David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 14, 2012 12:17 pm

NOVEMBER 14, 2012
The Petraeus Saga
Epitaph for a Four Star
by Col. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR, Ret.
When Major General David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division met Lieutenant General William Wallace, commander of the U.S. Army’s V Corps on 27 March 2003 at a site near Najaf, only five days after American forces began the attack to Baghdad Petraeus and Wallace were deeply pessimistic. They concluded, “The war was in dismal shape.”8 Petraeus, an officer who had risen to Major General and Division Command with no previous combat experience, was deeply worried about the level of Iraqi resistance.

The fact that 3rd Infantry Division (mechanized), an armored force of hundreds of tanks and armored fighting vehicles was already 50 miles south of Baghdad and poised to attack the city did not seem to matter. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. would have flown into a rage and fired them on the spot. Yet both men went on to four stars.

Was General David Petraeus the heroic figure his press releases suggested or a piece of fiction created, packaged and presented to the American people by the Bush Administration and its Neocon allies in the media and academia as the poster boy for counterinsurgency? Was he simply a world class aid de camp, military assistant and speech writer, a slick briefer who successfully cultivated dozens of Army four stars and political appointees on the ladder to four stars? Or is Petraeus simply the victim of his own press releases?

Consider these points: The Shiite dominated government of Iraq is not only more corrupt today than its secular Baathist predecessor. It’s also among the most corrupt states in the world, far worse than North Korea or Russia. And, unlike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq it is unambiguously tied to and aligned with Iran. In Afghanistan, Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) continue to run from fights with pathetic Taliban in bed sheets and flip flops and more Afghan civilians died during the 18 months of Petraeus’s “Afghan Surge” than at any time in the previous ten years.[i] How did these things come about? Who is responsible for this debacle?

How many times have Americans read the flattering assessments of Petraeus on the editorial pages of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or heard Journalists repeat Petraeus’s assertions of “progress” and “success” on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC? Whenever Petraeus wanted to show that his alleged “counterinsurgency” strategy was delivering significant progress in Iraq or Afghanistan, the mainstream media offered unconditional support for whatever narrative Petraeus provided.[ii]

Vacuous statements removed from the facts were routinely treated like sermons on the mount, “It’s about being comfortable with a degree of chaos,” he [Petraeus] said in the interview. “And the whole point is that I am comfortable with that kind of situation. What you want to do is constantly push the envelope in every respect.”[iii] Huh???

When the Surge in Iraq began, no one in Washington was interested in explaining why the world’s most powerful military establishment led by Petraeus was buying off its Sunni Arab opponents with hundreds of millions of dollars, effectively supplanting counterinsurgency with cash-based cooptation.[iv] When the Surge in Iraq ended, no one in Washington wanted to discuss why Tehran’s Shiite allies in Baghdad restrained their fighters, and waited until the U.S. occupation ended before consolidating their control of Arab Iraq. In 2009, an Iraqi journalist described the outcome in terms no serious observer of the conflict could ignore:

“Observers not steeped in Iraqi history might be bemused to find that six years after the toppling of a dictator, after the death of several hundred thousand Iraqis, a brutal insurgency, trillions of wasted dollars and more than 4,000 dead US soldiers, the country is being rebuilt along very familiar lines: concentration of power, shadowy intelligence services and corruption.”[v]

A year later, Al-Qaida together with its Sunni Islamist affiliates in Iraq was also making a comeback recruiting scores of Sunni Muslim Arabs to rejoin the fight against the “crusaders and the Shiites” by paying them more than the monthly salary they received from the Maliki Government.[vi] Petraeus had brought the country back to where it started. Members of the House and the Senate privately acknowledged Iraq was a failure,[vii] but this tragic outcome did not obstruct the Petraeus proposal to repeat the folly of Iraq in Afghanistan.

On 7 October 2009 before the surge in Afghanistan began, Marc Sageman, a veteran intelligence officer with years of experience in Pakistan and the region warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “The proposed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is at present irrelevant to the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda, which is located in Pakistan. None of the plots in the West has any connection to any Afghan insurgent group, labeled under the umbrella name “Afghan Taliban.”[viii] Reason and facts took a back seat. Sageman was ignored.

