McChrystal Aide Did Not Mean to Call Out CIA

So says Capt. Matt Pottinger, one of the co-authors of Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn’s scathing assessment of intelligence operations in Afghanistan:

“This is primarily about improving intelligence within the Department of Defense,” he said via e-mail

“Our timing was independent of the tragic event in Khost Province,” he said, referring to the attack that killed the CIA officers.

I’d encourage people to re-read Flynn’s paper for the Center for a New American Security and see if that’s always clear. It’s definitely an unusual paper, published just as, per the Los Angeles Times, Flynn is conducting precisely the overhaul his paper advocates. CNAS’s Tom Ricks sheds a bit of light on what’s going on:

As I understand it, the paper was released through CNAS because Gen. Flynn wanted to reach beyond his own chain of command and his own community and talk to people such as commanders of deploying infantry units about what kind of intelligence they should be demanding.