MyChrystal to Afghanistan

Replacing McKeirnan...

June 26, 2006 issue - No one would have mentioned his name at all if President George W. Bush hadn't singled him out in public. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, West Point '76, is not someone the Army likes to talk about. He isn't even listed in the directory at Fort Bragg, N.C., his home base. That's not because McChrystal has done anything wrong—quite the contrary, he's one of the Army's rising stars—but because he runs the most secretive force in the U.S. military. That is the Joint Special Operations Command, the snake-eating, slit-their-throats "black ops" guys who captured Saddam Hussein and targeted Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

JSOC is part of what Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to when he said America would have to "work the dark side" after 9/11. To many critics, the veep's remark back in 2001 fostered his rep as the Darth Vader of the war on terror and presaged bad things to come, like the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. But America also has its share of Jedi Knights who are fighting in what Cheney calls "the shadows." And McChrystal, an affable but tough Army Ranger, and the Delta Force and other elite teams he commands are among them.

Here's the link to the above, which also mentions his "'direct action' forces or so-called SMUs--Special Mission Units--whose job is to kill or capture bad guys". Apparently he was a favorite of Rumsfeld and various other neocons, but the milbloggers will know better. In the interim, this certainly does appear to be a new direction as Gates indicated. Wonder if the left will become outraged that Obama is now taking a "Cheney-like approach" to fighting the good war?