From Igor Volsky at the Wonk Room:
Lt. Dan Choi — the DADT advocate who was discharged from the military after he came out as gay on The Rachel Maddow Show — appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room yesterday to discuss his recent call back to training with the National Guard. "Essentially, my commander says, we’re going to war and we need all of the capable soldiers that we could get to train with us," Choi explained.
Choi said he knew other gay soldiers who were in the process of being discharged but "had been told by their commanders" to come back for the time being. "I know of some of them that are out there. And there’s a lot of people that are in their units that I — I think they realize, look, we’re in a time of war, we’ve got to have everybody that we can."
(bold emphasis by diarist)
full article here:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/...
Could this be the stealth epic win of the decade? It looks like commanders on the ground are beginning to openly ignore DADT! w00t!
I can only assume that word has come down from Sec. Gates and/or Adm. Mullen and/or POTUS, that DADT need no longer be followed.
I also can't think of a better, more expeditious way of saying buh-bye to this stupid law. The way it's happening, as we are witnessing, is making it very difficult for the GOP to criticize. I haven't heard a peep from them about this, at least since Lt. Choi was re-upped.
Isn't it delicious to experience a win without the phoney histrionics of the Gorns? Someone pinch me.
From the comments: Liberalindependent28 correctly points out:
Congress needs to formally repeal DADT and make it so that it is no longer illegal to be openly Gay in the military.
I agree, and think this is a brilliant way to expedite that inevitability. As ultraviolet uk says, (from comments):
It is far more difficult to object to the repeal of a law which is not being followed in practice anyway.
Cheers.
UPDATE 1: From teh eevul FDL, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand talks about the way forward:
Gillibrand, who has stepped into the lead on repealing the policy, said that she spoke today with Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He maintained that the most effective way to advance this forward is to put an 18-month moratorium into the defense authorization bill, where it would take 60 votes to remove it, and where it would be more safely attached to a must-pass measure funding the Pentagon. The reason that this could take the form of an 18-month moratorium on discharges, as opposed to repeal, is because that would accommodate the Pentagon’s proposed one-year study of the impact of eliminating the policy, and some Senators may be more willing to vote for a moratorium to respect that process rather than a repeal. This would allow for that implementation lag, while ending the policy of discharging gay and lesbian service members.
The other option would be a bill Gillibrand has proposed to cut off funding for implementation of the DADT policy (it costs roughly $20-$30 million a year in prosecution and retraining). That cannot go through Armed Services because they don’t have jurisdiction, so Gillibrand is looking for a separate legislative vehicle for that. "I don’t want to see one more man or woman kicked out," the Senator from New York said. "Whether it’s a moratorium, cutting funding, or full repeal, whatever can go the quickest and get the most votes is what I want to do."
full article here: http://news.firedoglake.com/...