No Lack of Irony in Snowden Case

We've all heard about the 2009 chat log in which Snowden says that leakers should be shot.

Worse yet, during a remarkable January 2009 chat, Snowden wrote that Obama had "appointed a fucking politician to run the CIA." In that same conversation, he vented his rage over reading a New York Times article about US actions in Iran, which was based on confidential leaks.

TheTrueHOOHA HOLY SHIT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=1&hp
TheTrueHOOHA WTF NYTIMES
TheTrueHOOHA Are they TRYING to start a war?
Jesus christ
they're like wikileaks
User19 they're just reporting, dude.
TheTrueHOOHA They're reporting classified shit
User19 shrugs
TheTrueHOOHA about an unpopular country surrounded by enemies already engaged in a war
and about our interactions with said country regarding planning sovereignity violations of another country
you don't put that shit in the NEWSPAPER
User19 meh
TheTrueHOOHA moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?
TheTrueHOOHA those people should be shot in the balls.
TheTrueHOOHA But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
TheTrueHOOHA HELLO? HOW COVERT IS IT NOW? THANK YOU
User19 meh
TheTrueHOOHA I wonder how many hundreds of millions of dollars they just completely blew.
User19 you're over reacting. its fine.
TheTrueHOOHA It's not an overreaction. They have a HISTORY of this shit
User19 with flowersand cake.
User20 [User21]'s mushrooms are :o
TheTrueHOOHA these are the same people who blew the whole "we could listen to osama's cell phone" thing
the same people who screwed us on wiretapping
over and over and over again
Thank god they're going out of business.
User19 the NYT?
TheTrueHOOHA Hopefully they'll finally go bankrupt this year.
yeah.

But now, apparently, Ecuador is pissed that someone leaked the memo about them granted amnesty to the leaker, and want to prosecute the leaker who leaked the leak about the leaker leaking into leakedhood.

Officials on Thursday acknowledged that the Ecuadorean Embassy in London had issued a June 22 letter of safe passage for Snowden that calls on other countries to allow him to travel to asylum in Ecuador. But Ecuador's secretary of political management, Betty Tola, said the letter was invalid because it was issued without the approval of the government in the capital, Quito.

She also threatened legal action against whoever leaked the document, which she said "has no validity and is the exclusive responsibility of the person who issued it."

"This demonstrates a total lack of co-ordination in the department of foreign affairs," said Santiago Basabe, a professor of political science at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Quito. "It's no small question to issue a document of safe passage or a diplomatic document for someone like Snowden without this decision being taken directly by the foreign minister or president."

So apparently, people who leak things to the media should be shot in the balls, and people whose country is protecting leakers should leak themselves.

By: Brant

AQIM Leaves Vital Document Behind in Rapid Retreat

The AP has a great article talking about an Al Qaeda 'manifesto' that was left behind in Timbuktu and discovered by one of their reporters.

In their hurry to flee last month, al-Qaida fighters left behind a crucial document: Tucked under a pile of papers and trash is a confidential letter, spelling out the terror network's strategy for conquering northern Mali and reflecting internal discord over how to rule the region.

The document is an unprecedented window into the terrorist operation, indicating that al-Qaida predicted the military intervention that would dislodge it in January and recognized its own vulnerability.

The letter also shows a sharp division within al-Qaida's Africa chapter over how quickly and how strictly to apply Islamic law, with its senior commander expressing dismay over the whipping of women and the destruction of Timbuktu's ancient monuments. It moreover leaves no doubt that despite a temporary withdrawal into the desert, al-Qaida plans to operate in the region over the long haul, and is willing to make short-term concessions on ideology to gain the allies it acknowledges it needs.

The more than nine-page document, found by The Associated Press in a building occupied by the Islamic extremists for almost a year, is signed by Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the nom de guerre of Abdelmalek Droukdel, the senior commander appointed by Osama bin Laden to run al-Qaida's branch in Africa. The clear-headed, point-by-point assessment resembles a memo from a CEO to his top managers and lays out for his jihadists in Mali what they have done wrong in months past, and what they need to do to correct their behavior in the future.

