WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been summoned to Washington to explain derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and his colleagues, administration officials said Tuesday.
The move came hours after General Stanley McChrystal apologized for comments by his aides insulting some of President Barack Obama's closest advisers in an article to be published in Rolling Stone magazine.
In the magazine profile, his aides are qurabroad
ed mocking Vice President Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The first victim in the growing controversy was the Pentagon's PR official who set up the interview with McChrystal. NBC reported that Duncan Borabroad
hby, a civilian member of the general's public relations team was "asked to resign."
According to administration officials, McChrystal was ordered to attend the monthly White House meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan in person Wednesday rather than over a secure video teleconference. He'll be expected to explain his comments to Obama and top Pentagon officials, these officials said.
President Obama was described as "furious" about the remarks while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen told McChrystal of his "deep disappointment" in a conversation late Monday, a spokesman said.
Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday that he had confidence on McChrystal's ability as a general. However, he said the issue was whether the article would impact his ability to have a relationship with Obama and the rest of the National Security staff.
Kerry, speaking on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown," described the remarks in the article as a "mistake," and "poor judgement" by the general and some of his staff.
Lone wolf?
The article in this week's Rolling Stone depicts McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to persuade even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war.
Morning Joe
The interview describes McChrystal, 55, as "disappointed" in his first Oval Office meeting with Obama. The article says that although McChrystal vrabroad
ed for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama appointed McChrystal to lead the Afghan effort in May 2009. Last fall, though, Obama called McChrystal on the carpet for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.
"I found that time painful," McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. "I was selling an unsellable position."
The article also reported:
* McChrystal has seized control of the war "by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House."
* One aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a "clown" who was "stuck in 1985."
* Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found frustrating. And the White House's troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.
* The article portrayed McChrystal's team as disapproving of the Obama administration, with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who backed McCrystal's request for additional troops in Afghanistan.
* It qurabroad
es a member of McChrystal's team making jokes about Biden, who was seen as critical of the general's efforts to escalate the conflict and who had favored a more limited counter-terrorism approach. "Biden?" the aide was qurabroad
ed as saying. "Did you say: Bite me?" Biden initially opposed McChrystal's proposal for additional forces last year. He favored a narrower focus on hunting terrorists.
