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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

And in Other News (Updated)

Ok Keith is back, like he was ever really gone and Dkos is in full swoon.

Obama gave his speech it got panned. He got 20 billion out of BP the next day it got praised and panned and apologized for.

But what else is going on.

Well we woke this morning to find the General Stanley McChrystal has stepped in it. It seems he and his aides may have spoken just a little to freely to a freelance Rolling Stone reporter.

Some of the more incendiary quotes all thanks to TPM

On meeting with Obama

“It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”

On ambassador Holbrooke

McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” says a member of the general’s team. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous.

On National Security Advisor Jim Jones

One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a “clown” who remains “stuck in 1985.”

On DC Politicians

Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, “turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful.”

And finaly on having dinner with a French foreign minister

“Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.”

Next on today’s hit parade. It seems that aNew Orlean’s Federal judge with strong financial ties to the oil industry has decided to block

President Obama’s Deep water drilling moratorium.

The grounds in a nut shell. Just because one went to hell in a hand basket doesn’t mean they all will.

LA Times

This “blanket moratorium, with no parameters,” he wrote, “seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”

Feldman agreed that the plaintiffs, a group of oil rig service companies, were able to show that the Obama administration acted “arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the moratorium.”

So questions, questions, questions.

Is McChrystal toast?  ( He should be) Will the moratorium get reinstated on appeal? ( I friggin’ hope so)

And will Fogiv make another comment over at DKos that will get Keith to storm out in a huff?. (Pretty please)

UPDATE: JOE KLINE IS TWEETING McChrystal has tendered his resignation

http://twitter.com/cnnbrk/stat…


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 82 Comments

82 comments

  1. louisprandtl

    for GBCW-ing. He confirmed in this new diary that his last diary was indeed a GBCW. So the question for Kos is: Is there a set of rules for KO and a separate set for all other users at DKos?

  3. HappyinVT

    but the president wants to meet with him before making a final decision.  I’ll like the president to begin the conversation with, “explain to me why I shouldn’t fire your ass.”  Even McChrystal’s “apology” was lame.  Bottom line for me is that this is an embarrassment for the president and a freakin’ distraction he doesn’t need right now.

    I’ll be very disappointed if his resignation isn’t accepted.

  4. creamer

     The General reportedly drinks alot and was given demerits as far back as West Point for insubordination. And Karzai likes him. This guys got no political future.

      I’ve had mixed feelings over the pursuit of this war. I’m unconvinced that we can win or even gain anything substantal for our own security. Make McChrystal the goat, start lining up Predator strikes and get the troops out. Run Karzai’s ass over too. Mineral rights to the Japaneese…… fucking moron.

  5. HappyinVT

    but that first quote about the meeting between Obama and McChrystal has been bothering me because I seem to remember that Alter had very different things to say in his book about that meeting.  Fogiv, you’re reading the book ~ am I correct?  Or confused?

  6. Chris Blask

    I can’t see any other way.  The Right will take this as an opportunity to stop trying to find a way to make “Drill Baby Drill!” sound intelligent, there’s nothing that can put that genie back in the bottle.

    McChrystal showed such overwhelming incompetence for a management role by giving that interview that there is absolutely no keeping him.  He could be my brother, and I’d still fire him.

  7. Peter Jukes

    The only way these anecdotes could have appeared in Rolling Stone.

    1. Accidentally, so he’s out of control

    2. On purpose, so he wants a way out

    Obama just has to make sure he fires McChrystal in the most humiliating way possible

  9. HappyinVT

    then for another half hour with the president.  He’s left the White House.  What might be more interesting is that he, apparently, did not stay for the regularly scheduled AfPak meeting in the Situation Room.  Seems like you’d take the opportunity to have your top commander in such a meeting while he was in town.  Or not.

  10. jsfox

    is gone and Petraeus is in.  Putting aside my opinion of the war as a whole and desire to get yesterday and looking at from a CiC and political stand point. fucking brilliant. The Petraeus pick I believe immediately silences the right (will it should) he is well respected both in and out of the Pentagon. The Afgan plan in place is something he helped develop and craft. He knows the territory and has the respect of the boots on the ground. I also think he will do a better job of working with the civilian side in theater.

    So folks what say you?

  11. HappyinVT

    The guy who authored the RS article, Michael Hastings, is a Burlington, VT local who graduated from one of the area’s high schools.  Guess he couldn’t get a job at the local paper.   🙂

    And, we had a 5.0 earthquake earlier this afternoon.  Kind of cool; I wonder if at least one of my cats is still under the bed.  Shoot, Sam was probably on the coffee table enjoying the ride while Fran’s hair is still probably standing on end.

  13. fogiv

    so here some reporting from the NYT, on Gen. McChrystal’s dismissal:

    During the 36 frenetic hours since he had been handed an article from the coming issue of Rolling Stone ominously headlined “The Runaway General,” the president weighed the consequences of cashiering Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, whose contemptuous comments about senior officials had ignited a firestorm.

    Mr. Obama, aides say, consulted with advisers – some, like Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who warned of the dangers of replacing General McChrystal, others, like his political advisers, who thought he had to go. He reached out for advice to a soldier-statesman, Colin L. Powell. He identified a possible successor to lead the war in Afghanistan.

    And then, finally, the president ended General McChrystal’s command in a meeting that lasted only 20 minutes. According to one aide, the general apologized, offered his resignation and did not lobby for his job.

    [snip]

    The time between Mr. Obama’s first reading of the Rolling Stone article and his decision to accept General McChrystal’s resignation offers an insight into the president’s decision-making process under intense stress: He appears deliberative and open to debate, but in the end, is coldly decisive.

    I found this part very interesting:

    The drama began on Monday afternoon, when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was flying home from Illinois to Andrews Air Force Base, took an unsettling call from General McChrystal.

    The phone connection was scratchy, and the conversation lasted barely two minutes. General McChrystal told the vice president there was an article coming out that he would not like. Baffled, Mr. Biden asked his staff to investigate, and when he landed, aides handed him the article.

    He calls Biden first?!?!  Biden?  Wow.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06…  

  14. jsfox

    I thought this para from a Shrum opinion piece was probably the most succinct one I have ever read on Obama.

    Sometimes, in the swirl of events, we forget that the president has already kept us out of depression, saved the auto industry, passed health care after a century of delay, overcome fierce lobbying and achieved the wholesale reform of college student loans, and will soon sign into law the most comprehensive financial reform since the New Deal. One passable speech does not unmake a presidency. And if anyone continues to harbor the cliché that Obama’s too professorial, too indecisive, they should try offering that opinion to Stanley McChrystal. Barack Obama just understands that decisiveness is not impulsiveness-and eloquence is not empty boasting. In that, he’s different from his predecessor, who got us into so much of this pervasive mess.

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