Gen. Stanley McChrystal's report on the situation in Afghanistan is likely to strain relations between the Obama administration and the uniformed military. The arrival of McChrystal's report in Washington is likely to spark its own low-level war of finger-pointing and blame-shifting between civilian policymakers in the White House and McChrystal's staff and defenders in the Pentagon. This strain in civil-military relations could last through the duration of the U.S. military's involvement in Afghanistan and beyond.
McChrystal's report is supposedly secret, but anonymous staffers have already revealed its themes to the Washington Post. The goal of these staffers is to protect McChrystal and the uniformed military against White House officials they likely don't trust. These staffers have evidently concluded that they need to leak first in order to establish their position and put White House staffers on the defensive.
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