A year later, when I asked a field grade officer in Washington, DC with experience in Afghanistan if the simultaneous departure of General Petraeus and Ambassador Eikenberry from their posts in Kabul at the start of the security transition and after two high-profile assassinations (Jan Mohammad and Ahmed Wali) would undermine the Afghan population’s confidence in the U.S. leadership, he answered, “Absolutely not! There is no public confidence to lose. Read the local media translated every day in opensource.gov. The matter is absolutely irrelevant to the population-Uzbek, Tajik, Huzzara or Pashtun.”[ix]

Sadly, what happened in Afghanistan was also irrelevant to the American people. By now, Americans had figured out that large-scale U.S. military occupations of non-Western societies to transform them into images of the West inevitably provoke resentment and breed violence; even when the U.S. pays $25 million a month in hard cash to its enemies not to fight.

Why did these things happen?

The short answer involves the skillful use of data and information to create a false picture of military action in faraway places. It’s not a new practice,[x] but in Iraq, Petraeus elevated it to an art form. With the backing of the Bush Administration, Petraeus created a narrative based on the illusion the he, David Petraeus, had “discovered” a military solution to Iraq’s societal misery in the form of counterinsurgency.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson said it best, “Americans are suckers for good news.” And P.T. Barnum insisted, “A sucker is born every minute.” Both were right.

However, in Afghanistan, Petraeus overestimated his ability to control the narrative even with a friendly U.S. press. True, the chronic absence of accountability for lost funds and failed nation building projects persisted as they did in Iraq,[xi] but when Marjah, the alleged test case for the Afghan Surge faltered badly, IED strikes multiplied and U.S. casualties rose, the Afghan narrative fell apart.[xii] Unfortunately for General Stanley McChrystal, he arrived in Kabul just in time to embrace Petraeus’s false counterinsurgency strategy and supporting narrative, an act that brought him down as much as any imprudent remarks he made under the influence.

When Petraeus finally left joined the CIA, a place from which he could direct black operations that are largely unmonitored and uncontrolled by the president and congress, Americans simply tuned out operations in Afghanistan that were going nowhere. If such disastrous leadership did not result in the pointless loss of American life in uniform,[xiii] undermine American strategic interests abroad, and empty the U.S. Treasury of its hard earned tax dollars,[xiv] it would almost be comedic.

Of course, these observations still don’t completely explain the meteoric rise of Dave Petraeus, or how his carefully crafted image swayed American public opinion. One reason is very that few Americans know much about the military. Most are conditioned to see generals through the prism of Hollywood films. They are easily persuaded that today’s generals are indistinguishable from the battle-hardened leaders of the Second World War or the Korean conflict. Nothing could be more inaccurate.

Directing air strikes, raids and patrols from the safety of the Green Zone, a place that compares favorably with any number of elaborate shopping malls and motels in the United States, is not waging war. Suppressing hostile Muslim populations that resent Western occupation is not the same as confronting the Waffen SS in the Ardennes or hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops on the Korean Peninsula. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there are no opposing armies, air forces or air defenses.

In truth, only a fraction of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who deploy, are ever under fire. Their courage and devotion are never in question, but confusing them with generals is tantamount to equating senators and Wall Street Bankers with American citizens struggling to survive the economic meltdown. In such an artificial war environment, sacred cows like Petraeus are never slain, they simply vanish.

In addition, Petraeus made a common mistake that is all too common in the Army’s four star ranks. He concluded he was the smartest guy in the room and he made sure everyone in the room knew it. Petraeus was always one of those guys who wanted to be a general for the sake of being a general and he was prepared to do anything to secure the stars,[xv] the product of extreme careerism coupled with the façade of false humility. President Bush and the Neocons in his administration needed a “hero,” an alleged “great captain” to make the case for victory in Iraq when there was none.

Petraeus was eager to play the role and, the otherwise unknown Paula Broadwell, a former Army officer and West Point graduate, was anxious to tell Petraeus’s story. Broadwell and Petraeus were simply two people with converging agendas.

Petraeus wanted a biographer who would cultivate the myth he worked so hard to create, someone who would glorify him, his “surges” and legitimate the Neocon policy of occupation and nation building with which he identified himself. Broadwell wanted the fame and fortune that access to Petraeus and his narrative would bring. Both got what they wanted, at least, for a while.

However, given that amateur hour in Benghazi is taking center stage on Capitol Hill, there’s little reason for the Obama Administration to keep up appearances with its generals. The latest revelations cast doubt on General John Allen’s future.

It turns out that in two years Allen sent approximately 30,000 pages containing hundreds of emails to Jill Kelley, a volunteer social organizer at the MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, and a bit player in the Petraeus-Broadwell affair. How many emails a day is anyone’s guess, but how could Allen have any time left over to focus on operations in Afghanistan when he was sending so many messages to the magnetic Mrs. Kelley!!!

