The Other McCain

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Did Obama’s Campaign Manager Help Spin Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’?

Posted on | June 28, 2011 | 9 Comments

A friend tipped me to a news story by Fresno’s KMJ-AM:

Survey Skewed To Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Based on a 30-page report prepared by the Pentagon inspector general, the story points out that President Obama’s 2012 campaign director (and former White House deputy chief of staff) Jim Messina was identified as one of five administration officials at a key Nov. 9 meeting where they were briefed on a confidential task force study on the DADT policy. Contents of the study were apparently leaked to the Washington Post the next day. As I report at The American Spectator:

The Pentagon inspector general’s report concluded that “the source carefully disclosed specific survey data [to reporters] to support a pro-repeal agenda,” and added: “We consider it likely that primary source disclosed content from the draft [CRWG] Report prior to its release to gain momentum in support of a legislative change during the ‘lame duck’ session of Congress following the November 2, 2010, elections.”
Congress, still under Democrat control during the lame-duck session, approved the repeal legislation which Obama signed into law Dec. 22. The Pentagon IG’s report on the leak, prepared in April, was recently obtained by the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), which opposed repeal of the DADT policy that had been implemented by President Clinton in 1993.
The IG report shows that the Pentagon study “was a publicly-funded, pre-scripted production put on just for show,” Elaine Donnelly of the CMR said in a statement, adding: “The purpose of the contrived CRWG process was to neutralize military opposition to repeal of the law by manufacturing an illusion of support. The administration misused military personnel, resources, and facilities to help President Obama to deliver on political promises to gay activists at the expense of unknowing troops who became props in the pro-repeal campaign.”
Frank Gaffney of the conservative Center for Security Policy, called the inspector general’s report a “smoking gun” explaining how Democrats pushed through DADT repeal during the lame-duck session “with scarcely any hearings and extremely limited opportunity for debate.” . . .

Read the whole thing.

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, Gays, Military

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