Well, they might as well stop trying. This story just out (h/t to Sowsear), Military Tells Congress To Keep Gay Ban For Now. Well, that headline pretty much says it all, but here is the justification:

Senior Pentagon leaders on Friday warned Congress not to tamper with the ban on gays serving openly in the military until they can come up with a plan for dealing with potential opposition in the ranks.

In a strongly worded letter obtained by The Associated Press, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee that forcing policy changes on the military before it’s ready would be a mistake.

“Our military must be afforded the opportunity to inform us of their concerns, insights and suggestions if we are to carry out this change successfully,” Gates and Mullen wrote to the panel’s chairman, Missouri Democrat Ike Skelton.

Gay rights advocates want an immediate freeze on military firings of openly gay service members, and some senior Democratic senators have said they want to offer such a bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday said the Obama administration should suspend enforcement of the law until the Defense Department completes its study and Congress can act to change it.

But other lawmakers, including Skelton, have said they are uneasy about lifting the ban and don’t want to act before the force is ready.

The letter provides Skelton and other unsettled Democrats political cover not to press the issue until after this year’s midterm elections. Earlier this week, Skelton asked Gates in a letter to outline his views as the House committee prepares the 2011 defense authorization bill.

President Barack Obama has said the 1993 law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” unfairly punishes patriotic Americans and asked Congress to repeal it.

In a statement released late Friday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama’s commitment to repealing the law remains “unequivocal” and that Obama “is committed to getting this done both soon and right.”

First of all, how insulting is it that the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs do not think our military is as capable of serving alongside openly gay people as the UK, or Israel, or a host of other countries??

Second of all, nice political cover for the Democrats, especially Obama. It is disingenuous for the White House to claim Obama really, really wants to change this law. If he wanted to, he already would have. And, considering his Justice Department lent their hefty support to keeping “DADT” using outdated quotes from Colin Powell that even HE doesn’t agree with anymore, it just makes this laughable. Or would, if it wasn’t people’s lives and service at stake.

This is also a bit hard for me to believe:

Gates says he supports lifting the ban but wants to survey the troops first on how it should be done. He has ordered a study by Dec. 1 that will look at whether housing arrangements would have to be altered and gay partners would be allowed military benefits.

If Congress acts before then, “it would send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter,” he and Mullen wrote to Skelton.

The letter prompted immediate protests from gay rights groups.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said that if Congress doesn’t act this year it would send the message to gay troops that “the impact on them and their families does not matter to the military leadership, including their commander in chief.”

This is one reason why I left the HRC – the belief by people like Solmonese that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Obama gives a damn about GLBT people. Wake the hell up already, Joe – ask Donnie McClurkin or James Meeks what Obama REALLY thinks of us. Sheesh.

Doesn’t it just gripe you when people continue to believe promises made with absolutely NO basis? Does me.

And here’s the part where they bascially call our military personnel a bunch of homophobes:

Defense officials hope the protracted timeline will also help troops adjust to the idea of serving with openly gay colleagues before they have to accept the change.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, is expected to propose in the 2011 defense authorization bill a moratorium on gay firings in the military.

In the House, Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., is considered the most likely to offer the legislation.

Just more bullshit from this White House and those who serve it. More broken promises. More, “Hey, I really WANT to do it, but gee – I’m just the president, what do you want from me?” Spare me.

The only acceptable justification for NOT allowing gays to serve in the military comes from The Onion (that’s your alert that this is SATIRE):

Hey, if I’m not laughing about this, I’m crying, especially when I think of all those who have served proudly, wish to do so, but have been dismissed. I’m just shaking my head in disbelief. How about you?

This is an OPEN THREAD. Discuss this, or whatever else is on your mind today!

“We have repeatedly sought your departments’ cooperation,” they wrote. “Our efforts have been met with delay, the production of little that was not already public and shifting reasons for why the departments are withholding [information] that we have requested.”

Before he went on his terrorist rampage, Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born imam who ministered to at least three 9/11 hijackers as well as the would-be Christmas Day underwear bomber.

Indeed, FBI and Army investigators reportedly intercepted those e-mails, and also knew that he’d been heard making statements justifying suicide bombing.

“Given the warning signals about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s extremist radicalism,” ask Lieberman and Collins, “why was he not stopped before he took 13 American lives?”

Why not, indeed?

That is the question – why WON’T Holder and Gates provide the information the Senate needs to fulfill its duty? I am sure this will be dragging out for a while.

Then I reported that Gov. Rendell claimed the Tea Party is not a legitimate movement, basically asserting that its “popularity” is simply the result of positive media coverage. After I picked my jaw up off the floor at such an incredibly ridiculous statement based on FACTS, I found numerous instances of the media covering the Tea Party, but it was far from positive.

I was not the only one to refute this ridiculous claim, though, A Tea Party member, who is also a DJ, had this to say about Gov. Rendell’s statement:

Uh, yeah. I might add, I was reminded by Karen For Hillary that Rendell had also tried to found an Anti-PUMA group during the election, one he termed, H.O.U.N.D. (thanks, Ani, for acronym). Get it? Ahem. Yeah, he needs some rehab from that Obama Kool Aide.

