"NATO general in Afghanistan: Victory will be slow" AP

 "... winter offensive in the southern Afghan town of Marjah has been followed by the re-infiltration of Taliban forces into the area despite a continuing strong U.S. Marine presence.

"We've dramatically changed the state of the insurgency in that region," McChrystal said, but at the same acknowledged that Marjah was still a struggle.

"Progress there is not yet fully established," he said.

A summer offensive planned for the Taliban birthplace of Kandahar will be similarly painstaking, McChrystal said. The plan is to focus on delivering services like electricity and water, he explained."  AP

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Is McChrystal really this delusional?  Does he really think that he can "log-roll" the media, shape US public opinion and thus force Obama to do what he wants him to do?

Apparently, the answer is yes.

The info-ops obsession seems to have reached a level of development in which the monkish general believes that he bestrides the world and can sculpt history to his taste.

The problem with being a senior personage for a long time is that you live with sycophants for so long that after a while you start to believe the nonsense they serve up about how wonderful you are, how powerful, how handsome, etc.  My wife calls this the "great man syndrome."

It sounds as though Stanley is riding hard for a fall...  pl 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_afghanistan