( – promoted by buhdydharma )
General Stanley McChrystal, who runs things in Afghanistan for the US Military, gave a rather candid and heartfelt interview to Rolling Stone magazine.
“The Runaway General” has a few issues with some of his civilian colleagues…. like the Ambassador Eikenberry.
So far his special assistant Duncan Boothby has submitted his resignation (aka “fired”) and McChrystal has been summoned to a meeting tommorrow at the White House.
And he’s apologized. McChrystal: “It was a mistake reflecting poor judgement and should never have happened.”
President Hamid Karzai is praising him, saying he’s the best general ever, and his spokesperson is saying he hopes he stays.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…This week’s development comes as criminal investigators are said to be examining allegations that Afghan security firms have been extorting as much as $4 million a week from contractors paid with U.S. tax dollars and then funneling the spoils to warlords and the Taliban, according to a U.S. military document. The payments are intended to ensure safe passage through dangerous areas they control.
The payments reportedly end up in insurgent hands through a $2.1 billion Pentagon contract to transport food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan.
What not to say to a magazine about your President and CIC, even if he is ignoring you for 4 months before:
HuffPo 6/22/10
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”
Yee ouch.
McChrystal also disses VP Biden, Richard Holbrooke, and a French minister.
The entire thing is …. well, just don’t sit here, go read it. http://www.rollingstone.com/po…
And yes, they talk about the Pat Tillman cover- up, too. The Iraq detainee torture problem, and the Special Forces.
http://www.rollingstone.com/po…
Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it’s going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. “It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win,” says Maj. General Bill Maryville, who serves as chief of operations for McChrystal. “This is going to end in an argument.
Read page 5- after the “kinder, gentler offensive than the disaster in Marja, the big offensive in southern Afghanistan, the Kandahar offensive, will be delayed until the fall. And then….
“If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular,” a senior adviser to McChrystal says. Such realism, however, doesn’t prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. “There’s a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here,” a senior military official in Kabul tells me.
That ought to keep the Kagan family busy.
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…. and the mother of the surge. Frederick Kagan is her husband, a “resident scholar” at the American Enterprise Institute. And if he’s the daddy, we should have a big bouncing baby deficit about nine months …. knock knock.
Why, somebody just left a bundle wrapped on the doorstep! What could it be?
McChrystal has now resigned according to the Huffington Post.
But notice that President Obama did not make McChrystal resign over his horrible performance and advice regarding the Afghanistan War itself, but rather President Obama made him resign just over having made unflattering remarks about the administration in the Press.
So, you see it’s perfectly fine to Kill and slaughter thousands upon thousands of innocent people (including children), and drive our Nation into financial ruin and bankruptcy. That’s all good stuff. But it is not okay to speak ill of the President or of his staff.
……..Priorities……
Obama, I’m sure, will find another radical Neocon Warmonger to replace him.
for whitleblowing on President Disengaged’s sad little war.
of his duties.
AP source: Obama replaces McChrystal with Petraeus
General Betrayus! I guess he’s a tad better than McChrystal.
OBTW, McChrystal was Cheney’s chief assassin in Cheney’s secret assassination wing (JSOC) Joint Special Operations Command and was then named as the new commander of Afghanistan. See more here.