None of the generals’ peccadillos is newsworthy, but for its commentary on the generals. The affairs are genuinely irrelevant. But the events demonstrate that the readiness of four stars like David Petraeus and John Allen to enthusiastically push utterly foolish and self-defeating policies conceived in Washington, DC is not the result of individual failures, but the crisis of an entire institution.[xvi]

Americans must wake up. The contemporary American military is not led by a Roman or Prussian class of hardened professionals. On the contrary, for the most part, the senior leadership is really an overgrown bureaucracy committed to jobs for generals. But these bureaucrats in uniform have gone too far. They are now responsible for the extraordinary loss of American blood, treasure, as well as, strategic ground in Iraq and Afghanistan at a point in time when the American people just cannot afford it.


Evidence Emerges That GOP Leader Tried to Use Petraeus Affair to Hurt Obama Before Election
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has some explaining to do.
November 13, 2012 |

Amidst the sordid details of the high-ranking CIA sex scandal (that has now spread to an investigation of Jill Kelley, the woman who complained of being harassed by Gen. David Petraeus's mistress (Paula Broadwell), being involved in voluminous and questionable e-mail exchanges with the current commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen), one important political factor has emerged in the last day: Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor appears to have tried to put pressure on the FBI to advance the investigation, with the likely goal of an October surprise scandal that would have potentially harmed Obama's chance of re-election. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times provided insight into the Cantor involvement, with the Journal noting in the beginning of a November 12 article: A federal agent who launched the investigation that ultimately led to the resignation of Central Intelligence Agency chief David Petraeus was barred from taking part in the case over the summer due to superiors' concerns that he was personally involved in the case, according to officials familiar with the probe. After being blocked from the case, the agent continued to press the matter, relaying his concerns to a member of Congress, the officials said. New details about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation handled the case suggest that even as the bureau delved into Mr. Petraeus's personal life, the agency had to address conduct by its own agent—who allegedly sent shirtless photos of himself to a woman involved in the case prior to the investigation. The Journal went on to reveal that the "The [shirtless photograph] agent is now under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal-affairs arm of the FBI, according to two officials familiar with the matter." A quick recap is called for here. Some time earlier this year, the unidentified FBI agent filed an agency request to investigate alleged threatening e-mails from the mistress of Petraeus (then C.I.A. director) to one Tampa Bay resident Jill Kelley, a married socialite who is a "volunteer liaison" (whatever that means) with one of the most top secret military units (based in the Tampa area). The agent who sent shirtless photos of himself to Kelley, via a mobile phone one presumes, was obviously a close friend of hers. Jane Mayer of the New Yorker takes the political dimensions of the story from there: The [New York] Times uses the word “murky” to describe what happened next, and there are many puzzling aspects. But according to the Times, at the end of October, a week or so after the F.B.I. investigators confronted Petraeus, an unidentified F.B.I. employee took the matter into his own hands. Evidently without authorization, he went to the Republicans in Congress. First he informed a Republican congressman, Dave Reichert of Washington State. According to the Times, Reichert advised this F.B.I. employee to go to the Republican leadership in the House. The F.B.I. employee then told what he knew about the investigation to Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader. Cantor released a statement to the Times confirming that he had spoken to the F.B.I. informant, whom his staff described as a “whistleblower.” Cantor said, “I was contacted by an F.B.I. employee who was concerned that sensitive, classified information might have been compromised.” But what, exactly, was this F.B.I. employee trying to expose? Was he blowing the whistle on his bosses? If so, why? Was he dissatisfied with their apparent exoneration of Petraeus? Given that this drama was playing out in the final days of a very heated Presidential campaign, and he was taking a potentially scandalous story to the Republican leadership in Congress, was there a political motive? According to the Times, Cantor said he took the information, and “made certain that director Mueller”—that is Robert Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I.—“was aware of these serious allegations, and the potential risk to our national security.” This is a strange way to explain his contact with the F.B.I. on this matter, because it is almost inconceivable that director Mueller was not already aware that the bureau he runs had examined the e-mail account of the director of the C.I.A., and, further, confronted him in person. Such a meeting between the bureau and head of the C.I.A. would have been extraordinary, and it is fairly unthinkable that Mueller wouldn’t have been consulted. So what information was Cantor conveying when he got in touch with Mueller? The New York Times reports of an interesting wrinkle in the political implications of the conduct of the "shirtless" agent who seemed to be pursuing Mrs. Kelley and "advocating" on her behalf with keen interest: "Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, the official said — that the case had stalled. Because of his 'worldview,' as the [F.B.I.] official put it, he [the "shirtless" agent] suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama." Normally, it should be noted, the FBI does not become involved in investigating adulterous affairs of government officials unless there is proof that national security has been compromised. The unidentified "shirtless" F.B.I. agent now under investigation -- and his end run around the bureau through Eric Cantor during the days leading up to Election Day -- raise more serious issues than adulterous sex in terms of what appears to be a last ditch effort to influence a national election. Fortunately, Cantor didn't bully F.B.I. Director Mueller into an October Surprise revelation of Petraeus having had an adulterous affair. More may come out, given that Broadwell may have a penchant for wanting people to know that she has inside information (including her questionable public claim that the C.I.A. was holding prisoners in Benghazi) -- and that there are questions of whether any classified information was revealed or rendered vulnerable. But it would take a leap of unjustified faith to believe that Eric Cantor's telephone call to the head of the F.B.I. on Halloween was not an attempt to force the salacious scandal of lust (as it stands at this moment) to the front pages before the election. Fortunately, global warming's October surprise -- Hurricane Sandy -- trumped Cantor's inappropriate meddling into an FBI investigation for opportunistic political purposes likely aimed at influencing an election.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby yathrib » Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:12 pm

