True Warrior

Last night's segment on 60 Minutes about General Stanley McChrystal (that last name is hard to spell) was very interesting. It could reasonably be thought of as a 'puff piece', encouraging Americans to think of this man in the best possible light. That always makes me suspicious. The average person shouldn't be seeing this much about the commanders in the field, except that there is a political donnybrook going on in the Adminstration.

Here is an article about him I found in the Guardian newspaper, with an excerpt from the last few paragraphs. This General could be trouble for Obama.

Born 14 August 1954 to Major General Herbert McChrystal. He was the fourth
child in a family of five boys and a girl, all of whom would serve or marry into
the military. McChrystal has a wife and adult son. Currently commander ISAF
international forces in Afghanistan.

Best of times Credited with masterminding the killing of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq. Zarqawi claimed responsibility for
numerous bombings and executions.
Worst of times A Pentagon investigation
ruled that McChrystal was "accountable for the inaccurate and misleading
assertions" in the scandal surrounding the death of former football star Pat
Tillman in Afghanistan in 2004. McChrystal approved his posthumous citation for
a Silver Star, claiming he died in "the line of devastating enemy fire". It
emerged that McChrystal wrote a memo to senior military officials that Tillman
might actually have been killed by friendly fire.

He says "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in
the near-term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks
an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."Confidential
report, 30 August 2009.

They say "If you asked me the first thing that comes to mind about General
McChrystal, I think of no body fat." Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign
Relations, quoted in the New York Times.