Posts Tagged ‘General Stanley McChrystal’

FAIR Media Advisory: News Media Missing the McChrystal Point

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

Advisory says mainstream news media missed major point of the  Rolling Stone profile by Michael Hasting, that is, the damning portrait of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And, according to the Advisory, Hastings concluded that the media have mostly “given McChrystal a pass” on several controversies and scandals in the recent past.

Entire article follows.

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General Stanley McChrystal: Why? Why? Why? – Part 2

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

If this writer had been thinking clearly, he would have known that there would have to be a Part 2. And maybe even a 3. Braggadocio definitely on center stage but there is more. Tomorrow, Sunday, CNN’s Reliable Sources, will feature some  pundits talking about the McChrystal affair. I can’ wait to see it.

However, I still like what I wrote in Part 1, that the General’s mooning of the Obama administration was contempt expressed in act of desperation. Regardless of what others have, might or will say. And I especially like this excerpt from Frank Rich of the New York Times:

There were few laughs in the 36 hours of tumult, but Jon Stewart captured them with a montage of cable-news talking heads expressing repeated shock that an interloper from a rock ’n’ roll magazine could gain access to the war command and induce it to speak with self-immolating candor. Politico theorized that Hastings had pulled off his impertinent coup because he was a freelance journalist rather than a beat reporter, and so could risk “burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.”

That sentence was edited out of the article — in a routine updating, said Politico — after the blogger Andrew Sullivan highlighted it as a devastating indictment of a Washington media elite too cozy with and protective of its sources to report the unvarnished news.

Love it.

Full Rich Op Ed – The 36 Hours That Shook Washingtonhere.

General Stanley McChrystal: Why? Why? Why?

Friday, June 25th, 2010

General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), described in several news accounts as being a fearless if not hedonis snake eater, did not cut-off-his-nose-to-spite-his-face. Rather, what he did (and I believe I understand why the  pundits offering sycophantic explanations about his aggressive posturing missed this occurring faux pas) was  moon the administration and he did it because …

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