I don't have the talent to do it, but I'm picturing a parody of Lou Reed's seminal "Walk on the Wild Side" that explains this scandal. It's too bad that it's Petraeus' wife who is named Holly, rather than one of the Florida (FLA) socialite twins.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby beeline » Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:29 pm

Link
Ex-classmate at Lower Moreland: Jill and twin were destined for notoriety

THEY WERE TWO peas in a pod, those Khawam sisters, known simply as "the twins" at Lower Moreland High School back in the early '90s.

Jill and Natalie Khawam, who moved to the school in their junior year and graduated in 1993, fancied tight jeans and flirting, recalled a former classmate, who spoke on condition that his name not be used. Still, even the babes had detractors (this was high school, don't forget) who made fun of their noses, according to the British Daily Mail website.

"We are going to get a nose job and when we do you'll all be in awe of us," Jill said, according to an unnamed former classmate quoted by the website.

Not quite how U.S. military intelligence or alpha-jogger-biographer Paula Broadwell regard Jill today.

Although friends quoted in news reports and former classmates expressed shock at what has transpired with Kelley and two generals, one former classmate told the Daily News he's unfazed by the events.

"They were destined to become involved in the mess they are now in," said the man, who also wanted his name withheld. In high school the twins were involved in "brand names, politicians, power and social circuits," he told the People Paper.

After Lower Moreland, the Khawams traveled in high-end Philadelphia cliques, the man said.

"They were always at the Palm, they knew the maitre d's' names at the Palm," he said. "They were always with high-powered attorneys, decked out in Versace, name-dropping.

"It's not a surprise."

In the 1993 Lower Moreland High School yearbook, the twins don't appear to be too involved in school activities. Their only images are their senior pictures, which mirror one another. Both wear simple white pearls and V-neck dresses, like all their female classmates. Their dark tresses dangle over one side of their bare shoulders: Jill's left side, Natalie's right side.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Nov 14, 2012 6:46 pm

Best (perhaps "only good") article on this so far:
http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/11/13/da ... d-trainer/

There’s a critical sub-genre of reporting on the Petraeus scandal, noting that Petraeus’ sins don’t so much pertain to fucking a dissertation advisee under his desk, but sending lots of men and women to die in his pet failed military strategies.

Of course there’s Michael Hastings’ focus on Petraeus’ successful spin of his failures.

"Here’s a brief summary: We can start with the persistent questions critics have raised about his Bronze Star for Valor. Or that, in 2004, during the middle of a presidential election, Petraeus wrote an op-ed in The Washington Postsupporting President Bush and saying that the Iraq policy was working. The policy wasn’t working, but Bush repaid the general’s political advocacy by giving him the top job in the war three years later.

There’s his war record in Iraq, starting when he headed up the Iraqi security force training program in 2004. He’s more or less skated on that, including all the weapons he lost, the insane corruption, and the fact that he essentially armed and trained what later became known as “Iraqi death squads.” On his final Iraq tour, during the so-called “surge,” he pulled off what is perhaps the most impressive con job in recent American history. He convinced the entire Washington establishment that we won the war.


There’s Michael Cohen’s examination of Petraeus’ role in both the Iraqi and Afghan surge.