And while I am on the topic of the media, and the way it covers events, how about the coverage of the AZ protesters of the new Immigration law v. Tea Party coverage:

So Anti-Immigration protesters are heaving full water bottles at police officers, some are being arrested, and this is a PEACEFUL protest? Wow.

Finally, there is this call to violence by Slate’s David Plotz:

Plotz acknowledged that he was indeed calling for violence (isn’t that a crime? “Inciting a riot” is what it sounds like to me, though I’m no lawyer). Moreover, when asked if he wanted to burn people in effigy, he made it clear that “in effigy” was NOT his plan.

Can you imagine, can you JUST imagine, if ANYONE in the middle or the right issued such a call?? Ohmygosh, they would have the FBI at their door tout de suite.

I might add, Plotz is clearly uninformed – there IS a populist uprising in progress in this country right now. It’s the TEA PARTY. Whether you agree with it or not, that is exactly what it is – a populist uprising against wasteful spending, taxation, and government expansion. You’d think someone who was in the news business would be aware of that. Ahem.

Stay tuned – I am sure there will be more to add in the coming days!

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has learned very little from the military trials and tribulations of the United States over the past 50 years. During that period, the United States has lost three costly and avoidable wars in Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, and the Middle East. These wars involved U.S. military forces for more than 12 years in Vietnam, more than six years (and counting) in Iraq, and eight years (and counting) in Afghanistan.

Despite our military, intelligence, and technological superiority, we were stymied by two countries that had no air force, no navy, no army, no air defense. We were able to deploy weapons of great lethality, sophistication, maneuverability, and firepower. Nevertheless, Secretary Gates wants to reorient planning at the Pentagon so that the United States could be positioned to fight more such wars.

Despite his previous lip service to ensure that the State Department and various civilian agencies get more involved in implementing American national security policy, Gates clearly wants the Pentagon to have pride of place in international areas outside the principal mission of military operations. He wants to expand the military’s role in equipping and training foreign forces, and for educating foreign officers.

He also wants to expand the nation-building programs that grew out of our egregious experience in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, which the Obama administration seems to favor for our involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like his regional commanders, Gates seems to see the Pentagon as a “big Velcro cube that other agencies can hook to so we can collectively do what needs to be done” in such regional commands as the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Gates apparently would do nothing to reverse the trend of the recent past that allows general officers and particularly regional commanders to have more influence and leverage than their civilian counterparts in the implementation of American foreign policy.

The emphasis on adding to the ranks of the Army, the Marine Corps, and special forces and greater spending on low-tech weapons that are best suited for guerrilla or irregular warfare points to continued problems for American national security. Gates explained that he is “just trying to get the irregular guys to have a seat at the table and to institutionalize the needs they have.” Any shift in the direction of greater funding for such counter-insurgency operations as Iraq and Afghanistan is not encouraging.

The United States (and the Western community in general) can point to very few military successes in such operations and run the risk of large-scale and long-term occupations. We invaded Iraq six years ago when there was no connection whatsoever between that country and U.S. national interest, and now we are committing greater forces and resources to Afghanistan where there is no connection to our vital interests. President Obama and Secretary Gates want to move in the direction of nation building, although there is no operational strategy for involving the State Department and the Agency for International Development in stabilization and reconstruction in troubled areas.

Some aspects of the Gates’ doctrine are laudatory, particularly the decision to scale back spending on national missile defense; to create a professional procurement process; to cap production of the Air Forces’ F-22 fighter jet; to cancel production of a new presidential helicopter; and to reduce the Army’s Future Combat Systems. The effort to fix the procurement system is long overdue, and even Gates’ two previous budgets were mere straight-line projections of Donald Rumsfeld’s budgetary and procurement agenda.

The Pentagon’s weapons-procurement system has been a well-known disaster that presidential administrations and congressional committees have refused to address. In taking on the Pentagon’s inability to make hard choices in weapons systems or to undertake major reform, Gates is taking on President Eisenhower’s military-industrial-congressional complex.

A more promising development is in legislation sponsored by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), who want to create a director of independent cost assessments, who would have a senior staff with the authority to obtain data from weapons contractors and to ensure that costs are justified. The services, which are responsible for cost estimates on weapons programs, have never developed a professional staff to provide accurate cost estimates, let alone discipline profligate weapons manufacturers.

Last year, according to the Washington Post, the Government Accountability Office reported that cost overruns on the largest weapons systems totaled about $300 billion.

Sadly, the Gates’ doctrine still points to the United States as the “indispensable nation,” in the words of former president Bill Clinton and his secretary of state Madeleine Albright, endowed by providence with unique responsibilities and obligations.

Gates and presumably President Obama want the United States to be able to respond to any and all crises, even those that have no relevance to American national interests, let alone vital national interests. Gates wants to maintain the offensive orientation of the Bush administration’s foreign policy and obviously believes that American military power will preserve law and order.

