This evening, during an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, Gen. Colin Powell reiterated his belief that repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell must “take into account the views of our military leaders,” but cautioned LGBT advocates against urging Congress to lift the ban before the Pentagon publishes its review of the policy.

Asked if he agreed with Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) evolving view on the issue, Powell said, “I share Senator McCain’s view that we ought to let the process unfold and not try to intercept it with court rulings or with people trying to get a vote out of the Congress when the Congress is not ready to vote on it”:

POWELL: My position has been, it has been 17 years since we put that policy in place. Lots of things have happened. Attitudes have changed within our society. But i always believe, as I believed in 1993, that we have to take into account the views of our military leaders who are responsible for the well-being of the armed forces.

KING: So you support the McCain’s view?

POWELL: Yes. But, you know, our military leaders have now spoken. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, there is some, some difference of opinion among the chiefs that will have to be resolved. But I wish that we would just let that study be finished, let it be published and let everybody read it and not leak parts of it. And so I share Senator McCain’s view that we ought to let the process unfold and not try to intercept it with court rulings or with people trying to get a vote out of the Congress when the Congress is not ready to vote on it.

Watch it:

Powell, who helped usher in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, first announced his support for repeal in February of 2009, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen testified about their support for lifting the ban before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

His comments on King, however, place him to the right of Gates, who has recently called on the Senate to vote on repeal during the lame duck session. Recent leaks from the Pentagon’s study have found that repeal would not disrupt the military during a time of war, leading Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) to call on the Pentagon to release the study ahead of the December 1 deadline.

Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports that Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urging the Pentagon to release the Working Group’s study of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell “as soon as possible”:

Some of our colleagues in the Senate share our view about the importance of passing a defense bill, but they are awaiting the release of the working group’s report before agreeing to begin debate on the bill. We are hopeful that release of the report and the opportunity for our colleagues to review its findings and recommendations will help inform their understanding and alleviate some concerns that they may have regarding the military’s capacity to implement repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in a manner that is consistent with our armed forces’ standards of readiness and effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention. Given the limited amount of time remaining in the 111th Congress, the soonest possible release of the working group’s report could therefore be instrumental in allowing the defense bill to move forward.

Indeed, my colleagues Jeff Krehely and Crosby Burns have released this list of 10 lawmakers “who have said they are waiting to hear from the troops and military leaders before deciding on DADT repeal.” These include: Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH). These senators should be held to task once the report comes out and forced to take a position on repeal.

Gates has urged the Senate to pass repeal in the lame duck session but at least two separate Pentagon spokespeople have thus far suggested that the study will not be released before December 1. On Friday, DoD spokesman Geoff Morrell suggested “the full report will be made public for all to review early next month.” Earlier in the week, Pentagon spokesman Col. David Lapan also said he was “not aware that there’s been any effort to speed it up.”

Yesterday, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) argued that he opposed repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and disagreed with the Pentagon’s study of the issue because “this study was directed at how to implement the repeal, not whether the repeal should take place or not.” “I wanted a study to determine the effects of the repeal on battle effectiveness and morale. What this study is, is designed to do is, is to find out how the repeal could be implemented,” he said.

This afternoon, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) distanced himself from McCain’s denunciation of the report, telling MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, “in this case I disagree strongly with my friend John McCain”:

LIEBERMAN: I was so encouraged by the first indications of the study that’s been done, thousands and thousands of our military personnel and their families question, more than 70% apparently said, no problem, because, in the classic situation, when you’re in battle, you don’t care what anybody’s sexual orientation or race or gender or nationality or religion is. You care about whether they’re going to fight well. [...]

I’m not giving up on us doing a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t tell during the lame duck session. To make that possible, I hope that the Defense Department can find a way to issue this report that they’ve got pretty much done, but going through clearance now, as quickly as possible and certainly before December 1st. We’ve got time to do this, and it’s the right thing to do.

Watch it:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has encouraged the Congress to pass repeal during the lame duck session but has refused to move up the release of the study. “The full report will be made public for all to review early next month,” DoD spokesman Geoff Morrell insisted on Friday.

Politico’s Josh Gerstein points out that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) opposition to the Pentagon’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell study and his insistence on holding hearings on the matter will likely sink any remaining prospects of repealing the ban during the lame duck session. Unless the Pentagon releases the report ahead of its December 1st due date, lawmakers simply won’t have enough time to consider the measure before the end of the Congressional session:

Holding hearings during the busy and short lame-duck session could be tricky, but even if feasible such a move could doom repeal legislation for this Congress simply because of time and the necessary sequence of events. Repeal backers want an initial vote on “don’t ask” in the first part of the lame-duck session, set for this week. However, many senators have indicated they want to hold off on voting on “don’t ask” until the Pentagon study is back.

If McCain can hold off Senate floor action on the defense authorization bill which contains conditional repeal language not only until December 1 but until after hearings on the Pentagon report, that may well kill repeal for this year. If the Senate waits until after hearings to move on “don’t ask,” it would then need time to bring the defense bill to the floor, debate and vote on what could be a lengthy list of amendments, end debate, pass the bill, conference it with the House, and re-pass it in the Senate. Even if the Senate began work on the bill this week, that would be a tall order and if the body takes no action until, say, the second week in December, it becomes hard to see how passage could be accomplished in the face of continued resistance by McCain and others.

The Human Rights Campaign issued a belated call for moving up the release date on Friday, but the Defense Department — which has been surprisingly vocal in calling on Congress to repeal the ban during the lame duck session — isn’t budging. “The full report will be made public for all to review early next month,” Gerstein quotes DoD spokesman Geoff Morrell as saying. The sentiment only reiterates the notion that repeal isn’t a top priority for the administration or most Democrats — or at least isn’t important enough to pressure the Pentagon or Congress to expedite the process.

Last week, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer meekly suggested that repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military is “at least worth a shot” during the lame duck session and on yesterday’s Sunday shows, Senators from both parties only echoed his tone.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said, “I don’t think there’s a lot of time, and I don’t think there’s a lot of appetite to jam stuff through,” and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) — a repeal supporter — actually agreed. “Who knows what’s going to happen in the lame duck?” he asked.

The crux of the problem is that the administration has signaled that repealing the ban — while a laudable goal — isn’t an important enough accomplishment to spend any serious political capitol attaining. As R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, told The Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel, the White House isn’t even pressuring moderate on-the-fence Senators to support repeal.

“[T]hese are all senators who would be willing to have a dialogue, and they have not heard from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, which is an arm of the Executive Office of the President,” relayed Cooper. “So again, if President Obama is serious about this as a legislative priority, there are Republican offices that need a phone call.” And he should call the Pentagon while he’s at it.