Pentagon clears Stan McCrystal
Surprise, the Pentagon says they couldn’t verify the accuracy of the reporting in the Rolling Stone article which profiled General Stan McCrystal according to the Stars & Stripes – yeah the same article for which Dickbreath Michael Hastings won a Polk Prize;
Pentagon investigators said they were unable to confirm the events as reported in the June 2010 article in Rolling Stone, and the inquiry’s final review challenged the accuracy of the profile of General McChrystal, who was the top commander in Afghanistan.
The profile quoted people identified as senior aides to the general making disparaging statements about members of President Obama’s national security team.
Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Hastings can’t verify his interviews. Yeah, me neither. Now he knows why his “men who stare at Senators” (hat tip to B5 for that phrase) story went absolutely no where.
Nice move on the part of everyone who didn’t bother to lift a finger to defend him. Did I mention that US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry has been a dick for the whole four decades I’ve known him? So much for “civilian leadership”.
Category: Media, Military issues
We won’t here about this in the MSM :(….
I do believe that I heard, or read, you utter that statement about Eikenberry once before, but I can’t be sure…………..
But noticed how fast the story using military training to influence elected officials went away. So far RTA has not said anything since.
Amazing how quickly they’ll fuck over the General McCrystal’s career for it, though.
Poor McChrystal. Spends his whole career sequestered in black ops and the JSOC war room just to get torpedoed by a hit piece in a hippie mag as soon as he steps out into the light. That he sailed off into the sunset after devoting his whole adult life to military service without so much as a grimace is a testament to his professionalism and character.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/18/mcchrystal.probe/
A telling quote:
‘The report goes on to say, “Not all of the events at issue occurred as reported in the article.”‘
You know it’s awful what happened to Stan but I’m glad that RS article got him canned. The man has blood on his hands (ganjagal valley kunar province oct. 09) and should be serving time in leavenworth. His tactical directives were complete and utter bullshit so much so he issued a theater wide letter that all leaders had to read to their subordinates pretty much bitching us out because nobody was listening to his bullshit. Long tab or not but he only embraced the soft aspect of COIN and not the closed fist which is what secured Iraq during the surge. Drinking Chai with the sheiks didn’t secure Iraq but regular army manuever elements killing scores of bad guys and showing the locals who the biggest dogs on the block were.
Not the first commander to have his “higher” turn their backs on him and sail off into the sunset. I just hope it’s the last, though.
I’m with DirtyMick on this one.
DirtyMick I concur absolutely. This shows that even special ops boy-yos aren’t infallible.
If this doesn’t kill Hastings occupational prospects, nothing will.
I just don’t understand all this love for McChrystal. It just seems a lot of people that blog about our line of work had a hard on for Stan because he had a long tab and came from the secret squirrell community. I was in Kunar Province for 10 months last year and a good chunk of that was with McChrystal as Theater commander. His tactical directives/ROE tied us up and he was incompetent.
Granted I’m just an E5 infantryman and not a general staff offficer but the shit he passed down to the Joes on the ground and his ideas were pretty fucking terrible. To be honest I firmly believe he has blood on his hands especially that fight the Marine ETT team got into in October 2009 in the Ganjagal valley in Kunar. He needs to go to leavenworth instead of teaching class at Yale
Look, if you’re gonna burn someone, make sure you burn them for the right reasons. The RS article was not it. If he was a shitty strategic leader, then you have a case. Frankly, he shouldn’t be directing tactics as a theater commander.