Posted on 06/26/2010 3:50:06 PM PDT by Schnucki
the first reaction I had was .....Mcrystal saying to Obama...”CHECKMATE!”
Indeed, Obama just threw another of his own under the bus.
Last thing we needed is this general running in some primary somewhere. I’ll never weep for a fallen lib, especially one who went along with the policies in Afghan which made the job of our soldiers there more difficult to do.
Hows that Hope n Change workin out for ya now General?
I’ve heard so many commentators wonder about why the General allowed this guy around him and didn’t realize that he was a leftist who would sand bag him.
If McCrystal is a social liberal as everyone says, he probably thought that gave him some sort of immunity from attach by the left.
Stanley, Mon General, they eat their own all the time if it fits into their worldview and political program.
You are absolutely correct. Everyone should expect anything they say to a reporter will be reported.
I’m as appalled by the 10-day military bender as by anything they said because it was the bender that got them to say what they said.
Too late now , uindeer the bus he goes. This is abhorrent; but my major question is why o why would the CO take an interview from a bunch of leftie dopers in the first place?
Too late now , uindeer the bus he goes. This is abhorrent; but my major question is why o why would the CO take an interview from a bunch of leftie dopers in the first place?
Too late now , uindeer the bus he goes. This is abhorrent; but my major question is why o why would the CO take an interview from a bunch of leftie dopers in the first place?
How much you want to bet that he receives a Pulitzer Prize for this nasty hit piece?
Broke the rules, huh? Well I’ll bet that kills any chance of an interview with Petraeus.
> How much you want to bet that he receives a Pulitzer Prize
> for this nasty hit piece?
Pulitzer was the father of Yellow Journalism. This prize was set up in his name to ease his conscience for his unconscionable, biased, slanted, and prejudicial reporting by rewarding REAL journalists for unbiased, down-in-the-trenches reporting.
The “prize” looks more and more like its namesake with every passing year.
rules
By Karen DeYoung and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer >p>Saturday, June 26, 2010
It was 2:30 Tuesday morning in Kabul, after a busy day of travel to Kandahar and meetings with top Afghan officials, when Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was awakened by an aide with grim news. This Story
McChrystal allies say article broke ground rules Rolling Stone fact checker sent McChrystal aide 30 questions Gen. Stanley McChrystal is relieved of his duties Gen. David Petraeus to replace Stanley McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan
McChrystal ousted from Afghan post
"There's a Rolling Stone article out," the aide told
McChrystal. "It's very, very bad."
Forty hours later, McChrystal had been relieved of his command, his 34-year military career in tatters. Apart from a terse apology, McChrystal has not discussed publicly the disparaging remarks that he and his aides made about administration officials and that appeared in the article.
On Friday, however, officials close to McChrystal began trying to salvage his reputation by asserting that the author, Michael Hastings, quoted the general and his staff in conversations that he was allowed to witness but not report. The officials also challenged a statement by Rolling Stone's executive editor that the magazine had thoroughly reviewed the story with McChrystal's staff ahead of publication.
The executive editor, Eric Bates, denied that Hastings violated any ground rules when he wrote about the four weeks he spent, on and off, with McChrystal and his team. "A lot of things were said off the record that we didn't use," Bates said in an interview. "We abided by all the ground rules in every instance."
A senior military official insisted that "many of the sessions were off-the-record and intended to give [Hastings] a sense" of how the team operated. The command's own review of events, said the official, who was unwilling to speak on the record, found "no evidence to suggest" that any of the "salacious political quotes" in the article were made in situations in which ground rules permitted Hastings to use the material in his story.
'Clearly off the record'
A member of McChrystal's team who was present for a celebration of McChrystal's 33rd wedding anniversary at a Paris bar said it was "clearly off the record." Aides "made it very clear to Michael: 'This is private time. These are guys who don't get to see their wives a lot. This is us together. If you stay, you have to understand this is off the record,' " according to this source. In the story, the team members are portrayed as drinking heavily.
Bates said the contention that the night at the bar and other instances in which derisive comments were made about administration officials were off the record was "absolutely untrue." Hastings was traveling Friday, and an automated response from his e-mail account referred queries to Rolling Stone.
Neither McChrystal nor members of his staff have denied making any of the remarks quoted in the story, including a description of Obama as "uncomfortable and intimidated" in his first meeting with the general and a reference to national security adviser James L. Jones as a "clown."
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Thursday that the atmosphere of disrespect for civilian leaders that McChrystal apparently tolerated and participated in was grounds for dismissal regardless of the context in which the offensive comments were made or who made them.
A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, Air Force Lt. Col. Edward T. Sholtis, acknowledged that Hastings, like other reporters who have interviewed McChrystal over the past year, was not required to sign written ground rules. "We typically manage ground rules on a verbal basis," Sholtis said. "We trust in the professionalism of the people we're working with."
McChrystal's headquarters first received a copy of the story shortly before midnight Monday from a wire service reporter seeking comment. After McChrystal read it, "he knew instantly, this was going to be very large," the source said. "But I don't think any of us realized it was going to be as large as it was."
Gen. McChrystal allies, Rolling Stone disagree over article's ground rules Reaching out
The general's first action was to call his superiors. Then he began reaching out to members of the Obama administration mentioned in the article. He reached Vice President Biden -- whom one McChrystal aide referred to in the article as Vice President "Bite me" -- on an airplane as Biden was heading home from an official trip.
