Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen noted that despite the fanfare last month -- when a lame-duck Congress repealed the policy and the president signed it into law -- the old rules still apply.
"Now is not the time to come out, if you will," Mullen said. "We'll get through this. We'll do it deliberately. We certainly are focused on this. And we won't -- we won't dawdle."
Meanwhile the legal and political battle over Don't Ask also are not over.
Congressman Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, is signaling that he may try to re-open the whole Congressional debate, depending on what his fellow Republicans decide on the House Armed Services Committee. A Wilson aide says Wilson would "support repeal of the repeal" if Republican leaders took on the fight.
Wilson is a 31-year veteran of the National Guard with four sons in the military and has been critical of changing the policy. Committee members like Wilson were irked that Gates and the Joint Chiefs testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in early December but not the House. The committee could try to hold their own hearings on the House side in coming weeks and try to delay any implementation.
Asked about Wilson's efforts to repeal the repeal, Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the department is moving ahead with the change. "The department is aggressively moving out to meet the president's and Congress's intent to set the conditions to repeal the Don't Ask-Don't Tell law," he said.
The government still faces lawsuits about the policy. The Justice Department filed a motion just before the end of the year, on behalf of the Pentagon to stop the case filed by the Log Cabin Republicans which, after a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs that the policy was unconstitutional, threatened to derail the slower effort by the Obama administration to change the policy through legislation.