Droukdel, the emir of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, perhaps surprisingly argues that his fighters moved too fast and too brutally in applying the Islamic law known as Shariah to northern Mali. Comparing the relationship of al-Qaida to Mali as that of an adult to an infant, he urges them to be more gentle, like a parent:

There's a lot more at the link.

By: Brant

The French Can Screw Up Almost Anything

One of the most bad-ass pics of a French guy on operations goes viral, and their leadership complains about it. Oy. You'd think that a picture of the French kicking ass would be a good thing.

click to enlarge

The soldiers pulled on their goggles to protect their eyes from the dust. One soldier pulled up a black bandana -- with a white skeleton face printed on it -- over his nose. Behind him, light beamed through tree branches, creating an otherworldly image -- the soldier looked like a skeleton in French military fatigues. Photographer Issouf Sanogo of the Agence France-Presse news agency and Yann Foreix of Le Parisien were drawn to the soldier, whom they photographed. The bandana is an accessory sold for fans of the violent military game “Call of Duty.” At first glance, the soldier bears eerie resemblance the character Ghost from the video game. French military officials aren’t happy about the image, according to newspaper Liberation in Paris. “This is unacceptable behavior,” said Col. Thierry Burkhard. “This image is not representative of action by France in Mali.”

By: Brant

When Wargaming Was a "Sport"

Yes, there was an article about wargaming - tabletop minis gaming - in Sports Illustrated. That's right: Sports Illustrated.

The observation post I picked to watch the battle was about halfway between a railroad yard and the plateau on which the opposing armies were deployed. I had to squint to see through the blue haze and intermittent puffs of smoke that floated across the terrain. Some of the troops to the east were about to haul an artillery piece over a bridge, and behind them a group of cavalrymen was preparing to charge. To the west, the enemy had concealed some of his men in a pass behind a mountain. It occurred to me that I was one of the few war correspondents in history who ever had been afforded such a splendid panoramic view of an engagement, and again I peered through my glasses at the troops moving into position.

The men looked very small at that distance. For that matter, they looked very small up close, for each was only 1[3/16] inches tall. Their battlefield was a 5-by-9-foot piece of green-painted plywood set atop a pool table. The blue haze came from a gel placed over a flood-light by a photographer, and the smoke came from a smoke-pill apparatus made for him by a friend in the Special Effects department at NBC-TV. The rolling stock in the railroad yard behind me was all Lionel, my observation post was an aluminum tubular kitchen chair and my glasses were not field but nose. I was in Bristol, Conn. to cover a war game that was about to be played by two devotees of this little-known sport, the brothers Bob and Charlie Sweet (left).

President of the North Side Bank, a graduate of Washington and Lee (he played guard there on a Southern Conference championship team in 1934), Charlie Sweet is a 50-year-old outdoorsman whose husky body imprisons, although not very effectively, the spirit of a boy. For years he took time off from his various civic activities (he is on virtually every public-minded committee in Bristol) to make model aircraft, both gas-and rubber-band-powered, as well as model boats, trains and other toys. As a boy he had played with tin or lead soldiers, and around 1950 he found himself thinking that it might be fun to play with them again.

Today Charlie Sweet is one of the foremost collectors of tin soldiers—or military miniatures, as they are called more formally—in the country. He owns around 6,000 figures, most of which he designed, cast and painted in his basement workshop. Sweet is just one of approximately 10,000 collectors, a figure vouched for by Jack Scruby of Visalia, Calif., a military-miniature manufacturer who also serves as a kind of information center for this breed of hobbyist. "Collectors are divided into three major categories," Scruby said recently. "There are those who just collect soldiers—some of the more famous ones are Churchill, Eisenhower, the writer James Jones, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and King Farouk. Then there are those who get their kicks out of making their own figures, usually in plaster-of-paris molds, casting them in lead and painting them—or who just like to paint the unpainted figures I make and sell. Finally, there are those who play war games with them. Some collectors have really tremendous armies. Leon Chodnicki of Baltimore has more than 40,000 figures, and Gus Hansen of Chicago has at least that many also."

