MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: Don't Ask, Don't Tell - Don't Try? - 29 July 2009: Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings Is Interviewed.
MADDOW: "Congressman Alcee Hastings of Florida introduced an amendment this week to the defense appropriations act, which would have prevented the government from kicking gays out of the military. And then the next day, he withdrew that amendment, releasing a statement explaining that he withdrew it 'due to pressure from some of my congressional colleagues and from the White House...'"
"Today the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network told us in response: 'We hope it's not true the White House pressured Rep. Hastings to withdraw his amendment to stop funding Don't Ask, Don't Tell investigatons. Such a move would go against President Obama's commitment to end Don't Ask Don't Tell. Now, we need to see some postive action, some follow through from this White House.'"
CONGRESSMAN HASTINGS: "Thank you Rachel, I like that word 'thwarted' because that's exactly what I was..." "First let me make it clear that I did not meet with President Obama."
"Before the rules committee meets, there is a meeting. In this particular instance, there were persons from the White House that were there, and when the discussion was had with reference to my amendment, they chimed in and their thinking, Rachel, is different I believe yours and mine would be. I have a different political calculus. If something is bigoted, and if your intent is to see it that it does not continue, then I did not understand the leadership of Congress or the White House saying that the time is not right. My position is that the President has said that he wishes that this matter be repealed, my colleague Patrick Murphy now has more than 170 co-sponsors on a measure to repeal it, Secretary Gates... My view is that the time is now to eliminate this bigoted law once and for all."
MADDOW: "When you are hearing that the time isn't right, when you're hearing from fellow Democrats, even from fellow opponents of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that the time's not right for your amendment, that this ought to be delayed, that there is a more strategic way to do it, are you also hearing that there is a White House-endorsed strategy for when to get rid of it, or is it just being put off indefinitely?"
HASTINGS: "Very good question. I have not heard anything other than the rhetoric. I wrote to the White House on June 22 and had 76 other members of Congress to join me in a letter to the President explaining what the President can do right now, and that's what I was attempting to do with the amendment and that's say to the Secretary of Defense 'stop it, just don't put anybody else out of service.'"
"Rachel, I'd be terribly remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to say how I came to this is the soldiers we are forcibly separating are combat veterans, they're intelligence officers, they speak the languages that we need on the battlefield, so aside from the absurdity of telling dedicated soldiers that we don't want them 'cause they're gay, this law negatively impacts our national security... In the last five years, we've put out of the service under this policy 59 Arabic speakers and nine Farsee linguists. I serve on the Select Committee on Intelligence and I am telling you we cannot afford at all not to have language speakers with the paucity of language speakers we have in the intelligence committee."
MADDOW: "Congressman Hastings, as you know, the Beltway common wisdom on this is that this is an incredibly sensitive issue - that a lot of political capital needs to be invested in this, that President Clinton was immeasurably hurt by the way that he pursued this issue at the start of his first term... Do you think that that's true? Do you think that that's true now, that this would be an incredibly risky issue for the President to take a leadership issue on?"
HASTINGS: "I really do not. The majority of Americans do not support Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Without question, every poll has shown an uptick in favor of us getting rid of this policy. The one that is particularly salient is that members of the military are in favor of getting rid of this party. It is shameful for us to continue to wait for reference to this matter. I keep hearing that we'll do it next year. Well, in my view, that's ridiculous. If you know we want to do it, let's do it today, and spare anymore of our service men and women from the humiliation for being investigated for their sexual orientation."
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- Yeah, rhetoric. I've heard a lot of that too. Except most people call it BULLSHIT.
