McChrystal: Out

These people are nuts!!! I don't think they want to live in the real world. Talk about far-right extreme!!

 

The general spoke the truth as he perceived it: Biden's a clown, the state department is worthless, Obama was disappointing in person. Etc.

The detractors of Obama's administration all say the same things. Biden being a clown has even turned into conventional wisdom.

From Teh Politico, notice the "they thought they were off the record" line. It was bandied about this morning on CNN, and, I assume, the other morning shows. The writer has made a point that they were on the record and Rolling Stone's editor has said no one disputed the quotes during fact checking or even mentioned they thought they were off the record.

 

Not going to happen. Obama set to announce he's reliving McChrystal at the bottom of the hour.

Not to jump off-topic (general question), but if the Prez said that he was going to systematically reduce the # of troops out of Iraq, why hasn't that happened yet? Is there a lot more (or not as easy as people think) to it than that?

 

Vanity Fair just did an amazing piece of Petraeus. Not only was he first in his class at Ranger School, he had the best scores EVER. In the beginning of his military career, he left to take classes at Princeton, took accelerated classes and finished a 6-year program in 3. Fights military intransigence (not sure if that's the right word, but he is slowly but surely turning around ideas). Iraq surge was totally his idea. Truly a remarkable individual.

 

This is a pretty good speech by the commander in chief.

 

Everyone thinks that, but it's not actually true. It was Gen. Odierno's idea.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR2009020702153.html

 

Obama was against the surge in 2008 if I'm not mistaken.

 

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I'd love to have heard the conversation: "What family-friendly euphemism can we use for jerking off?"

 

There was no criticism of the previous administration?
Really?

 

Not a chance this all came raining down over the last few days. The RS piece has obviously been in the works for a while, seems pretty likely that someone told someone who told someone what was coming, giving the Obama folks plenty of time to plan McChrystal's exit. Doubtful the president just called Petraeus this morning to say, 'Hey, ya busy?'

 

That was an amazing piece, BB. Informative and entertaining at the same time.

Not to mention that was one of the best magazines I've read in quite some time: not only did you have that great Petraeus story, you had the infamous Tiger mistress story, a really interesting piece on Bruce Wasserstein and a couple other good reads.

Graydon Carter and Co. deserve props for that issue alone.