Good advice from the horses mouth. Of course you have heard the other side of the COIN that as inappropriate as these remarks were (most coming from the general's staff), it was the climate that the reporter for Rolling Stone was able to see and sense, and thereby report on, having by circumstances been given extended access to McChrystal.

Again, you must be aware that some think McCystal, insubordinate in this manner aside, was using this outlet as a way of conveying his dismay at the dysfunction of the Obama national security team?

The bottom line may in fact be that McChrystal having been through this twice before, knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he's a busy man, and may have been distracted enough that he wasn't aware how over the top his staff had become - which is what senior executive aides are for, but in the end he bears the responsibility for the hostile climate created.

Well anyway, at least it wasn't some admiral telling old Reader's Digest that there was "light at the end of the tunnel" (the little magazine made a good desk top to write letters home while in the bush).

As someone who worked in a corporate communications environment for many years, the short and simple "Don't ever say (write) anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of The New York Times" comes to mind.

By coincedence, I'm transcribing interviews and recordings from three trips to Iraq as an embedded reporter at the company level...and obviously there are plenty of comments that if I lifted a couple sentences with no beginning or end, they would horrify most listeners.

But, it's all about context...as long as the full meaning of the conversation is clear, then it's honest and truthful and that's what's important...

So for the staff officer talking about the meeting with the French, who said "It's fucking gay," if the next sentences were "but it's pretty important that we do these things, because to win the war we'll need a positive working relationship. I'm sure the French officers think it's as gay as we do," well, then that changes the context...

So without knowing what the reporter fully heard, I just can't have an opinion one way or the other...beyond that it's an interesting profile. I'd like to think the reporter presented an honest, objective presentation, and not a deliberate hatchet job to guarantee controversey.

If I learned anything from watchin "Almost Famous" it is that you should never open yourself up to a reporter from Roling Stone. Just as Russell Hammond and Jeff Bebe.

If I learned anything from watchin "Almost Famous" it is that you should never open yourself up to a reporter from Roling Stone. Just as Russell Hammond and Jeff Bebe did.

To me, the comments are more of a testament to McChrystal's management style than anything else. Sure, he doesn't get along with Eikenberry on a personal level, but anyone paying attention to the Afghan war knew that already. We also knew that McChyrstal does not necessarily endorse President Barack Obama's war strategy...he got less troops than we wanted and he was stuck with an eighteen month timeframe to actually get something done in Afghanistan. This puts a lot of pressure on McChrystal and his staff, and it looks like the pressure may have gotten to them.

But the more that I read about the story, the more I think that this was McChrystal's way of countering John Alter's new book, which displays the U.S Military command in a pretty bad light. But whatever the case may be, the motive obviously doesn't excuse McChrystal's behavior towards the Commander in Chief, nor his behavior towards the President's national security team. Double that for his staff.

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

The McChrystal media-military mashup: a few preliminary lessons for reporters.
Generals are smart and have huge egos. It is obvious that McC did all this on purpose. He was wrong and had screwed up the war worse, just like his rival, LtGen Eikenberry said he would. Rather than resign, he did this sneaky thing.

Good points Mr. Ricks. If a reporter writes the truth, he is unlikely to be invited to dinner parties and given access to write flattering books that makes him well known. You rarely see news reports about our foul mouthed troops in the Middle East laughing about wasting some innocent hajis.

Paris seemed an odd venue to bring a reporter. I know that McChrystal has spent years upon years of constant combat, so no one should accuse him of not pulling his weight. Still, what would troops think if they knew their commander was in Paris, drinking and having a good time?

I'm not saying that McChrystal wasn't entitled to do so--after all, we all have our annual R&R leave, and McChrystal has certainly spent his time in the sandbox--it just seemed like poor perception management.

It appears that Rolling Stone scooped the national press corp and rocked ISAF by actually reporting the military command atmospherics hovering above some very unhappy military and strategic facts. Shocking. We're knee deep in the big muddy, marching forward, with or without Stan. Who knew?

