McChrystal takes responsibility in memoir

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NEW YORK, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Retired U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in his memoir, says he was surprised by the tone of the Rolling Stone article that cost him his job in Afghanistan.

The June 2010 article attributed negative comments about Vice President Joe Biden and others in the Obama administration to McChrystal, then head of coalition forces in Afghanistan, and members of his staff. The general was summoned to Washington by President Obama, who ultimately accepted his resignation.

In the epilogue of his book, "My Share of the Task," which goes on sale Monday, McChrystal says he was caught off-guard when told the Rolling Stone piece had come out and was going to be a problem, the magazine Human Events reported Saturday.

"How in the world could that story have been a problem? I thought, stunned," he wrote.

"... This story, one of a number we'd done over the year in Afghanistan, was designed to provide transparency into how my command team operated. But, beginning with the provocative title 'The Runaway General,' the article described a hard-driving general, a struggling U.S. policy, and attributed a number of unacceptable comments to my command team.

"Regardless of how I judged the story for fairness or accuracy, responsibility was mine."

New York Magazine reported McChrystal appears to knock the article's author, Michael Hastings, without mentioning him by name.

"By nature I tended to trust people and was typically open and transparent," McChrystal wrote. "But such transparency would go astray when others saw us out of context or when I gave trust to those few who were unworthy of it."