There's a LOT more. Seriously. We excerpted part of page 1. It's 4 pages. Go read.

By: Brant

Busting Bond: The myths of movie spycraft – CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs

CNN Security Clearance blog has an entertaining read about "the myths of movie spycraft" in honor of the release of Skyfall, the new Bond flick.

The latest James Bond movie, "Skyfall," delves into some tantalizing personal details about the world's favorite British spy, from formative events in his childhood to an up-close look at his relationship with M, the chief of the super-secret British spy service where Bond works.

The new film offers plenty of the heart-thumping chase scenes one expects from a Bond movie, and it also gives glimpses of Bond's well honed art of spycraft. Which begs the question: How realistic is today's Bond?

And they proceed to run through a handful of 'myths' - in some cases with some amusing revelations.

Bond Myth 1: Spies have super human abilities
Bond Myth 2: Style is a spy's best weapon
Bond Myth 3: It's easier to work alone
Bond Myth 4: Breaking the rules makes you bad
Bond Myth 5: Technology always makes the job easier
Bond Myth 6: Sophisticated drinks and theme songs make you cooler

By: Brant

Interview With Designers of A Distant Plain

Hey folks! GrogHeads.com has a fantastic interview with Brian Train and Volko Ruhnke, designers of A Distant Plain, GMT's upcoming boardgame on Afghanistan using Volko's COIN system.

And as a bonus - the designers have agreed to stick around a few days and answer some of your questions in the forums

Please stop by and check it out :)

Part 1 of the interview

Part 2 of the interview

By: Brant

Sound Off! News Media

Where do you get your military news?
What sources do you like?
What sources do you hate?
Why?

By: Brant

Syrian TV Says Soccer Team is Acting Out Smuggling Routes to Inform Rebels

And not just any soccer team, but Barcelona, one of the best teams on the planet.

Syria’s state-run television channel has made the astonishing claim that the Barcelona soccer team is assisting a group of rebel fighters by delivering coded messages via its tactical formations.

The Middle Eastern country continues to be stricken with internal strife, as forces backing President Bashar al-Assad combat several rebel groups hoping to overthrow the government. Yet the long struggle seems to have caused widespread paranoia, even on the officially sanctioned news networks.

Al-Dunya TV aired a bizarre feature Sunday outlining how Barcelona transmitted details of effective smuggling routes that could be used to distribute arms to dissident fighters. The program repeated charges originally made in December. According to the TV reporter, the Barca side’s positioning on the field allegedly was deliberately set up to recreate a giant map, with players representing smugglers and the ball depicting a cache of arms.

A run from Andres Iniesta is said to portray the first part of the route, while the end of the move, where superstar World Footballer of the Year Lionel Messi passes the ball, indicates the successful handover of the shipment, according to Al-Dunya.

The station used a segment on its nightly news bulletin to launch into a detailed description of how Barca had decided to add covert operations and international espionage to its dazzling array of talents.

Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xavi and Sergio Busquets are supposedly all in on the plot, which would surely have needed the approval – if not the masterminding genius – of coach Pep Guardiola.

It is estimated that more than 9,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since the start of an uprising against President al-Assad last year, as part of the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East.

Even in the unthinkable eventuality that it was receiving assistance from the reigning European club champion, Syria’s biggest rebel group – the Free Syrian Army – is still hopelessly outgunned by the government forces.

The European Union imposed an arms embargo on Syria last year, but the widely acclaimed Stockholm International Peace Research Institute revealed foreign arms supplies to the country had increased fivefold in the past five years, with the majority of them provided by Russia.

By: Brant

Questions to Answer Before Going To War

The NY Times has a great op-ed today that details what we should consider before "pulling the trigger". Hey, that rhymed! I'm a poet and didn't know it.
Anyhow, the headings in the column...

1. HOW IS THIS OUR FIGHT?
2. AT WHAT COST?
3. OR WHAT?
4. AND WHO ELSE?
5. THEN WHAT?

But the text under each heading us also excellent and well worth the read.

By: Brant

h/t Doctrine Man!

