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David Gregory talks to author Jon Krakauer about his new book 'Where Men Win Glory' and Gen. McChrystal's part in the cover up of Pat Tillman's death.

GREGORY: Jon Krakauer, I want to get to a key element of your book, "Where Men Win Glory," about Pat Tillman and how it relates to this current conversation about Afghanistan. Because it does involve General Stanley McChrystal, who was obviously critical on the stage now and was critical in the Tillman story of well. As a reminder, if you look at pictures of Pat Tillman, the NFL star with the Arizona Cardinals, decides to enlist in the Army, serves in the Rangers after 9/11. This was certainly a big story when he enlisted. And at the time, General McChrystal was actually head of Special Operations command.

So Pat Tillman was killed in a friendly fire incident and ultimately won the Silver Star, and that's what you focus on in the book and in a subsequent piece that you wrote for The Daily Beast. And here's what you wrote: "An October 5 Newsweek article [said, about General McChrystal] that `he has great political skills; he couldn't have risen to his current position without them.

But he definitelydoes not see himself as the sort of military man who would compromise his principles to do the politically convenient thing.' In the week after Tillman was killed, however, this is precisely what McChrystal appears to have done when he administered a fraudulent medical"--excuse me--"a fraudulent medal recommendation"--we're talking about the Silver Star--"and submitted it to the secretary of the Army, thereby concealing the cause of Tillman's death." Briefly explain what happened.

KRAKAUER: The--after Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within--instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star.

And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal--Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That's why he was killed and the private wasn't. Without friendly fire there's no valor, there's no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.

GREGORY: And that's the important piece of it. And, and he actually testified earlier this year before the Senate, and this is what he said about it.

(Videotape, June 2, 2009)

LT. GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Now, what happens, in retrospect, is--and I would do this differently if I had the chance again--in retrospect they look contradictory, because we sent a Silver Star that was not well-written. And although I went through the process, I will tell you now I didn't review the citation well enough to capture--or I didn't catch that if you read it you could imply that it was not friendly fire.

GREGORY: Even those who were critical of him and the Army say they don't think he willfully deceived anyone.

KRAKAUER: That's correct. He, he just said now he didn't read this hugely important document about the most famous soldier in the military. He didn't read it carefully enough to notice that it talked about enemy fire instead of friendly fire? That's preposterous. That, that's not believable.

GREGORY: All right, part of this debate. Thank you all very much.

We'll continue our discussion with Jon Krakauer in our MEET THE PRESS Take Two Web Extra. Plus, read an excerpt from his book, "Where Men Win Glory." It's all on our Web site at mtp.msnbc.com. And we'll be right back.

We've posted a ton of information about the Pat Tillman saga on C&L as heartbreaking as it is and I wanted to remind everyone that the man who is going public with his views on how to handle Afghanistan was deeply involved with torture and Pat Tillman's cover up.

The parents of slain Army Ranger and NFL star Pat Tillman voiced concerns Tuesday that the general who played a role in mischaracterizing his death could be put in charge of military operations in Afghanistan. In a brief interview with The Associated Press, Pat Tillman Sr. accused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of covering up the circumstances of the 2004 slaying. "I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation," Pat Tillman Sr. said.

He later apologized for his role in the cover up.

The Daily News:
The general taking over the Afghan war said Tuesday he was sorry for the coverup of ex-NFL star Pat Tillman's friendly fire death.

"I was a part of that, and I apologize for it," Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal told a Senate hearing.

Tillman was killed by fellow GIs in 2004 as his Ranger unit operated in eastern Afghanistan on the Pakistan border.

McChrystal signed off on a posthumous Silver Star medal for Tillman - who gave up a fortune as a pro football player to join the Army after 9/11 - though he knew it might be fratricide and not a firefight.

It took six probes before his family learned the truth: other troops mistook him for the enemy and shot him as he screamed, "I'm Pat F---ing Tillman!"

"There is nothing we can do to automatically restore the trust which was the second casualty," McChrystal said.