The greatest indictment of Petraeus’s record is that, 18 months after announcing the surge, President Obama pulled the plug on a military campaign that had clearly failed to realize the ambitious goals of Petraeus and his merry team of COIN boosters. Today, the Afghanistan war is stalemated with little hope of resolution – either militarily or politically – any time soon. While that burden of failure falls hardest on President Obama, General Petraeus is scarcely blameless. Yet, to date, he has almost completely avoided examination for his conduct of the war in Afghanistan.


But I want to look at Petraeus booster David Ignatius’ take. His post today is barely critical of Petraeus. But it acknowledges that Petraeus’ CIA has been too focused on paramilitary ops to the detriment of human collection, which proved to be a fatal failure in Benghazi.

Petraeus was picked for the job, and eager to take it, partly because the White House believed that in an era of counterterrorism, the CIA’s traditional mission of stealing secrets was morphing into a wider role that increasingly stressed paramilitary covert action. The retired general, with his matchless experience in running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was seen as well-suited to run an agency that combined the trench coat and the flak jacket.

But the Petraeus-era CIA had a hidden defect, quite apart from any errant e-mails, which was that the paramilitary covert-action function was swallowing alive the old-fashioned intelligence-gathering side of the house. This actually seems to me to be the central lesson of the disaster in Benghazi, Libya.

[snip]

Benghazi showed the reason the United States needs clandestine intelligence officers in dangerous countries such as Libya. They’re in country, undercover, to collect the secrets that will keep U.S. citizens safe. That night, the United States needed to know what was going down in Benghazi, and in Cairo, Tunis and a half-dozen other capitals. It’s hard to do this intelligence collection — recruiting and running clandestine agents — when you’re operating from a quasi-public base, as seems to have been the case in Benghazi, and is certainly true in many others parts of the world.

[snip]

But one resolution for the post-Petraeus CIA should be to put intelligence collection back in the driver’s seat at the agency. Maybe this will only be possible when the agency fully deploys a new network of deep-cover “platforms” that can hide CIA officers better than that embattled annex in Benghazi did.


I think Ignatius is totally right. Petraeus responded to Benghazi by asking for more drones, rather than reapplying CIA to collecting information on the militias who ended up attacking us. But one of the lessons of Benghazi is we need to know who we’re dealing with–all the people, not just the people we’ve identified as bad guys, and not just the information we can collect from drones or (hahahaha!) email and social media.

There’s an additional intriguing criticism of Petraeus Ignatius alludes to. He comes as close as anyone has to suggesting CIA–David Petraeus’ CIA–was the entity training the militias to be more professional soldiers.

The CIA had a big base in Benghazi, with a half-dozen former military special forces assigned there as part of the “Global Response Staff.” These were the muscle-bound security guys known to flippant earlier generations of CIA case officers as “knuckle-draggers.” They were in Benghazi in such numbers in part because the CIA was trying to collect the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that had gone loose after the fall of Col. Moammar Gaddafi. They may also have been working with Libyan militias to help them become effective security forces.


Given suggestions that the February 17 Brigade–one of the militia we would have been training–at least failed to prevent the attack if not allowed it to happen, the suggestion CIA conducted their training is really damning indeed.

After all, as Hastings notes, Petraeus’ training program in Iraq effectively armed Iraqi death squads. As Jim has tracked forever, Petraeus’ training program in Afghanistan ended up training those Afghan forces who are now killing NATO forces.

David Petraeus has a fairly consistent history of training sketchy men to be fairly dangerous troops. Increasingly of late, precisely those American-trained forces are the people killing Americans.

If, along with everything else, CIA trained some of the people who failed to protect and perhaps even attacked Americans in Benghazi, it would be the third time Petraeus’ training has backfired. Couple that with the failure to collect HUMINT on people we didn’t know were bad guys, and we got blindsided in Benghazi. And that’s just hitting some of the problems.

Ignatius is right: Benghazi teaches us CIA needs to go back to collecting information on what people–both identified enemies and relatively trusted friends–are doing. And until we get far better at doing that, we sure as hell better not be arming and training these people.

Because there’s an increasing history of Petraeus’ programs training the men who kill Americans.


I also noted that the comments attributed "The only thing the Americans can train the Iraquis to do is kill Americans" to Martin van Creveld, a non-quote I had previously seen attributed to either Ehud Barak or Chalabi. I don't think anyone said it, but it's a gem just the same.

The real value of COIN, I'm starting to see, is that it's unwinnable by design. Perpetual war for impossible peace.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby nashvillebrook » Wed Nov 14, 2012 7:22 pm

New Robert Parry on TampaGate...PetrausGate...GeneralGate...kinda looks like a retelling of his earlier piece.