An Inaccurate "Debate" About Iran?

Stephen M. Walt has an excellent article about the top ten media failures in the debate about a 'war' with Iran. I've excerpted the list here, but there supporting paragraphs are outstanding and well worth the read. In short, Walt's point is that the information we are being fed through virtually every news source is filtered through a group of assumptions that inherently skew the coverage.

The interview got me thinking about the issue of media coverage of this whole business, and I'm sorry to say that most mainstream news organizations have let us down again. Although failures haven't been as egregious as the New York Times and Washington Post's wholesale swallowing of the Bush administration's sales pitch for war in 2002, on the whole the high-end media coverage has been disappointing. Here are my Top Ten Media Failures in the 2012 Iran War Scare.

#1: Mainstreaming the war.

#2: Loose talk about Iran's "nuclear [weapons] program."

#3: Obsessing about Ahmadinejad.

#4: Ignoring Iranian weakness.

#5: Failing to ask why Iran might want a bomb.

#6: Failing to consider why Iran might NOT want a bomb.

#7: Exaggerating Israel's capabilities.

#8: Letting spinmeisters play fast and loose with facts.

9. What about the human beings?

10. Could diplomacy work?

h/t SO over at Defence & Freedom for the link to the article.

By: Brant

We're Back to Indignant Outrage at the Wrong Things

After pulling the advisors in the wake of the shooting at the Afghan Interior Ministry, they haven't returned.

Many Western advisers stationed in Kabul opposed the decision by General John Allen, commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to withdraw them from their offices, even if -- as NATO insisted -- the move was temporary. "Pulling all advisers from the ministries as a blanket reaction to an incident at the Interior Ministry was an extreme reaction, giving the message that we don't trust anyone," says Santwana Dasgupta, an American support manager at the Ministry of Higher Education. "During these times, I believe it is even more important for the international community to reach out to the Afghans they know, express their dismay at the Koran burnings and not to hide in fear," Dasgupta tells TIME. "I think it is a shame that internationals are asked to run and hide."

No, it's a shame that internationals have to run and hide because illiterate and intolerant 19th-century simpletons think that every personal affront should be solved with a jihad and a bullet.

By: Brant

Stars and Stripes Relocation Drawing Major Attention

Media organizations don't like it when they become the story, especially the Stars and Stripes, who are being relocated, and they object to their landing zone.

An inside-the-office debate began to simmer when Pentagon officials — answering the order from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to find significant budget efficiencies — saw a way to cut $1 million a year in rent by relocating the newspaper from the National Press Building, a prestigious downtown address. The 80-member newsroom and business staff was ordered to Fort Meade, Md., where it would be housed at no cost alongside the agency that oversees official Pentagon and military media operations.

Staff members objected. And now, concerns that proximity could potentially lead to interference have reached Capitol Hill — which heightens the debate, since Stars and Stripes is subsidized with taxpayer funds but operates with a Congressional endorsement to maintain journalistic independence.

One of the most powerful voices on military affairs in Congress, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, wrote Mr. Panetta this week agreeing that questions of editorial independence for Stars and Stripes were “well-placed, and should lead to a review of possible alternatives to this decision.”

Mr. Levin, a Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote: “If this move is based on cost savings, were other alternatives considered, including other government spaces and other leased locations? If Stars and Stripes is moved to Fort Meade, what will the department do to ensure that the actual and perceived independence of the important service provided by Stars and Stripes is preserved?”

Douglas B. Wilson, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said the decision to relocate the newspaper to Fort Meade “is not a matter of reducing independence for Stars and Stripes. It is a matter of reducing rent costs to the taxpayer.”

He added, “In an era when the entire department is having to find efficiencies, and budgets are being reduced, it would be hard to explain why $1 million a year in rent should not be replaced by free office space.”

Terry Leonard, editorial director at Stars and Stripes, said he and the staff do not object to moving — only to a move that locates them at the headquarters for official Pentagon media operations.

By: Brant

Sigh... Some People

Apparently there's a Fox News pundit who thinks that sexual assault in the military is pre-ordained and that Congress is making the problem worse.

Trotta was reacting to news that the military will allow women to work closer to the front lines. Speaking to Fox News host Eric Shawn, she alleged that feminists wanted "to be warriors and victims at the same time."

She cited a recent Pentagon report that sex crimes committed by army personnel have increased by 64% over the past six years. Then she made a startling statement:

"I think they have actually discovered there is a difference between men and women. And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact, the whole airing of this issue has never been done by Congress, it's strictly been a question of pressure from the feminists."

Trotta also alleged that "feminists" have demanded too much money to fund programs for sexual abuse victims. "You have this whole bureaucracy upon bureaucracy being built up with all kinds of levels of people to support women in the military who are now being raped too much," she said

By: Brant

Saudi Journalist About to Get a Headectomy

You know what's most disturbing about the news coverage of Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari's deportation back to Saudi Arabia for "blasphemous" tweets? No news organization will republish them. If someone is being deported to a country that's most like going to kill him for what he said - not did, but said - then shouldn't we know the text of what he said so we can judge for ourselves?

Malaysian authorities have deported a Saudi journalist accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a tweet.

Police confirmed to the BBC that Hamza Kashgari was sent back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday despite protests from human rights groups.

Mr Kashgari's controversial tweet last week sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats.

Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam and is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

Mr Kashgari, 23, fled Saudi Arabia last week and was detained upon his arrival in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.

He had tweeted his doubts about Muhammad on the prophet's birthday last week. Saudi clerics condemned his remarks as blasphemous.

You know where to find the text of the tweets? Wikipedia. The news won't tell you. Wikipedia will.

On the occasion of Mawlid on February 4, 2012, Kashgari published three tweets about an imagined meeting with Muhammad:
On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you've always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

By: Brant

Why The Army's Games Aren't Your Games

Michael Peck has an article over at Kotaku. It'll be interesting to see how the comments shape up. No doubt some smart-ass is going to accuse him of not knowing what he's talking about.

First, the military doesn't play games. It uses training tools that happen to be games. The fun and competition of games is merely a means to induce students to learn, just like cherry flavor is a means to get kids to swallow disgusting medicine. Indeed, medicine is turning to video games to train surgeons. Do you want your heart surgeon to practice on a game because it's fun, or because it trains him to keep you alive?

People who sell games to the military don't think like gamers. They think like schoolteachers, with learning objectives and performance metrics. This may sound po-faced, but that's how they convince some cold-eyed bureaucrat that their game is better than a Powerpoint lecture at teaching Private Schmuckatelli to spot that IED hidden in the garbage pile by the road. Or, they need to show that the lazy Schmuckatelli will be more motivated to pay attention if his squad is competing against another squad in Virtual Battlespace 2. Making a game that's more interesting than Powerpoint would seem to be child's play, but it's not that simple. Games that will train hundreds of thousands of soldiers require plenty of computers, technical support and a generous donation of your tax dollars. Fun is good. Useful is better.

Second, everything bought by the military boils down to lots and lots of requirements. Someone has to have a need for a game, and the game will need to have very particular features. Sometimes the requirements don't make any sense, but that's how the military thinks. Boasting of your shooter's ultra-realistic physics model is pointless when the Army needs a game to teach soldiers how to butter up the natives not to shoot at them. In a burst of over-optimistic creativity, I once asked the Army why they couldn't use the Wii to practice physical tasks like fixing a tank. They replied that if they needed to teach a soldier to turn a wrench, they would get him a real wrench. Games are a solution, but never assume that they are the only solution.

By: Brant

Sound Off! Magazine Games

Are wargame magazine games...

... fantastic little explorations of underappreciated topics?

... crappy little rush-jobs to fulfill publisher promises they never should've made?

Whaddaya think? Sound off below!


By: Brant

A Damning Account of "Progress" on the Ground in Afghanistan

Of all the criticisms of the war, LTC Davis's Truth, lies and Afghanistan from the February 2012 issue of Armed Forces Journal hits pretty hard.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

And it gets worse. Go read.

