Sec Def Gates Says Congress Should Repeal Gay Ban Immediately; Marine Commandant Disagrees

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Congress should repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy before new members take their seats.

“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,” Gates said Saturday, as he traveled to defense and diplomatic meetings in Australia.

Gates is referring to the fact that it will be more difficult with a Republican House and with fewer Democrats in the Senate to end the discriminatory military policy.

However, General James Amos, the new commandant of the Marine Corps, disagrees that the policy should be immediately ended, saying, “There’s risk involved.”

“There is nothing more intimate than young men and young women – and when you talk of infantry, we’re talking our young men – laying out, sleeping alongside of one another and sharing death, fear and loss of brothers,” he said. “I don’t know what the effect of that will be on cohesion. I mean, that’s what we’re looking at. It’s unit cohesion, it’s combat effectiveness.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.