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/11/14/the-neocons-waterloo/


The Neocons’ Waterloo

Exclusive: The last week has witnessed what might be called the Neocons’ Waterloo as their bid to reclaim power was beaten back by President Obama’s reelection and their last major government ally, CIA Director David Petraeus, resigned amid a sex scandal, Robert Parry reports.


By Robert Parry

The decisive defeat of Mitt Romney in the presidential race and the forced resignation of ex-Gen. David Petraeus as CIA director have marginalized America’s neoconservatives more than at any time in the past several decades, confining them mostly to Washington think tanks and media opinion circles.

The neocons bet heavily on a Romney victory as they envisioned a return to power, like what they enjoyed under President George W. Bush when they paved the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and dreamed of forcing “regime change” in Iran and Syria. During the campaign, Romney largely delegated his foreign policy to a cast of neocon retreads from the Bush era.

Yet, amid the wreckage of the past week – with Romney blamed for a disastrous campaign and Petraeus embarrassed by a tawdry extramarital affair – the neocons now find themselves without a strong ally anywhere inside the Executive Branch. And with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who sometimes sided with them, expected to leave shortly, the neocons could be even more isolated in the weeks ahead.

This reversal of fortune has led some key neocons to send out what amount to peace feelers to the Obama administration. The Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Washington Post columnist (and Brookings Institution senior fellow) Robert Kagan have joined in urging Republicans to show more flexibility regarding their opposition to tax hikes on the wealthy.

Kristol made his views known on weekend talk shows, declaring on Fox News: “It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.” Kagan penned an op-ed column for the Washington Post that stated: “It seems pretty obvious that a compromise will require both tax reform, including if necessary some tax increases, and entitlement reform, since those programs are the biggest driver of the fiscal crisis.”

Some on the Left have cited the tax flexibility of Kristol, in particular, as an indication of Republican willingness to compromise seriously with President Obama in a second term. However, the truth is that neocons have never been economic conservatives. Instead, they have favored lavishing money on military programs and financing warfare to implement their imperial strategy of imposing political change by force. The budget has never been a high priority.

A Split on the Right

Over the past three-plus decades, the neocons have joined with cultural and economic conservatives more as a marriage of convenience than as a sign of true affection and shared values. Now, as the Religious Right and the Ayn Rand ideologues face harder times politically, the neocons are pondering a trial separation, if not an outright divorce.

The signs of a split among conservatives may be welcome news for President Obama who has been contemplating a number of controversial foreign policy moves in the post-election environment, including reaching an accommodation with Iran over its nuclear program. Harsh economic sanctions on Iran appear to have made Iranian leaders more serious about striking a deal and Obama is expected to seek a resolution in the weeks ahead.

However, the neocons have remained hostile to any concessions toward Iran. If Mitt Romney had won the presidency, the neocons likely would have hijacked the sanctions from their stated goal of achieving Iranian concessions on nuclear issues and transformed them into an economic club to bludgeon “regime change.” That could have set the stage for another Middle East war.

The significance of Petraeus’s resignation as CIA director is that the ex-four-star general was one of the neocons’ last insiders who could be counted on to frustrate Obama’s negotiations with Iran. Last year, Petraeus complicated U.S.-Iranian ties by pushing a dubious story about Iran planning a terrorist attack in Washington.

The White House and the Justice Department doubted that Iranian leaders were implicated in the harebrained scheme to assassinate the Saudi ambassador by blowing up a Washington restaurant. But Petraeus’s CIA embraced the suspicions and won over the Washington press corps, which largely swallowed the story whole.

It has since turned out that the central figure in the plot, an Iranian-American car dealer Mansour Arbabsiar, was diagnosed by doctors from his own defense team as suffering a bipolar disorder. In other words, his lawyers say he has a severe psychiatric ailment that affected his grasp of reality.


Nevertheless, the blaring news of the terror plot – echoing across U.S. front pages and American TV screens – strained the delicate negotiations between the Obama administration and the Iranian leadership. So, Obama’s inner circle saw a silver lining in Petraeus’s sudden departure: this neocon ally will not be around to sabotage talks again.

The Accommodating Obama

After winning the presidency in 2008, Obama extended an olive branch to the Republicans, the neocons and much of the Washington Establishment by retaining President George W. Bush’s last Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Bush’s military high command, including Petraeus who was then head of Central Command and thus overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amid media applause for this “team of rivals,” Obama also picked Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State. As a New York senator, Clinton had developed close ties to the neocons and generally supported their hawkish positions on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama’s generosity, which included a decision not to seek any accountability for war crimes committed by the Bush administration, won him little reciprocity, however. Secretary Gates and Gen. Petraeus, with the tacit support of Secretary Clinton, blocked Obama’s interest in hearing less aggressive options on Afghanistan. They essentially steered him into support of a major troop “surge.”

