UPDATE: Michael is taking heat from milbloggers who have never been embedded and being defended by others.
How do I know ? Michael Yon has has his embed with the troops cancelled by McChrystal.
Michael Yon: McChrystal’s crew has spoken: Embed is ended. This comes from McChrystal’s own spokesman (through one CPT Jane Campbell USN cc RADM Greg Smith and COL Wayne Shanks USA). This lends confirmation to ideas that the disembed came from McChrystal’s crew. (If not before, 100% now.) McChrystal cannot be trusted to tell the truth about this war. Packing my bags.
Michael Yon was the only reliable reporter from Iraq and when that war was won, he moved on to Afghanistan. His photos have been fantastic and his reporting has been the only window on the real war. He is an Army veteran in good enough shape to go out on patrols with the troops for the past six years. Now his career as an embed, the only one, is over.
Michael Yon: The disembed from McChrytal’s top staff (meaning from McChrystal himself) is a very bad sign. Sends chills that McChrystal himself thinks we are losing the war. McChrystal has a history of covering up. This causes concern that McChrystal might be misleading SecDef and President. Are they getting the facts?
This is a very bad sign. Not only the implication that we are losing but that it is being covered up.
One comment from an Afghanistan vet: Greg Watson Mike – thanks for your work. I was in Kabul for 2007. The real story needs to be told. Your leaving scares me in a way that an uptick in attacks doesn’t.
Me too.
Tags: Afghanistan
Merely further corroboration of what you and I have known since… oh… the moment the mission “expanded” into nation building under Bush.
I’m glad my one nephew is out of the marines (honorably discharged) and the other is leaving after his present enlistment is up.
Here’s what makes you (or me, anyone; I’ll let you speak for yourself, doc) literally shed tears:
Whether it’s a Republican “conservative” Commander-In-Chief with a Republican Congress or a “progressive” Democrat C-in-C with a Democrat Congress the corporatists/internationalists/pseudo-imperialists run the show.
Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are right; they’ve been right all along.
Eisenhower was right!
My God, Mike… what have these bastards done to our country…?
BILL
I was more supportive with Iraq because that is a viable country with oil reserves that will keep it going. Afghanistan has not changed since Alexander the Great. Their only improvement was the AK 47. Their golden age was a city of Kabul that was civilized in the center of barbarism. Read Churchill’s The Story of the Malakand Field Force. Some of the same villages are named and it was written over 100 years ago.
This coupled with the NYT revealing the names of informants/undercover is deeply depressing. And disconcerting.
And this was supposed to be the good war. Sheesh.