Former General Stanley McChrystal spoke at the Free Library of Philadelphia today. The first part was a question and answer session with Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down".
He reiterated his support for the appointment of former Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.
"If he will have the job, I support him," said McChrystal. "He will have to deal with sequester, integrating women in the military, which I support, and Iran in the next four years... Ahmadinjad (the President of Iran) does not exactly inspire confidence. The President will be making policy."
He compared the military's "op tempo and strategy" under him to the "Rocky Balboa strategy against Apollo Creed".
He said, "At first, we were going after only the top guys in the organization. We found that was not destroying the organization. Instead of aiming just for the top people, we hit constantly and in the mid section. When I started, we were doing 18 raids a month. At the end. we were doing 10 raids a night."
McChrystal had mixed feelings on drones.
"The other side does not respect leaders of a military that uses drones. They believe you should come up fighting mano el mano," he said. "There is collateral damage. If a drone hit a drug dealer in Philadelphia, the bystanders might think it was good he was hit. They still would have felt the impact."
McChrystal received a classified briefing on Benghazi, which begs the question why is a general that resigned in disgrace still receiving classified briefings.
"They entered the consulate not expecting to find the ambassador there," McChrystal was allowed to reveal.. "This was not organized. Other attacks in the area were. They set fire. The ambassador died in the safe room of smoke inhalation."
Chrystal said that he did not witness any extreme interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.
"The only torture techniques that were allowed were sleep deprivation, limiting sleep to 4 hours, and forcing them to be in extreme positions like kneeling," said McChrystal.
