**JP** Was it an escape strategy of Gen. McChrystal?

As the defeat is imminent and the despearation at its peak, was it a straegy of Gen. McChrystal and his office, to write such an article indicating chaos in the ranks, distrust of the US administration, and so on...so that they all get a chance to resign, and so they escape, well in time, to avoid the later blame game and from being the Gen. in-charge of the military that got defeated??

 

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to decide the fate of his top commander in Afghanistan Wednesday after a firestorm over remarks he and members of his staff made that were contemptuous of senior administration officials.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has prepared a letter of resignation, though President Obama had not made up his mind whether to accept it when they meet Wednesday morning.

"I think it's clear that the article in which he and his team appeared showed poor judgment," Mr. Obama said after a cabinet meeting Tuesday. "But I also want to make sure I talk to him directly before I make final judgment."

In an article in Rolling Stone magazine, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and his aides spoke critically of nearly every member of the president's national security team, saying President Obama appeared "uncomfortable and intimidated" during his first meeting with the general, and dismissing Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as "Bite Me."

The firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts — even in the military — that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise. And the remarks also laid bare the disarray and enmity in a foreign policy team that is struggling with the war.