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Defense officials: Lift military ban on gays Six more weeks ...

by Anne Flaherty
| February 2, 2010 8:00 PM

WASHINGTON - It's time to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and allow gay troops to serve openly for the first time in history, the nation's top defense officials declared Tuesday, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff proclaiming that service members should not be forced to "lie about who they are." However, both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen asked for a year to study the impact before Congress would lift the controversial policy. Reversing the Pentagon's 17-year-old policy toward gays "comes down to integrity," for the military as an institution as well as the service members themselves, Mullen told a Senate hearing. Unpersuaded, several Republican senators said they would oppose any congressional effort to repeal the policy. Ten months before voters elect a new Congress, some Democratic leaders also were leery of trying to change the policy this year, when both sides concede Republicans are likely to pick up seats, especially after GOP Sen.-elect Scott Brown's surprise victory last month in Massachusetts. Repealing don't-ask-don't-tell is not a winning campaign strategy for a party under siege especially in the South and Midwest. "What do I want members to do in their districts? I want them to focus on jobs and fiscal responsibility," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., classifying gays in the military in a category of "a lot of other issues" that will invariably come up. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he didn't see why it should wait another year. The Pentagon announced an 11-month review of how the ban could be lifted, as President Barack Obama has said he will work to do. But there is no deadline for ending the policy that dates to President Bill Clinton's tenure and that gay rights advocates are pressing to overturn. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - A generous world has flooded Haiti with donations, but anger and desperation are mounting as the aid stacks up inside this broken country. Bottlenecks at key transportation points and scattered violence, including an armed group's attack on a food convoy, have slowed the distribution of food and medicine from the port, airport and a warehouse in the Cite-Soleil slum. U.S. air traffic controllers have lined up 2,550 incoming flights through March 1, but some 25 flights a day aren't taking their slots. Communication breakdowns between Haitians and their foreign counterparts are also endemic. "Aid is bottlenecking at the Port-au-Prince airport. It's not getting into the field," said Mike O'Keefe, who runs Banyan Air Service in Fort Lauderdale. Foreign aid workers and Haitians are fed up - one Haitian father paid a group of men more than $200 on Tuesday to retrieve his daughter's body from his collapsed house, rather than wait for demolition crews. "No one is in charge," said Dr. Rob Maddox of Start, Louisiana, tending to dozens of patients in the capital's sprawling general hospital. "There's no topdown leadership. ... And since the Haitian government took control of our supplies, we have to wait for things even though they're stacked up in the warehouse. The situation is just madness." Boxes of supplies are stacked to the ceiling in the hospital's dimly lit warehouse. In another storage area, medicine, bandages and other key supplies pile up on tables.