Wednesday 23 June 2010

The Runaway General in a Runaway War


kenny's sideshow

Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan.

Read the entire article "The Runaway General"  here.

Let's get this out upfront.

War is run by deception and by lies. The media, including Rolling Stone, will only give us some truths while muddying the waters on the rest of the story.

This 'ambush' of McChrystal reeks of diversion and deception. Not he doesn't deserve to be ambushed. Remember, he was the guy who headed the cover up of  the assassination of Pat Tillman. He covered for war crimes of the Bush administration while involving himself in others right up to the present.

Obama is 'angry' and calls McChrystal to the White House for some 'splainin to do.'

President Obama reacted angrily to derogatory comments by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, about administration officials involved in Afghan policy and is leaving his options open about firing him, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.

Gibbs described Obama as "angry" after reading about McChrystal's comments in a Rolling Stone magazine profile.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tuesday that McChrystal "made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment" in making the dismissive remarks to a reporter for the magazine.
McChrystal has been summoned to Washington to explain highly critical comments by him and his staff about Vice President Biden, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry and other top Obama administration officials.{more}
Games and more games. The conservative cost of wars since 2001 has topped $1 trillion. The cost in lives of the U.S. and its allies and those of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. are well over 1 million but no one is really counting.

Rolling Stone got one thing right. Afghanistan is deeply fucked up. They leave out the part about how fucked up Obama, McChrystal and the rest of the war mongering liars are, at least for 99.9% of the world. They also don't touch upon the criminal state of Israel or an objective analysis of 9/11. No need to wonder why that is. It's the same old who owns the media tale.

Anyway, now that this story is out in the open, let's move on to something more interesting to the majority of sleep walking Americans. Like Lady Gaga bares her heart ... eh Rolling Stone. 

McChrystal should buy a bunch of copies of the latest issue for his troops. osted by kenny's sideshow at 3:13 PM


McChrystal was summoned to Washington for a White House meeting after apologizing for remarks about 22/06/2010 Tensions between leading military commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal and are on full display on Tuesday, as the White House summoned the General to personally explain published remarks to a US magazine in which he and senior aides mock and criticize top American officials -- including US President Barack Obama.

"McChrystal has been directed to attend (Wednesday's) monthly meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan in person" rather than appear in a secure satellite teleconference "to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes in the piece about his colleagues," a White House official told AFP.

In the magazine profile McChrystal jokes sarcastically about preparing to answer a question, referring to Vice President Joe Biden known as a skeptic of the commander's war strategy, and imagined ways of "dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner."

McChrystal also told the magazine that he felt "betrayed" by the US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, in a White House debate over war strategy last year.

And an unnamed McChrystal adviser says in the article that the general came away unimpressed after meeting with Obama in the Oval Office a year ago.

"It was a 10-minute photo op," the general's adviser says.

"Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was... he didn't seem very engaged," the adviser added.

A McChrystal aide also called the national security adviser, Jim Jones, a retired general, a "clown" who is "stuck in 1985."

McChrystal issued a statement late Monday apologizing for his remarks to the magazine.

"I extend my sincerest apology for this profile," McChrystal said in a statement issued hours after the article entitled "The Runaway General" was released Monday.

"It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened."

McChrystal, a former special operations chief, usually speaks cautiously in public and has enjoyed mostly sympathetic US media coverage since he took over the NATO-led force last year.

In the article McChrystal laughed when asked about the vice president.

"'Are you asking about Vice President Biden?' McChrystal says with a laugh. 'Who's that?'" the article quotes him as saying.
"'Biden?' suggests a top adviser. 'Did you say: Bite Me?'"

The article is likely to exacerbate tensions between the US command in Afghanistan and the White House.
McChrystal already received a dressing down from Obama after giving a speech last summer in which he appeared to criticize Biden's argument in favor of fewer troops in Afghanistan.

NATO SOLDIER KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN

Meanwhile, these tensions coincide along with high casualties the NATO occupation forces are paying in the occupied Afghanistan, with an occupation soldier was killed on Tuesday.

The soldier was killed in a small-arms attack by militants in southern Afghanistan, where the alliance has suffered heavy casualties during increased operations.
The nationality of the soldier, a member of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, was not released.

The death took to 66 the number of NATO soldiers killed this month and 286 this year, according to an AFP tally.

The alliance has recently encountered heavier casualties in Afghanistan and 10 NATO troops were killed in attacks and a helicopter crash on Monday -- the second time this month that 10 service members were killed in a single day.

The US military has warned that casualties will inevitably mount as foreign forces build up their campaign against Taliban militants from the southern province of Kandahar..

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