Tom, by your rules, readers can assume that the fix is solidly in, semi-contractual, for all reporting that was approved by the military. Even if the straight skinny is 'every sgt knows this isn't going well at all', the print report will feature senior officers saying 'another truck bomb attack on the main Balad gate was not unexpected at the present stage of the war...'

Petraeus' Baghdad team knew that Team Bush was 'all in', that there were no reserves being held back, that deployments couldn't be further extended to 18 or 24 months, and that a 5 year COIN campaign was not acceptable to the local gov't. Even so, the tension between MNFI and the uniformed chain of command cost a CENTCOM's chief his job. The proximal cause there was quite parallel; Fallon quoted as calling VP Cheney's shadow cabinet 'the crazies'.

It's my impression that McChrystal's staff approach to this 'surge' was less diverse, not confident enough to embrace an Emma Sky or open the books to a skeptical BIddle. ISAF HQ sounds bitter about not being supported with the priority or troop/contractor troops that Petraeus was able to gain in 2007.

The argument in late 2006, when Pashtunistan was trending back to the Taliban, was that Iraq/Gulf is major strategic to the US, while Afghanistan is minor, given that OBL lives somewhere else. Eye on the ball, international support for our deficit economy requires that Gulf oil flows freely thru Hormuz and Suez. Thats why JSOC was doing business in Iraq with such gusto, in 2006-7.

2010 still finds 190,000+ men stretched between the two major wars, plus contractors, depot, staging and transport support. There is no infantry reserve, only 12 months after the last of the 15-month Iraq deployments returned. It's a never-ending 'surge' (ever-surge?) that continues to keep the brigades in a state of deployment exhaustion.

Our army needed a reset period four years ago. The US Marine base towns are starting to realize that max deployment is the new normal. Both strategic and tactical airlift assets are well past their half-life planning limit, but that long-tailed story is being under-reported, under Ricks Rules for press access.

The biggest strategic threat faced in the Afghan campaign is to our military reputation. That's the same argument that kept us escalating in Viet Nam, even after LBJ's cabinet looked failure in the face. 'We're too big to lose'. Perhaps. But the more resource we pour down the hole, the greater the material damage to our recovery prospects. The damage to credibility, morale and reputation is incurred incrementally, without cancelling the risk of a balloon payment at the end.

In chess terms, we're forked. 'Nobama the Wimp' didn't create it. 'Bite-me' ideas were looked over approved by some smart generals too, and are bloody-minded, in a different way.

The early course correction provides more leeway. But stay off the rocks at all costs.

Poor General McChrystal! With his bosses General David Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen as well as Defense secretary Gates justifying Pakistan’s ‘terrorist connections’, Mullah Mohammed Omar’s QST trail from Quetta to Kandahar is operating unimpeded.

McChrystal himself had warned about Pakistan ’s sheltering of Taliban terrorists in his August 2009 report to Obama: ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta , the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan . At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘.

But US can not even use its drones to destroy QST that is causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002! That shows Obama’s continuance of Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan .

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sought to justify Pakistan ’s terrorist connections, alluding to a “deficit of trust” between Washington , DC and Islamabad . Mr Gates also said there was “some justification” for Pakistan 's concerns about past American policies. Gen David Patraeus, rushed in with an apologia for his Pakistani friends, by claiming that while Faisal was inspired by militants in Pakistan , he did not necessarily have contacts with the militants. Both Adm Mike Mullen and Gen Patraeus fancy themselves to be “soldier statesmen” a la Gen Dwight Eisenhower. Adm Mullen has visited Pakistan 15 times and Gen Patraeus no less frequently. Both evidently have high opinions of their abilities to persuade Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to crack down on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar-led Quetta Shura.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they cannot prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line.

With US tolerating and mollycoddling Pakistani support of terrorist outfits across the Afghan border, US mission is doomed to fail no matter how much money and manpower US pours in that terror center of the world which resides in Pakistan.

Good words to start any conversation with a journalist. Open it up from there, discuss what can go on the record or background, negotiate. But if you're not a PAO or been prepped by one, get behind the off-the-record shield to start with and never assume that friendliness or interest imply confidentiality.

BTW, this situation's PR errors of staff and flag are raw rookie errors. One wonders how much else is fundamentally fucked up in that so-called team.