At a hearing before the United States Senate Armes Services Committee, Secretary of States Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued their emphatic support for the repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, which prevents gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

“It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do,” said Mullen, who was originally appointed to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President George W. Bush. “No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me, personally, it comes down to integrity, theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”

“The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we must — how we best prepare it — for it,” said Gates, another Bush Administration holdover. Gates announced his appointment of Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson and General Carter F. Ham, the commander of the United States Army in Europe, to begin a formal review process and create standards for implemantation for repeal of the policy.

Gates and Mullen’s testimony drew the quick support of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993 was one of the architechts of the policy he now opposes. “In the almost 17 years since the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed,” Powell said in a statement issued by his office. He added: “I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen.”

Much of the questioning by the panel was focused on how repeal of the policy would be implemented and addressing alegations that such a change would cause a problem to unit cohesion and military readiness. In response to a question by Senator Susan Collins, Admiral Mullen indicated that American soldiers serving alongside openly gay and lesbian soldiers from allied nations, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, in joint combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan has not created problems for unit cohesion. Mullen went on to indicate that there were no current reports that indicated a basis that allowing gay and lesbian servicemembers to serve openly would create problems with unit cohesion, military readiness or recruitment.

Further opposition to the policy has come from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, a former Republican Senator, who served on the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time the policy was enacted.

A report released by the non-partisan Williams Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, indicates that there are currently 66,000 gay and lesbian servicemembers in the military and that a repeal of the policy could bring in as many as 50,000 additional troops. A recent survey by Gallup shows that fifty-eight percent of conservatives oppose the policy.