05 August 2010

Gee, You Couldn't See This Coming

Michael Hastings, of Rolling Stone infamy, has had his embed privileges revoked.

The Pentagon said Wednesday it yanked the embedding privileges of the journalist at the center of a scandal that led to the sacking of the head of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said that freelance journalist Michael Hastings, author of the Rolling Stone magazine article on McChrystal, would no longer be allowed to accompany US troops in Afghanistan in a process known as embedding.

"There is no right to embed," Lapan said. "It's based on a trust requisite."


Whether you agree or disagree with the article, its circumstances, or its outcome, you can't disagree that this guy is useless as a battlefield reporter at this point. No soldier downrange is going to talk to this guy, and Rolling Stone would be stupid to send him out there to get a bunch of non-info from a non-cooperative audience. So the Pentagon is basically formalizing what was a likely reality anyway.

By: Brant

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