areas of the country, and key ISAF leaders agree that its momentum has been arrested but not yet reversed. Its divisions cost it some capability but complicate attacks on its hierarchy in spite of growing successes by US UCAVs and elite forces. It has now had eight years of experience in irregular warfare, and has created far better trained cadres. For all of its weaknesses, it is often less abusive, and virtually always far less corrupt than the various elements of the Afghan government. It has learned to avoid direct combat when this only brings defeat, to infiltrate and create shadow governments, and exploit its ties with Pakistani extremist movements, Al Qa’ida, and a variety of foreign movements. It will win if it can adapt and outlast ISAF and GIRoA in a war of political attrition.

2. Far too much of GIRoA is still part of the “threat.” The Afghan government has honest and capable elements at every level, but their impact is outweighed by a virtual kleptocracy at every level from the President’s office and family through Provincial and District Governors down to the lowest levels in the field. Eight years of capacity building have had limited effects. Training and advisory efforts are often more than offset by the constant flow of military and civilian contract and aid money to power brokers and corrupt officials. Afghan politics have become more divisive and power oriented since the election campaign in 2009, civil servants and judges remain grossly underpaid, and the efforts of the many honest Afghan officials and civil servants are either hamstrung or countered by the wealth and power of power brokers, cronies, and the corrupt. The lack of Afghan government integrity and capability remains a more serious threat to winning the war than the Taliban, and it is still unclear that the US, ISAF, and allied governments can work with honest and capable Afghans to counter this threat during the course of the coming campaign.

3. There is still a critical lack of unity of effort and effectiveness within ISAF. The international command structure of NATO/ISAF has shown considerable strength, competence, and unity. The nations who contribute, however, still apply caveats and restrictions to key national forces that gravely limit their effectives. Pledges to provide trainers and mentors for the ANSF are not kept. Parts of the Afghan population are not properly protected. Military contracts of all kinds, including virtually every road shipment, often lack sufficient control to avoid empowering corrupt officials and power brokers, police and other elements of the ANSF, and sometimes the Taliban.

Eliminates availability of funding for the construction of a military detention facility in Thomson, Illinois.

Restricts the transfer of detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention facility to certain countries where Al Qaeda has an active presence.

The full text of the bill isn’t yet available. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, last week floated that the money to buy Thomson — key to the administration’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay — could come from the Justice Department’s budget, which is still before the congressional judiciary committees.

And it just did. The vote was 16 to 12, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining 15 Democrats in voting to attach an amendment to repeal the military’s ban on open gay service to the fiscal 2011 defense authorization.

LGBT activists have waited for this day for 17 years. A sample reaction from the press releases flooding my inbox:

“The importance of this vote cannot be overstated – this is the beginning of the end of a shameful ban on open service by lesbian and gay troops that has weakened our national security,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “The stars are aligning to finally restore honor and integrity to those who serve our country so selflessly.”

Or:

“This initial victory today in the Senate Armed Services Committee is an historic first step forward in the drive to finally get the onerous ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law off the books forever,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army interrogator who was discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” “All of us who have served under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and who have been impacted by this law will remember this day as the beginning of the end for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

From Chris Anders of the ACLU:

“For years, without being able to live openly, gay and lesbian service members have been fighting and dying for their country alongside straight soldiers. Our men and women in uniform deserve to be treated fairly, honestly and with dignity. We applaud the committee for including this provision and urge the House to pass its amendment as well. We cannot dare lose momentum now.”

A House vote on attaching a similar amendment will come possibly as early as tonight. But Senate Republicans tell TPM’s Brian Beutler that they’ll do anything to stop the Senate bill when it goes to the floor.

[S]ection 1037 of the Act [page 403 of the PDF], titled “Inspector General Investigation of the Conduct and Practices of Lawyers Representing Individuals Detained at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” instructs the Department of Defense IG to “conduct an investigation of the conduct and practices of lawyers” who represent clients at Guantánamo and report back to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees within 90 days.

“Reasonable” basis for an investigation of these lawyers includes such vagueries as believing an attorney “interfered with the operations of the Department of Defense at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” As Vladeck points out, this can mean any attorney, since the overlapping DOD commands at Guantanamo Bay (the Office of Military Commissions; the Naval Base; Joint Task Force-Guantanamo; the Office of the Secretary of Defense) ensure that any lawyer will inevitably “interfere” with some operation on the base. Consider the chilling effect that will have on detainees’ access to counsel in the commissions.

For instance. Right this moment, the chief commissioning authority for the military commissions at Guantanamo, Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, is in talks with detainee Omar Khadr’s attorneys to see if the Khadr’s case can be resolved through a plea deal. The government’s interest in seeking a plea? First, a judge might throw out a lot of the basis for its case against Khadr as improperly coerced; and more broadly, a detainee who was 15 years old when first captured by U.S. forces might not make the best poster boy for the justice dispensed by the military commissions.

So how cooperative might Khadr attorneys Barry Coburn and Kobie Flowers be in those plea talks if a different military command is investigating their activities at Guantanamo Bay? More broadly, how might an appeals court consider the overall fairness of a system that allows for detainees’ access to counsel — but places the specter of military investigation over counsel’s heads?

We’ll see whether this survives the Senate committee mark-up or the floor vote in the House.

There’s going to be a rally/press conference on the Hill at 11 a.m. with six veterans, five of whom were either discharged or chose not to re-enlist because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” urging senators and congressmembers to vote for repeal. Veterans are going to deliver 20,000 pro-repeal postcards to Congress — focusing mostly on the Senate. Specifically, the coalition – comprised of groups like Servicemembers United, the Human Rights Campaign and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund — continues to target six states represented by undecided or wavering legislators: West Virginia, Virginia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Indiana and Florida. Already, its released polling in those states that show scrapping “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has wide support.

