Obama Sets Sights on 'Don’t Ask'March 04, 2009
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The White House says President Barack Obama has begun consulting his top defense advisers on how to lift a ban on homosexuals openly serving in the military.
The administration will not say how soon that might happen or whether experts will be commissioned to study the issue in-depth, as some Democrats have suggested.
The move enables Obama to say he is making good on his campaign promise to reverse the law, but does not lock him into doing so anytime soon. The carefully calculated statement, released this week by White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, is vague enough to prevent the hot-button issue from consuming Obama's foreign policy agenda, which is dominated by ending the Iraq war and salvaging operations in Afghanistan.
"The president supports changing `Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" Vietor said in the e-mailed statement. That is the compromise solution for the emotional subject that ended hot debate after the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, proposed in the early 1990s to let openly gay men and lesbians serve.
"As part of a long-standing pledge," Obama has begun consulting closely with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the highest-ranking uniformed American as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "so that this change is done in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security," Vietor said.
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