jim jones

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, yesterday clarified that he accepts the call from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and national security adviser Jim Jones to keep his advice to the president on Afghanistan strategy private. And his aides further specified to me that he doesn’t have any additional public speaking [...]

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House speaker, waded into the media-manufactured controversy Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s London speech on “Charlie Rose” last night, according to Greg Sargent, who’s got the transcript:
“Let me say this about about General McChrystal, with all due respect,” Pelosi said, according to a transcript sent my way by a Pelosi aide. “His [...]

Consider this pseudo-controversy ended. Now that Defense Secretary Bob Gates has joined in with national security adviser Jim Jones to remind Gen. Stanley McChrystal of the virtues of restraining public advice ahead of the Afghanistan strategy review, the McChrystal camp endorses the message.
From Lt. Col Tadd Sholtis, McChrystal’s spokesman in Kabul: “General McChrystal concurs with [...]

The national security adviser, upset by Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recent speech, told CNN that it’s “better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.” As criticism goes, that’s substantively mild and theatrically loud. And that’s probably how Jim Jones, a retired four-star Marine general and NATO commander, wanted it. It’s also worth [...]

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) may have made quite the bureaucratic gambit today by calling for an acceleration of the schedule to train Afghan security forces ahead of any new U.S. troop deployment. That position attracted the support (with caveats) of respected counterinsurgency theorist-practitioners like John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security. Accordingly, [...]

Blink and you’ll miss this, from National Security Adviser Jim Jones’ “Meet The Press” appearance yesterday:
MR. GREGORY:  Is it still your belief that Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan?
GEN.  JONES:  That one’s a little bit more elusive.  We are still very much on the hunt.  We think that he’s still in that general region.  But [...]

So reports Barbara Starr. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has already come to the conclusion that there are too few Afghan forces, and they’re, ultimately, the ballgame. So: what to make of all this?

It’s been awhile since the last bureaucratic/journalistic freakout over Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, and so Joe Klein fills the gap by talking about the low, low policy stakes involved:
The interesting thing here is that there are no real policy disagreements among the Obama foreign policy players. By all accounts, they’ve been getting [...]

Use the initials if you don’t understand, but that was what Gen. Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, told commanders in Afghanistan would be the president’s reaction if they asked for more troops on top of the 17,000 extra combat troops and 4,000 extra trainers that Obama already ordered to be deployed this year. [...]

Ben Smith at Politico has a good piece attempting to shed light on one of the most opaque aspects of Obama administration Kremlinology: what in the world the appointment of Dennis Ross as a National Security Council senior director heralds for Obama’s Mideast policy. As a reporter, it’s been frustrating how few people, inside and [...]