In advance of a complementary House floor vote later this week, the coalition sent an email alert yesterday asking 750,000 people around the country to email their members of congress in support of repeal. It’s going to send another one today asking them to phone member offices. The idea is to escalate pressure, capping off a build-up of several months that’s brought veterans affected by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — and those who just believe overturning it is the right thing to d0 — to key states and districts.

That effort got the White House to acquiesce to the strategy on Monday, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to reluctantly accept the legislative push on Tuesday. But it’s not won over every member of Congress it’s targeted. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) saw 77 percent of Massachusetts voters backing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, but the new senator — a lieutenant colonel in his state’s National Guard — said yesterday that he’s voting against Lieberman’s amendment. So is Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a Marine veteran of Vietnam and a former Navy secretary, even after the coalition sent a letter from Virginia servicewomen urging him to support repeal. Both claim that Gates’ original plan — to hold off legislative efforts at repeal until a Pentagon working group on its implementation issues guidance to him in December — ought to proceed. Over in the House last night, the chairman of the armed services committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), made the exact same argument as his grounds for opposition.

The coalition believes that the Senate committee still has a significant number of undecideds, soft-yes and soft-no votes. (For what it’s worth, I’m not going to give my own whip count, because I don’t believe that’s journalistically responsible in a fluid situation like this one.) But it’s also used to setbacks, even though the legislative compromise provides perhaps the best shot for repealing the law since its enactment in 1993, and that speaks to the resilience of the activists who have pushed the White House, Congress and the Pentagon this far already.

“This is one of the best opportunities for repeal that has come around,” said Michael Cole of the Human Rights Campaign. “The fact that you have congressional leaders supporting it, the president supporting it and Secretary Gates and Adm. Mullen saying it will do what they want in respecting the working group, the stars have aligned for putting repeal closer to reality than ever.” If the votes are there.

Sen. Joe Lieberman plans to introduce an amendment Wednesday to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." (Pete Marovich/ZUMA Press)

Less than a month after the Pentagon leadership warned it would unwise to abandon the military’s ban on open gay service this year, a fast-moving legislative effort this week has opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” feeling like the law might finally be on the scrapheap.

[Security1] Activists opposed to the law met Monday morning with White House officials ahead of a dual-tracked strategy in Congress to insert a formal repeal of the 17-year old law in next year’s defense funding bill. On Wednesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee will mark up the 2011 Defense Authorization, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) plans to introduce an amendment repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He’ll be followed by Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), an Iraq war veteran, who said Monday he would introduce a complementary amendment into the House’s version of the bill when it receives a full floor debate later this week. If passed, it would allow the Pentagon a few months’ worth of a grace period so an internal review due in December can guide how the implement overturning the ban.

By Monday evening, activists were announcing what the Human Rights Campaign’s president, Joe Solmonese, said in an official statement was the “brink of historic” action to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” While legislative language was not available by press time, several prominent activists cheered the White House for clearing the way for what Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran and one of the activists who took part in the White House meeting, called “a dramatic breakthrough in dismantling ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, wrote to Murphy late Monday to say the administration “supports the proposed amendment” on repeal, given that it recognizes the “critical need” for uniformed input to guide how repeal will work in practice. Orszag’s letter did not argue any need for repeal, and reiterated that the administration’s first choice would have delayed getting rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until at least 2011.

The contours of a potential deal paving the way for a legislative repeal this week were first floated by retired Army Gen. John Shalikashvili in the Washington Post on Saturday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who expressed his opposition to the law in February, dismayed activists by urging congressional leaders in April to delay any legislative remedies for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until a Pentagon working group surveying military attitudes about how to implement any repeal delivers its final report in December.

Shalikashvili, himself a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the dawn of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” proposed cutting the legislative and bureaucratic Gordian Knot. “Congress could repeal the federal statute and return authority to the military to set rules about gay troops, just as the armed services had before ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ became law in 1993,” he wrote. “Indeed, acting now to remove the constraints imposed by that law is the most faithful response that Congress can offer to the working group’s efforts to engage service members and their families.”

That appeared to offer all sides a way out of the impasse. President Obama will get to keep the promise he made to the LGBT community in his State of the Union address for a 2010 repeal, and the Pentagon will ensure that the recommendations of the working group, led by Army Gen. Carter Ham and top Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson, form the basis of a post-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” future. Michael Cole, a spokesman for the anti-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Human Rights Campaign, portrayed a legislative repeal this week as a necessary prerequisite to implementing the working group’s findings. “If the law is not repealed this year, when the implementation study comes down, [the Pentagon will] not able to carry it out,” Cole said.

In their April letter to Congress, Gates and Mullen warned that a legislative fix ahead of Johnson and Ham’s working group report would “send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter.” But chief Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell sounded more open to congressional action on Monday, however reluctantly. “Given that Congress insists on addressing this issue this week, we are trying to gain a better understanding of the legislative proposals they will be considering,” Morrell said in an e-mail.

Activists are seeking to ensure they don’t waste their congressional opportunity. The Human Rights Campaign is spending millions this week to pressure six senators on the Armed Services Committee who haven’t taken a firm position on repeal but the group believes are persuadable: Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Field staff in the states of all six senators are calling the legislators’ district offices, mailing thousands of postcards and scheduling rallies with anti-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” servicemembers and veterans demanding an end to the law.

Cole said he anticipated close votes in both the Senate committee and the House floor. But he vowed Human Rights Campaign would “keep up the pressure and remind wavering members that 75 percent of the American people support repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and this is an issue to strengthen our military and respect LGBT troops at the same time.”

Update: Here is the text of Lieberman’s amendment.