WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday that he sees no roadblocks to ending the ban on openly gay military service, and if the top officers of each service recommend moving ahead on the repeal before the end of the month, he will endorse it.
A little over two weeks before ending his 4½ year tenure as Pentagon chief, Gates sat down in his office for an Associated Press interview that touched on a range of issues, including his expectations for a smooth handoff to his designated successor, current CIA director Leon Panetta. Gates will retire June 30; Panetta’s Senate confirmation is expected shortly.
Gates sounded a cautiously optimistic note about developments in troubled Yemen, where the government and opposition tribes have engaged in armed clashes, pushing the country toward civil war. Gates said things have calmed down a bit since President Ali Abdullah Saleh left for neighboring Saudi Arabia on June 5 for medical treatment of wounds he suffered in an attack on his compound in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.
“I don’t think you’ll see a full-blown war there,” Gates said. “With Saleh being in Saudi Arabia, maybe something can be worked out to bring this to a close,” by finding an accommodation among Saleh’s family, the opposition tribes and the military.
The move to end the ban on gay services could be one of Gates’ final acts as defense chief.
More than a million U.S. troops have been trained on the new law that repealed the 17-year-old ban on gays serving openly in the armed services, and Gates said the instruction has gone well.
“I think people are pretty satisfied with the way this process is going forward,” he said. “I think people have been mildly and pleasantly surprised at the lack of pushback in the training.”
Still, he noted that decades after women entered military service, there are still persistent problems with sexual assaults. So, the notion that there will be no ugly incidents when the ban is lifted is “unrealistic,” he said.
Under the law passed last December and the detailed process laid out this year by the Pentagon, the military chiefs report to Gates every two weeks on training progress and must eventually make a recommendation on whether the repeal will damage the military’s ability to fight.
If Gates approves the certification before he leaves office, the repeal could be fully implemented in September.
Gates says the most common questions deal with housing, and commanders are developing ways to deal with that.
On Afghanistan, Gates said Americans should be reassured that the White House is making another “deep dive” review of the situation as part of President Barack Obama’s decision on how many U.S. troops to withdraw in July. And he said he expects the Iraqi government to request that some U.S. troops remain in Iraq beyond this year.
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