Behind the young President’s back, Gen. Petraeus even mounted a P.R. campaign in support of a larger and longer Afghan War. In 2009, when Obama was weighing what to do about Afghanistan, Petraeus personally arranged extraordinary access to U.S. field commanders for two of his influential neocon friends, Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute.

“Fears of impending disaster are hard to sustain … if you actually spend some time in Afghanistan, as we did recently at the invitation of General David Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command,” they wrote upon their return when they penned a glowing report in about the prospects for success in Afghanistan – if only President Obama sent more troops and committed the United States to stay in the war for the long haul.

In mid-2011, Gates finally left the Pentagon, with Obama replacing him with CIA Director Leon Panetta, who had emerged as a trusted Obama adviser. To fill the CIA job, Obama named Petraeus partly to prevent the ambitious general from launching a political career as a Republican, including possibly becoming the GOP’s presidential standard-bearer in 2012.

Obama’s move was risky, in that Petraeus could use his position at the CIA to leak out information to his neocon allies that could undercut Obama’s foreign policies, a possibility that appears to have come to pass in the alleged Iranian assassination plot.

So, when the White House learned that Petraeus had entangled himself in a sex scandal, there was no rush to help the CIA chief extricate himself. Rather than sweeping the scandal under the rug and letting Petraeus stay on – as he apparently expected – or concocting a cover story for a graceful exit, the Obama administration let the story play out in all its messy details.

Decks Cleared

Between the outcome of the election and the departure of Petraeus, President Obama now has the chance to take full control of his foreign policy. The neocons also find themselves sitting on the outside looking in more so than at any time since the 1970s when they emerged as a group of hawkish ex-Democrats and embittered ex-Leftists who defected to Ronald Reagan.

Many neocons worked on Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980 and were rewarded with prominent jobs on President Reagan’s foreign policy team, the likes of Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Frank Gaffney. Though their influence ebbed and flowed over the 12 years of Republican rule, the neocons established themselves as a potent force in Washington policymaking.

Even after President Bill Clinton took office, the neocons retained some measure of influence in his administration and became favorites on newspaper op-ed pages and at powerful think tanks, including some that were regarded as center and center-left, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution.

The neocons reached the apex of their power under President George W. Bush when they persuaded the inexperienced Bush to respond to the 9/11 attacks by invading and occupying Iraq, which had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or 9/11.

Iraq had long been on the neocon target list as a threat to Israel. The neocons also envisioned using occupied Iraq as a base for forcing “regime change” in Iran and Syria, with the ultimate goal of allowing Israel to dictate peace terms to its near-in enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas.

The neocon hubris in Iraq contributed to the geopolitical disaster there as nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers died and hundreds of billions of dollars were wasted. Finally, neocon power began to recede. By the end of his administration, Bush was resisting pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocons around him to bomb Iran.

Still, when Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the neocon influence remained strong enough in Official Washington that the new President left in place a number of key neocon allies, especially Gates and Petraeus, and named Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Though Obama upset the neocons by completing the military withdrawal from Iraq, he accepted their plan for an expanded war in Afghanistan, and he continued much of Bush’s “war on terror,” albeit without the name.

Turning on Obama

Obama’s concessions garnered some favorable neocon commentaries in important news outlets, such as The Washington Post, but the neocons still rallied behind Mitt Romney’s campaign to oust Obama in 2012. Romney assembled a team of Bush retreads to write his foreign policy white paper, “An American Century.”

The title was an obvious homage to the neocon Project for the New American Century, which in the 1990s built the ideological framework for the disastrous Iraq War and other “regime change” strategies. Romney recruited Eliot Cohen, a founding member of the Project for the New American Century and a protégé of prominent neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, to write the foreword.

Romney’s white paper chastised Obama for pulling out the 30,000 “surge troops” from Afghanistan by mid-2012 and conducting a gradual withdrawal of the remaining 70,000 by the end of 2014. Instead, Romney’s white paper argued that Obama should have followed the advice of field commanders like then-Gen. David Petraeus and made withdrawals either more slowly or contingent on U.S. military success.

However, like Napoleon seeking to regain his former glory through an audacious challenge to his entrenched adversaries, the neocons encountered a Waterloo instead. Their strategic defeat began with Romney’s loss to Obama on Nov. 6 but it then grew worse with the humiliating resignation of Petraeus from the CIA. Now, the neocons are left with no major foothold within the Executive Branch.