This Story
McChrystal allies say article broke ground rules Rolling Stone fact checker sent McChrystal aide 30 questions Gen. Stanley McChrystal is relieved of his duties Gen. David Petraeus to replace Stanley McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan
McChrystal ousted from Afghan post
At the White House, copies of the article were already circulating among key West Wing officials.
"Tuesday was definitely not a normal day" in Kabul, the source said. McChrystal tried to maintain his schedule, assuming that the response to the story would be handled by the White House and the Pentagon. It was late in the day in Afghanistan when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called to order McChrystal home immediately for face-to-face meetings.
As events unfolded at the White House, members of McChrystal's staff in Kabul "were all heartbroken," the source said. "I've seen incredibly brave men cry this week."
Bates said it was telling that it took four days for those close to McChrystal to begin crying foul. Subjects of critical articles, he said, have many ways "after a story appears to question its veracity, [to complain] that things were taken out of context or off the record. None of those objections were raised during the critical few days in which this became a national issue," he said. "You're used to instantaneous responses from sources who feel they were abused in any way."
Sholtis said that "arguing about the merits of the article would have seemed like we were trying to protect or excuse ourselves rather than acknowledge our mistake. That may have not been the best PR strategy, but it was the approach consistent with the character of General McChrystal."
Officials also questioned Rolling Stone's fact-checking process, as described by Bates in an interview this week with Politico. "We ran everything by them in a fact-checking process as we always do," Bates said. "They had a sense of what was coming, and it was all on the record, and they spent a lot of time with our reporter, so I think they knew that they had said it."
In an interview Friday, the managing editor, Will Dana, said the reporter's notes and factual matters were exhaustively reviewed.
But 30 questions that a Rolling Stone fact-checker posed in a memo e-mailed last week to then-McChrystal media adviser Duncan Boothby contained no hint of what became the controversial portions of the story. Boothby resigned Tuesday.
In the e-mail, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a military official sympathetic to McChrystal, Boothby is asked to confirm the makeup of McChrystal's traveling staff on the Paris trip and the communications equipment they brought with them on an earlier visit to London. "They don't come close to revealing what ended up in the final article," the official said.
"Does McChrystal's staff joking refer to themselves as Team America?" the fact-checker asked. "Not really," Boothby replied. "We joke that we are sometimes perceived that way by many of the NATO forces" under McChrystal's command.
In the article, Hastings wrote that McChrystal and his aides "jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority." In other passages, Hastings took what appear to be similar minor liberties with the facts as Boothby described them.
In the last question, the fact-checker asked: "Did Gen. McChrystal vote for President Obama? (The reporter tells me that this info originates from McChrystal himself.)"
Boothby replied in all capitals. "IMPORTANT -- PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE THIS -- THIS IS PERSONAL AND PRIVATE INFORMATION AND UNRELATED TO HIS JOB. IT WOULD BE INAPPROPRIATE TO SHARE." He went on to describe the "strict rules" under which military personnel keep their political views to themselves.
In the article, Hastings reported that the general "had voted for Obama."
Bates said that the remark was "absolutely" not off the record, and he noted that Boothby's appeal "isn't on accuracy or even that it was off the record," but that it was irrelevant. He said the magazine, like other news organizations, had no obligation to warn sources that they had made unwise remarks.
------------------------------------------------------
My own questions are,
why is Obama reading this trash? Or why does he care? Doens't he have BIGGER things to worry about like oil, the economy, how the Health care bill he shoved down America's throats sucks? the pick up basketball game photo shoot and the next concert
Why does he even give a sh** since McChrystal was doing a good job being Obama's lapdog following the lame ROE and etc?
Of course McChrystal() should hold some bitterness when only getting 60% of soldiers he asked for to get it done in Afghanistan.
And as written, why would the CO in charge of all Afghanistan even let this asswipe near him?
Would ANY general in their own right mind dating back to the 1960's sit down with this lame a***d maggotscene and think they were coming out smelling like roses?
And why would Obama stoop so low as to slam the CO of Afghanistan? Seems he's as we all know, he's a sensitive flamer that cares more about his narcissistic man love of self than he cares at all of his soldiers and the war.
He uses the White House as his William Hearst San Simeeon get-away or the Playboy mansion more that the place of business where the greatest leaders since the beginning of the White House have coordinated business and made policy where REAL presidents have WORKED; not used the WH as his own"I won" playground for his lame arsed thugs and crooks?
From inane things like the oil leak was/is some conspiracy with Obama and GE just loving is( including Soros) to his asinine racist vies from his own book( written by a terrrorist) to the WH and the beer summit, the freeing of the Black Panthers, the silence when hasan murdered so many soldiers in Ft Hood, the taxing of banks and other businesses AFTER they were force fed the stimulus money and paid it all back
Oh I wonder about damned near everything this guy does including his wife. I wonder mostly if he thinks being opresident is his own personal mansion in which he's delegated almost a 100 czars to do the real work that's seemingly below his 16.7 percent "black " butt
Heavens he's not even desended from slaves but in his delusions he has the opposite of the Michael Jackson syndrome. The guy and his thugs have scared me from his racist views to his inept ways of any decision he's made to being the worst absolute liar( born because of Selma) I've ever heard coming from the words teleprompter of this POSpOTinternational 57 States.
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