Senior Pentagon leaders ask Congress to delay changing Don’t Ask Don’t tell until they can formulate a plan to handle opposition within the ranks.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen are the leaders spearheading this proposition.

“Our military must be afforded the opportunity to inform us of their concerns, insights and suggestions if we are to carry out this change successfully,” Gates and Mullen wrote to the panel’s chairman, Missouri Democrat Ike Skelton.

This letter provides undecided Democrats to suspend their decision until after the year’s midterm elections.

Gates supports the lifting of the ban but wants to make sure the troops are prepared for such actions first.

If Congress acts before then, “it would send a very damaging message to our men and women in uniform that in essence their views, concerns and perspectives do not matter,” he and Mullen wrote to Skelton.

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