USA — Gates Issues Statement on McChrystal Profile

WASHINGTON, June 22, 2010 — Defense Sec­re­tary Robert M. Gates issued a state­ment today regard­ing a pro­file arti­cle on Army Gen. Stan­ley A. McChrys­tal, com­man­der of the Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Here is the secretary’s statement: 

“I read with con­cern the pro­file piece on Gen. Stan­ley McChrys­tal in the upcom­ing edi­tion of ‘Rolling Stone’ mag­a­zine. I believe that Gen. McChrys­tal made a sig­nif­i­cant mis­take and exer­cised poor judg­ment in this case. We are fight­ing a war against al Qae­da and its extrem­ist allies, who direct­ly threat­en the Unit­ed States, Afghanistan, and our friends and allies around the world. Going for­ward, we must pur­sue this mis­sion with a uni­ty of pur­pose. Our troops and coali­tion part­ners are mak­ing extra­or­di­nary sac­ri­fices on behalf of our secu­ri­ty, and our sin­gu­lar focus must be on sup­port­ing them and suc­ceed­ing in Afghanistan with­out such dis­trac­tions. Gen. McChrys­tal has apol­o­gized to me and is sim­i­lar­ly reach­ing out to oth­ers named in this arti­cle to apol­o­gize to them as well. I have recalled Gen. McChrys­tal to Wash­ing­ton to dis­cuss this in person.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs)