A report by the Defense Department’s Inspector General finds the 2010 Pentagon survey that was so instrumental in the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) had been engineered and skewed to favor repeal.
“[E]vidence showed the source carefully disclosed specific survey data to support a pro-repeal agenda … to gain momentum in support of a legislative change during the ‘lame duck’ session of Congress.”
A November Washington Post article reported that 70 percent of military respondents said a DADT repeal would a have a “positive, mixed, or nonexistent” effect. But the truth is combat troops overwhelmingly opposed the DADT repeal, 44 percent to 11 percent. Troops with combat experience said the repeal would have a negative or very negative impact on troops in the field.
[O]ver twelve times as many Marine combat troops said repeal would impact unit readiness negatively as those who responded positively, while Army combat troops were six times more likely to be negative than positive.
In December, the Ruler and Defense Secretary Robert Gates used the Post’s false information to tell Congress and the American people that more than two-thirds of those responding to the Pentagon survey either favored or didn’t object to a DADT repeal.
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”—Dresden James
I.M. Kane
For more on the story, see LEAKED: U.S. defense officials deliberately skewed survey results to sway ‘Don’t Ask’ repeal.
THE MILLSTONE DIARIES 
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