"In 2007, I watched a string of vehicles pass from Iran into northern Iraq... the choice was particularly tricky: whether or not to attack a convoy that included Qassem Suleimani...."

"There was good reason to eliminate Suleimani..... But to avoid a firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow, I decided that we should monitor the caravan, not strike immediately.... Suleimani has grown from a military commander into a ghostly puppet master. His brilliance, effectiveness, and commitment to his country have been revered by his allies and denounced by his critics in equal measure. What all seem to agree on, however, is that the humble leader’s steady hand has helped guide Iranian foreign policy for decades—and there is no denying his successes on the battlefield. Suleimani is arguably the most powerful and unconstrained actor in the Middle East today. U.S. defense officials have reported that Suleimani is running the Syrian civil war (via Iran’s local proxies) all on his own.... His staunch defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has effectively halted any progress by the Islamic State and other rebel groups, all but ensuring that Assad remains in power and stays solidly allied to Iran.....  Suleimani is singularly dangerous. He is also singularly positioned to shape the future of the Middle East."

From "Iran’s Deadly Puppet Master/Gen. Stanley McChrystal explains exactly why Qassem Suleimani is so dangerous" in the Winter 2019 issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

"At 63, I Threw Away My Prized Portrait of Robert E. Lee," writes Retired United States Army general Stanley A. McChrystal...

... in The Atlantic.

The painting had no monetary value; it was really just a print of an original overlaid with brushstrokes to appear authentic.

Well, then... no great sacrifice. I clicked through to this because I'm opposed to the destruction of artwork for political purposes, but this isn't really artwork. The headline conned me. Dammit, McChrystal. "Prized Portrait" — spare me.

But 40 years earlier it had been a gift from a young Army wife to her lieutenant husband when the $25 price (framed) required juggling other needs in our budget.

You know, it's hard to throw out a gift you don't like. Took him 4 decades to work out the excuse to throw the thing in the garbage. But my question is, what does his wife say?

It was not a simple decision. For almost 150 years, Lee had been a subject of study, and of admiration, not only for his skill, but also as a symbol of stoic commitment to duty. And while I could appreciate the visceral association with slavery and injustice that images of the Confederacy’s most famous commander evoke, for a lifetime, that’s not the association I’d drawn. I’d read and largely believed Winston Churchill’s statements that “Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains known to the annals of war.”

At age 63, the same age at which Lee died, I concluded I was wrong—to some extent wrong about Lee as a leader, but certainly about the message that Lee as a symbol conveyed. And although I was slow to appreciate it, a significant part of American society, many still impacted by the legacy of slavery, had felt it all along....

The essay continues at great length about Lee, and I got tired of looking for the answer to my question about his wife, whose gift he threw out. Now, I'm down to the last paragraph:

The picture of fellow soldier Robert E. Lee that hung in my home and inspired me for so long is gone, presumably crushed and buried with the other detritus of life.

Including your wife — buried? That would explain the long-awaited freedom to throw out the "portrait."

But the memory remains. The persona he crafted of a disciplined, dutiful soldier, devoid of intrigue and strictly loyal to a hierarchy of entities that began with God and his own sense of honor, combined with an extraordinary aptitude for war, pulls me toward the most traditional of leadership models. I try to stand a bit straighter. But when I contemplate his shortcomings, and admit his failures, as I must my own, there is a caution I would also do well to remember.

No, nothing — in all that sententious prose —  nothing of the wife. She disappeared after that first mention, unnamed, "a young Army wife."

I looked up McChrystal's Wikipedia page so I could find the name of his wife and whether she is still living. I read this, under "Personal Life":

McChrystal married Annie Corcoran, also from a military family, in 1977. The couple have one son. McChrystal is reported to run 7 to 8 miles (11 to 13 km) daily, eat one meal per day, and sleep four hours a night.

Man, I wish I'd kept a list of all the people I've read sleep only 4 hours a night — Donald Trump, Elon Musk, etc. etc.  How about Robert E. Lee? Did he only sleep 4 hours? "[Lee] routinely turned down offers to use the homes of Southerners as his headquarters, preferring to sleep outside in his modest tent...." Can't see how long he slept. Don't know if he went jogging 7 or 8 miles a day. Don't know if he threw out presents from his wife.

"WikiLeaks says Michael Hastings contacted it just before his death."

"Are they implying he was murdered?"

Michael Hastings was a much admired freelance journalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to bring down General Stanley McChrystal. He was tragically killed this week in a car crash in Los Angeles, after his car hit a tree. Hastings is believed to have been alone in the vehicle.

Petraeusgate drags in Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

"According to a senior U.S. defense official..."

... the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 documents — most of them e-mails — of 'potentially inappropriate'communication between Allen and Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old Tampa woman whose report of harrassment by a person who turned out to be Petraeus’s mistress ultimately led to Petraeus’s downfall....

The scrutiny of Allen’s personal behavior extends a remarkable string of failures and misconduct allegations that have dogged the last four commanders of the Afghan war. Petraeus took the job in 2010, after President Obama fired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal for cooperating with a Rolling Stone profile that quoted McChrystal’s aides as mocking the president, Vice President Biden and other civilian leaders. 

A chain of events set in motion by the unignorable insult "Bite Me"...

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite me?”

McChrystal out.

Petraeus in.

"If the president fires McChrystal, we need a new ambassador and we need an entire new team over there."

"But most importantly, we need the president to say what Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates have both said but what the president refuses to say: Our withdrawal in the middle of 2011 will be conditions based. It's got to be conditions based and he's got to say it.... He won't say this because he's captive of his far-left base."

McCain.

Meanwhile: "Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal left the White House after meeting with President Obama for about 20 minutes, apparently departing before another meeting on the Afghanistan war scheduled for later Wednesday morning, but there was no immediate word on whether he would keep his job as the top American commander in Afghanistan."

AND: "[W]hy were the general and his team so candid?... They were in Paris...."

AND: In the Wall Street Journal, there's "Why McChrystal Has to Go" by Eliot A. Cohen. But the editors say:

Above all, the President should think beyond short-term political appearances to the difficult hand his own policy restraints have presented to General McChrystal....

This is no justification for military disrespect, but it ought to make Mr. Obama think twice about advice that he sack General McChrystal merely so he doesn't look weak as Commander in Chief. He'll look a lot weaker in a year if his Afghan policy looks like a failure. With a war in the balance, Mr. Obama should not dismiss his most talented commander without knowing who, and what, comes next.

You think the new issue of Rolling Stone is tough on General McChrystal, but how do you think Lady Gaga feels?

She posed for the cover in a big machine-gun bra and a nearly naked ass and purports to "tell all," yet everyone's talking about McChrystal, whose name isn't even on the cover! Life is so unfair to Lady Gaga!

ADDED: That gun bra made me think of this crotch-gun in "From Dusk 'Til Dawn":

General McChrystal and his advisers spoke to Rolling Stone — "derisively ... often in sharply flippant and dismissive terms" — and now... what?

WaPo reports:

Preparing for a speech he is about to give at a French military academy, McChrystal "wonders aloud" whether he will questioned about the well-publicized differences in opinion between himself and Biden.
"Are you asking me about Vice President Biden? Who's that?" McChrystal says with a laugh, trying out the line as a hypothetical response to the anticipated query.

"Biden?" chimes in an aide who is seated nearby, and who is not named in the article. "Did you say Bite me?"

More quotes from the Rolling Stone article here:

"Who's he going to dinner with?" I ask one of his aides. "Some French minister," the aide tells me. "It's fucking gay."...

According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal. "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed."...