Now, I've not done a lot of research on this story, but at first blush, I wonder if there's not a disconnect in the evaluation metrics being used.

When senior leaders stand before Congress and say "things are improving" they are very likely telling the truth, in that what is "improving" are those metrics being tracked by their command. The question now is "what" is it that's improving?

When LTC Davis walks around the country and concludes that things are not improving, what is the evaluation metric he's using?

If they're both using the same metrics, and the same ways of measuring those metrics, and coming to different conclusions, then we have evidence of a serious problem.

If they're measuring completely different things - for instance, if no one in uniform is tracking "incidents of Taliban violence within visual range of US bases" - then you've got a different problem. Potentially just as serious, but still very different.

Either way, it sounds like there needs to be some investigation and introspection, rather than the expected career-nuking smear campaign that we all know is coming.

h/t Ed at CSW

By: Brant

Off-Topic: WotC Announces New Edition of D&D Coming

Look, we know there's a lot of other types of gaming out there, and RPGs aren't just things that insurgents shoot at people. We're not going to become a fantasy gaming blog, but we did want to take a minute and point people towards some good articles about the upcoming edition "revision" of the venerable Dungeons & Dragons franchise.

If you want to be a part of "Charting the Course for D&D", visit the Official Home Page at WotC.

The New York Times considered the news fit to print.
So did Forbes.

Critical hits has not one, but two good articles about it.

There's a nice long - and rambling, natch - thread over at ENWorld, the pseudo-sorta-unofficial RPG HQ online.

The Escapist magazine is always good source of gaming info, and I'm not just saying that because they know how to recognize true genius.

But hey, if CNN.com thinks it's important, who are we to argue?

By: Brant

Hastings is Still a Schmuck

But the guy can write... here's a set of pretty good articles he wrote before he went on the anti-military warpath.

By: Brant

Michael Hastings is NOT Looking Good After This

A lot of military folks hated Hastings after his infamous hit piece on McChrystal. What comes out in the review of his new book The Operators over at the Wall Street Journal isn't going to make anyone like him any more.

In the Rolling Stone article, Mr. Hastings sketched a trip to Paris in April 2010, when the McChrystal team allegedly made the inflammatory comments, without attributing most quotes to specific individuals. In "The Operators," he names names. We now discover that the large majority of the incendiary statements came from a 33-year-old lieutenant commander. In "The Runaway General," Mr. Hastings attributed the lieutenant commander's assertions at various times to a "team member," an "aide" and an "adviser," leading readers to conclude that the statements emanated from a broad range of Gen. McChrystal's staff members. Moreover, an investigation by the Defense Department's Inspector General found insufficient evidence to attribute some of the offending quotes to team members and determined that other quotes had been taken out of context.

According to members of Gen. McChrystal's team, Mr. Hastings represented himself as a supporter of the Afghan war and the U.S. military upon meeting the team in Paris. When "The Runaway General" was published, he dismissed accusations that he was antiwar, explaining that his views of the war "are critical but that shouldn't be mistaken for hostile." In "The Operators," he states unabashedly: "I hated the war."

Most telling perhaps, is the final paragraph of the review. If Hastings hated the war, he sure found an excellent way to torpedo it.

Like David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, Mr. Hastings ignores the harm that his reporting caused to America's overseas interests. The firing of Gen. McChrystal removed the one American who enjoyed the confidence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and of Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of staff of Pakistan's army. It also widened the gulf between Mr. Karzai and Washington. Mr. Karzai became convinced that the White House had removed Gen. McChrystal as another slap in his face for disregarding American lectures. To the Afghan president, it was inconceivable that the U.S. government would fire its top military officer because of unattributed quotes in a pop-culture magazine.

No doubt the Rolling Stoners will claim that they're more than a "pop culture" magazine. But if they are, then it's only to become a very strident and partisan voice on one side of the political spectrum, and not in a good way. Rolling Stone used to have some excellent reporting - even about national security topics - but since 9/11 has made a hard left turn into the culture wars and alienated a lot of readers who preferred their serious writing about entertainment topics and read other sources for serious writing about serious topics.

By: Brant