Don’t Ask…About “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…”

By Mark Thompson | @MarkThompson_DC | July 14, 2011 | +

…because it is getting really confusing, as I tried to detail Wednesday night on the PBS NewsHour, along with Aubrey Sarvis of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, in a segment with Judy Woodruff. There’s a race now underway — will “Don’t Ask” die a merciful death, hospiced away under the Pentagon’s carefully thought-out strategy of troop training, or will a federal court instantly order it unconstitutional for good?

Strangely, it’s looking like both may happen soon, and near-simultaneously, ending the 17-year old law banning openly gay men and women from serving in the U.S. military. Regardless of where you stand on the ban’s merits, the fact that we may end up with the Congress, the Pentagon, the White House and the federal courts all agreeing the law should end can only be viewed as a convincing repudiation of the law and the policy it created.

@TIME

Latest on Battleland

Afghanistan May 21, 2012

Only One Year of U.S.-Led Fighting Left

President Obama’s goal at the NATO summit this week is looking increasingly clear: wrap up U.S. troops’ combat role over the coming year, and get the allies to pay more money to enable the Afghan military to fill the gap.

Missile Defense May 21, 2012

House Pushes for East Coast Missile Shield

The House has approved a $643 billion defense-spending bill for 2013 that’s $3.7 billion more than the Obama Administration, and its Pentagon, is seeking. That’s just about the same amount the Congressional Budget Office estimates the House bill’s push for an East Coast missile shield will cost over the next five years.

Military Spending May 21, 2012

The Pentagon’s “Washington Monument Strategy”

Whenever federal bureaucrats running the nation’s parks get antsy that their purse is likely to shrink, they roll out something long known as the “Washington Monument strategy.” That’s the tried-and-true technique of warning the public that if money isn’t forthcoming, one of the first budget cuts will force the shutting down of the popular obelisk to Washington, D.C., tourists.