In his inaugural address, President Obama emphasized that “power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.” It does not appear that Obama’s secretary of defense was listening.

Melvin A. Goodman,a regular contributor to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”

Here’s HILLARY on the missile launch as well as another video that provides excellent backgrounder info, with a partial world MAP of North Korea’s possible trajectory towards Alaska:

From my story of Greta’s interviews of Hillary Clinton in Mexico this past week:

Now, here’s a “breaking news” story on Japan’s and the U.S.’s movement of battle ships — and a helpful map of the positions of the ships related to from Studio B on March 27th — as well as the left-leaning POV of P.J. Crowley of the Center for American Progress:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Gates to be director of central intelligence (DCI), but he was denied confirmation because a majority of members on the Senate intelligence committee believed he was lying about his knowledge and role in Iran-contra. The independent counsel for Iran-contra, Lawrence Walsh, “found insufficient evidence to warrant charging Gates with a crime,” but he established that Gates knew early on about Oliver North’s illegal support for the Contras and the illegal diversion of funds.

In 1991, Gates survived the confirmation process to become DCI despite the opposition of more than 30 senators who believed that his remarks were scripted and that he was not candid in discussing his role in the politicization of intelligence on the Soviet Union, Central America, and Southwest Asia.

In his memoir in 1996, Gates says nothing about the CIA’s exaggeration of Soviet military forces, although he spent a great deal of his working life at the CIA tailoring national intelligence estimates on Soviet military capability and intentions. And today, Gates is lying about the Iraq War, arguing that an intelligence failure was the reason for the Bush administration’s decision to launch a preemptive attack against Iraq.

Gates told PBS’s Tavis Smiley this week that the United States will be more cautious about launching another preemptive attack because of the intelligence failures of the Iraq War. But the role of the White House and the CIA in distorting the intelligence on Iraq had nothing to do with the decision to go to war. The Bush administration relied on phony intelligence to create and employ a strategic disinformation campaign to convince the Congress, the media, and the American people of the need for war.

President Bush wanted the war to establish himself as a genuine commander-in-chief; Vice President Dick Cheney wanted the war to create a more powerful presidency; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted the war to make his case for transforming the military into a smaller and more mobile force; National Security Advisor Condi Rice wanted the war because the old boy network favored it. Sadly, Secretary of State Powell knew that going to war made no sense, but he unwisely made the phony case for war at the United Nations because he wanted to be seen as a team player. And now Gates, who owes all of his success to the Bush family, is helping George W. Bush make the case that faulty intelligence was responsible for the Iraq War.

There are lessons to be learned about the Iraq War, but the role of faulty intelligence in the declaration of a preemptive attack is not one of them. The Congress must learn that it needs to rebuild its legitimacy and credibility, which was lost on its way to authorizing force against Iraq. The professional military must learn that it cannot be an accomplice in presidential deception, which should have been the lesson from the Vietnam War.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff never challenged the presidential lies during the tragic buildup in Vietnam or the run-up to the Iraq War. The mainstream media must learn to challenge conventional wisdom and to examine the arguments of the contrarians, who were right about Vietnam and Iraq. Judith Miller of the New York Times was not the only victim of the disinformation of the Bush administration; Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and Michael Gordon of the Times should have been skeptical of the information they were given.

The major task of the press is to hold any administration’s feet to the fire in regard to duplicity. The American people must also learn to be more skeptical in times of crisis, when presidents often engage in deception to make the case for war. James Polk did so before the Mexican-American War; William McKinley did so before the Spanish-American War; Lyndon Johnson did so to support the buildup in the Vietnam War. The Congress, the military, the media, and the public must understand the importance of loyal dissent, particularly in wartime.

President Barack Obama blundered badly when he decided to retain Robert Gates as secretary of defense. Obama genuinely believes in change in international security. In his inaugural address, he emphasized that “our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do what we please.” He argued that the “world has changed, and we must change with it.” Secretary of Defense Gates, on the other hand, has traditional notions on the importance of post-Cold War military supremacy.

He believes that American military policy and the weapons we bought to defend ourselves won the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In his memoir, he described the Cold War as a prizefight in which a sudden flurry of hooks and jabs put the big guy down for the count. Obama has questioned the need for the policies of the Bush administration that Gates favors, including the deployment of a national missile defense at home; a ballistic-missile defense system in East Europe; NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine; and the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

These policies are responsible in part for the isolation of the United States from the international community. Real change requires an end to the superpower notions of unquestioned military superiority and militarization of national security policy.

At a crucial time in the discussion of strategic policy in Afghanistan, where additional troops will not reverse the steady deterioration there, it is essential that the Congress, the media, and the military also recognize the limits of power against the Taliban and recognize the need to study the case for withdrawal from Afghanistan. We must learn from the mistakes of the misuse of power, which occurred in Cuba, Vietnam, and Iraq. We all know the words of naval commander Stephen Decatur regarding “our country, right or wrong.”

But we must never forget the words of Carl Schurz, a major general in the Union Army and then a senator, who said “Our country, right or wrong. When right, it ought be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”