But the general, who commanded the supersecret Joint Special Operations Command then, denied the phony narrative of a raging firefight was anything more sinister than "mistakes" made to honor the famous GI.

And then there is his role in our torture policies.
The Nation:

When an anonymous Army interrogator "at great personal risk" blew the whistle to Esquire in August 2006 on an extensive torture enterprise at Camp Nama, he described the then unknown McChrystal as being an overseer who knew the ugly truth. Torture at Camp Nama included using ice water to induce hypothermia. It was not a rogue operation unless we consider Generals like McChrystal "rogues." As Esquire reported:

Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. "Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?" And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in--they won't have access and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators.

Later in the piece, when asked where the colonel was getting his orders from the interrogator said, "I believe it was a two-star general. I believe his name was General McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of times."

I was watching MSNBC and on Andrea Mitchell's show, pundits wondered if McChrystal would quit if he didn't get the troops he requested. You know, I always thought that soldiers were supposed to follow orders. The president is in charge of the military and serve him. What would happen to a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan who refused a direct order? I understand that he's past that pay grade, but he's way out of line. Hey, I don't mind leaks to the media, that's going to happen, but he's not acting like a high ranking General should, but with his past, are you surprised?

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From CNN's State of the Union. Looks like some pushback against the Lindsey Grahams of the world from Jim Jones.

National Security Adviser Chides McChrystal:

President Obama's National Security Adviser James L. Jones suggested Sunday that the public campaign being conducted by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan on behalf of his war strategy is complicating the internal White House review now underway, saying that "it is better for military advice to come up through the chain of command."

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who commands the 100,000 U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, warned bluntly last week in a London speech that a strategy for defeating the Taliban narrower than the one he is advocating would be ineffective and "short-sighted." The comments effectively rejected a policy option that senior White House officials, including Vice President Biden, are seriously considering nearly eight years after the U.S. invasion.

McChrystal's statement came a day after he was challenged by senior White House officials over his dire assessment of the war -- and what it will take to improve the U.S. position there -- during a video conference from Kabul with Obama and his national security team. Obama then summoned McChrystal to Copenhagen the day after the general's speech for a private meeting aboard Air Force One.

Continue reading...

Of course no one in the media is bothering to ask why Obama would have promoted the likes of Gen. McChrystal in the first place given his record.

McChrystal's Pat Tillman Connection:

Now the man who greased the chain of command that orchestrated this great deception is prepared to assume total control of US operations in Afghanistan: Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was McChrystal who approved Tillman's posthumous Silver Star, a medal given explicitly for combat, even though he later testified that he "suspected" friendly fire.

Yet despite this, both Democrats and Republicans are rushing to heap praise on McChrystal, including Sen. John McCain. It was McCain who rushed to speak at Tillman's funeral and then, when the cover-up became known, pledged to help the Tillman family expose the truth. McCain later turned his back on the Tillmans when they raised the volume and demanded answers. As Pat's mother, Mary Tillman, said last year, "He definitely eased out of the situation. He didn't blatantly say he wouldn't help us, it's just that it became clear that he kind of drifted away."

And now the Tillman family, amidst bipartisan praise for Obama's new general, must once again raise the inconvenient truth.

[....]

What particularly rankles about Obama's choice of McChrystal, whose background is in the nefarious and shadowy world of "black ops," is that his actions in the Tillman cover-up feel emblematic instead of exceptional.

[....]

Clearly President Obama is trying to "own" the war in Afghanistan: upping the troop levels, making it his "central front" in the battle against terrorism and now placing his own general in charge. But the president is also disappointing a generation of antiwar activists who voted for him expecting an end to imperial adventures and torture sanctioned by the executive branch. Now a man who should perhaps be on trial at the Hague is in charge of Afghanistan. Obama needs to know it's not just the Tillmans who are enraged by this terrible choice.

As Siun at Firedoglake notes:

Jones was not the only one to push back on the McChrystal PR campaign this week and it seems that a number of informed voices seem to share my concern that McChrystal is “teetering towards insubordination.”

Transcript below the fold.

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