Former Vice President Dick Cheney on
Sunday said he believes repeal of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” was
“the right thing to do.”
The 18-year-old ban on gay and bisexual
troops serving openly ended on September 20.
In an appearance on CNN's State of
the Union, Cheney told host Candy Crowley that he supports the
move.
“I think the decision that's been
made with respect to allowing gays to serve openly in the military is
a good one,” Cheney said. “It's the right thing to do.”
(Related: Dick
and Lynne Cheney support gay marriage on The View.)
But Cheney rejected the notion that
Republican candidates should have responded to the audience's booing
of a gay soldier who asked about the policy during a recent GOP
presidential debate.
Cheney said he's “a little bit leery
of the notion that somehow we ought to hammer the Republican
candidates because they didn't respond to the booing in the audience.
When you're in a political campaign and debates, people boo a lot of
things. I'm not sure that it was all focused specifically on that
particular issue.”
Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney's daughter,
suggested President Barack Obama's support for gay rights was
disingenuous.
“I think it was the right decision to
repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' I don't know where President Obama
is on this issue and I suspect that are a lot of people who are
watching his speech in that room last night wondering whether they
could believe what he was saying, frankly. His position on these
issues hasn't been that different from where many of the Republican
candidates are. He hasn't come out and advocated gay marriage, for
example,” she said, referring to Obama's speech on Saturday at a
gay fundraiser in which he chided
GOP presidential candidates for not coming to the defense of booed
gay soldier Stephen Hill. (The video is embedded in the right
panel of this page.)