Some thoughts on Petraeus
So, I’m trying to sort out this whole thing about David Petraeus’ revelation that he had an affair. I’m wondering what the hell he was doing in charge of the CIA and conducting an affair with his official email account. What kind of spy chief would do that? OK, he shouldn’t have been having an affair in the first place, but what grade of moron does it with a government email account? And, then apparently, he gave this woman access to his email account which she then used to harass other people? Was she wearing Depends while she was doing it – because that’s the kind of crazy that drives across country wearing Depends to save time.
According to Fox News, Broadwell admits that she works out with Petraeus when she’s in town, but we noticed back in January that she needed work on her pushups.
“By any measure, he was one of the outstanding General officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges, and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end,” Obama said. The White House has named Michael Morell, the agency’s deputy director, to serve as acting director.
The decision abruptly ends the public-service career of one of the military’s most vaunted leaders. He led the surge in Iraq, and was later tapped to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan — following two years at the helm of U.S. Central Command. In April 2011, Obama again tapped Petraeus to lead the CIA.
Well, as far as I’m concerned, if this whole thing about an affair turns out to be true, in my memoirs, Petraeus will come off as a moron. It’s really poor judgement to have an affair in the first place, and especially stupid to conduct it on a government email account – what with all of the alternative options available. And being the head of CIA, he must have been aware of all of the ways he coould have been caught. It’s as if he wanted to be caught.
I’m not subscribing to the theory that it was all manufactured to keep him from testifying about the Benghazi fiasco, that would be too easy to circumvent, but then this affair thing is majorly stupid on everyone’s parts.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
Anonymous (50): I’m guessing our enemies chart more people working there than you might think. But I could easily be wrong.
Leaving aside the implausibility of someone working openly at CIA HQ and commuting there daily having a valid claim to “covert” status, I agree with you in theory. So please, by all means go talk to Plame’s husband Joe Wilson.
Wilson apparently told Armitage (and many others) that Plame worked for the CIA weeks before Novak published his article in July 2003. That’s what blew Plame’s cover – not Novak or Armitage.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/when-and-why-joseph-c-wilson-iv-outed-valerie-plame
The whole Plame incident was ludicrous on its face the day it broke, it was political maneuvering at its worst.
Which is why it’s more than a bit disingenuous for democrats to now claim a different rule set for their guy…if you want to put somebody in prison for outing Plame (besides her husband) where is the outrage regarding the Obama administration securing secrets in the same fashion a sieve secures water?
Disingenuous political maneuvering is not unique to democrats certainly, but their outrage over the former and the complete apathy regarding the latter clearly outlines the hypocrisy….
It took me a while to find this, but here it is.
Back in October, on October 26, to be precise, there was a Tweet put out by Jake Tapper, a White House correspondent that supports this article from the Weekly Standard:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/petraeus-throws-obama-under-bus_657896.html
Bascially, Petraeus speficially rebutted in October what the White House said at the time about what did/did not happen at the Benghazi embassy and whether or not the people there requested help. He said the White House lied. Now he’s resigned from his CIA job — over having sex?
Give me a break, will you?
I just want to know how bad your short term memory losses are. It’s not a good sign you’re all still so very young.
Here’s another link.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/#ixzz2ARnom7We
And here is the link to a Nov. 1 article by Jake Tapper regarding the denial by the White House.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/the-benghazi-drip-drip-drip/
Now if you still want to go on quibbling over whether or not Petraeus resigned over a porking fest with Broadwell, go ahead, but get over it. That is not the reason for his resignation.
“speficially” — gack! — should be “specifically”.
I don’t know I kind of like that he speficially rebutted….sounds forceful…
Well, ABC is now yacking about the possibility of Petraeus being charged if the affair started on active duty. I agree with what has already been said that 1) this is a distraction from the Benghazi issue and 2) he’s retired, it doesn’t appear to have undercut good order and discipline while he was in uniform and hence, as it pertains to the adultery, I don’t really care. Its sad and disappointing, but ultimately a personal matter.
That having been said, as I’ve said before, I’d like to know when Broadwell is going to activated so that she can be charged for conduct unbecoming or harassment. How much time and money had to be wasted by the FBI pulling the thread on the emails because this woman decided she wanted to go all Fatal Attraction on an innocent female friend of the family?
Petraeus was outgoing BC with the Iron Rakkasans when I got to Ft. Campbell. This was when he was shot in the chest and made his amazing recovery.
Prior to that, though, he enjoyed the derision of his men as “Professor Petraeus.” A lot of people felt that his marriage to the proverbial “General’s Daughter” enabled a good amount of his fast-tracking. Jack Keane liked him, though, and a lot of his advancement through the 18th Airborne Corps could definitely be attributed to him. Prior to the GWOT, all of Professor Petraeus’ rep was theorycraft, and to be fair, I think most of his COIN could be summed up in “pay the enemy and buy his heart and mind.”
In other words, it’s hard for me to feel that this “academic warrior” did anything but lean hard on his brigade commanders for his success as divco for the 101st. After that, flooding his AOs with copious amounts of money could make any COIN operation look awesome.
So ends the career of one of our most over-hyped products of the Cold War force, and I find it rich that it sadly came at the expense of the wife that married him into his early success.
Here’s the most recent update on this mess:
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/12/15119872-emails-on-coming-and-goings-of-petraeus-other-military-officials-escalated-fbi-concerns?lite
It seems Ms. Broadwell was engaging in cyberstalking and cyberharassment and was able to hide her tracks rather well.
The FBI were not investigating Petraeus; they were investigating her.
“Moreover, the sender of the emails had “covered her tracks pretty well,” the source said.”
Given that the speaker was probably a LE type, I’ll reserve judgment on “pretty well”. Using throwaway email addresses really doesn’t do much to hide the user.
“Finding the location from which the emails emanated would not have been difficult, experts say.”
Yup. And their bit that follows about IP addresses being sent with each email is right on the money.
“Agents could also have sought a wiretap order and monitored Broadwell’s email in real time, though wiretaps are more challenging to obtain, and there is no indication that agents took that step.”
Meh. That may or may not have made much of a difference, depending on the communication protocol used. If she were using something like IPSEC, to encode the actual transmission and MD5 to encode the contents of the email itself, they would have had to arrest her corpse, cause she would have been long dead of old age.
So now you have to ask, what was her purpose in doing this?
It’s too late in the day for this. I have to put the trash out where it belongs, on the street.
Crazy.
She was in the throes of ecstacy in her newfound “love” and saw a threat. Nevermind that the innocent woman was just a family friend and likely didn’t have a single romantic notion toward Gen Petraeus, she just couldn’t stand it, but she knew she couldn’t confront the person directly, so she tried the indirect approach and that’s what got her hung.
Crazy. And crazy as it sounds it’s not the worst we’ve seen in recent years. I mean…she didn’t strap on a pair of depends and drive cross country intending to kidnap the poor woman. That woman was married too, actually.
She couldn’t talk to anyone about it, because she was betraying her marriage. And without someone to talk her down off the edge, her mind talked her straight into crazytown.
This is a video that just appeared on the net:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755883/vp/49798881#49798881
The FBI are searching Broadwell’s home. No other info available yet.