Stanley McChrystal's new career depends upon his uttering the conventional wisdom as it is understood by the inside the beltway elite. He is going to do that anyway because when they get to multi-star level, they are in the heart of that elite. In other words, he will be the media darling if he says the right thing which he is inclined to do anyway. It is good for his career.

As far as his remarks about the fabled lethality of the 5.56 round, a lot of that comes from the initial effort to sell the M-16 to the military and can be directly traced to a pilot program that they ran in VN in 1962 or 63. They gave the weapon to some ARVN troops and used the results in promoting the weapon. The 'hit in the arm and the arm comes off' stuff came from there

This is very well related in The Great Rifle Controversy, which was a great book by the way.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Rifle-Co...le+controversy

Ken White at one time somewhere or other said that as far as lethality goes, a 30.06 tops a 7.62x51 which tops a 5.56x45. I figured he would probably know. If you want a really lethal bullet try a modern big or medium game cartridge in something like 7mm or 25.06. Or if you want to go back further, I've read that the old British .303 cartridge was very bad, a 174 grain bullet with an initial velocity of around 2500 fps with an unstable bullet that tumbled on impact.

McChrystal sensed an opportunity to further his career and he grabbed it.