But no need for tears. The neocons still retain their lucrative niches at prominent think tanks, as talking heads on TV and on influential op-ed pages.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Tags: Barack Obama, David Petraeus, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, neoconservatives, Robert Parry, Ronald Reagan
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 14, 2012 9:15 pm

Did Cantor Intimidate FBI in Petraeus Affair to Support FOX Benghazi Propaganda Campaign?

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Yesterday, BuzzFlash at Truthout laid out the case that Eric Cantor was likely attempting a longshot last minute effort to tip the election for Romney when he contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director at the behest of a rogue FBI agent. We noted that Cantor was assisting an agent in undermining the agent's chain of command in doing so, based on the agent's charges of anonymous harassing e-mails being sent to a woman who he was sending shirtless photos of himself to.

In fact, we noted that the FBI found the behavior of the agent who Cantor championed so inappropriate that they ordered him to cease and desist from involvement in the investigation and is currently conducting an inquiry into his actions. The agent, furthermore, had no cybersecurity expertise and normally would have had little or no role in the investigation, except that he appeared to have an apparent yen for Jill Kelley and dislike of President Obama that an anonymous FBI spokesman has termed "obsessive." The latter he obviously shared with Eric Cantor.

In the ongoing unfolding of this salacious tale, it is worthy to note information that the Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch) in an article today (November 14):

On Tuesday, people familiar with the case said that at one point in the summer, after the investigation began pointing to larger potential national security issues, Ms. Kelley tried to get the FBI to drop the matter. The people said she made the request because she was worried about the personal information being provided to investigators.

Ms. Kelley, a 37-year-old volunteer who organized social events for military personnel, developed misgivings after friends in her Tampa social circle urged her to drop the matter, saying the probe would only cause bigger problems, the people familiar with the case said.

Ms. Kelley's apparent regret points to one of the more unusual aspects of the case: what began as a seemingly minor case of cyberstalking mushroomed into fears that the Central Intelligence Agency director's personal email account had been hacked, which spawned concerns the CIA director might have passed sensitive information to his mistress. Each of those fears ultimately proved unfounded, U.S. officials familiar with the probe said. But the investigation eventually exposed Mr. Petraeus's relationship with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, leading to his resignation, according to U.S. officials familiar with the probe.

In short, by the time Cantor had applied pressure to the FBI on Halloween, Jill Kelley, the original complainant – who the shirtless photo FBI agent (under FBI investigation for his actions) was allegedly championing – had allegedly sought to withdraw her charges, but by then the horse was out of the barn.

As for the original charges of harassing e-mails by Jill Kelley, were a US citizen without connections to lodge such a complaint to the FBI, it is highly doubtful that one would get past the reception desk. In fact, it is highly probable that even a local police station would not pursue the matter. At this time, the FBI is not disclosing nor implying that any laws were broken.

This leads to what may have been perceived by Cantor, through cutthroat political instinct or conversations with GOP national campaign advisors, as an opportunity to redirect media coverage from Hurricane Sandy and an improving economy in the last seven days of the campaign.

For the last 2-3 weeks prior to Election Day, FOX focused heavily on a Romney line of attack that had fallen off the front pages: Obama had failed to protect US lives in Benghazi. Never mind the hypocrisy of Republicans talking about keeping Americans from dying after Bush's failure, despite warnings, to stop the 9/11 attack and the thousands upon thousands of deaths in the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. A key prong of the Romney strategy was to bog Obama down in media discussion of the Benghazi attack – and keep him on the defensive. But it wasn't working. FOX appeared to be in an alternative universe as it downplayed the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and kept up a relentless obsession with Benghazi.

In fact, a comment that Paula Broadwell made in a speech that the CIA was holding prisoners in the US Benghazi building was also mentioned on FOX News.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

In a separate twist in the tangled matter of Mr. Petraeus's resignation, the CIA disputed a theory advanced by Ms. Broadwell that insurgents may have attacked the U.S. consulate and a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 in a bid to free militants being held there by the agency. Ms. Broadwell suggested that rationale for the consulate attack in an address at the University of Denver on Oct. 26.

"I don't know if a lot of you had heard this, but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think the attack on the consulate was an attempt to get these prisoners back," she said then. "It's still being vetted."…

In addition, the source of her comment may not have been intelligence information, but news reports. Earlier in her address, she cited findings of a report that day by Fox News. Immediately after, she mentioned the possibility that the CIA had held militants at the site, which the Fox report also mentioned.

The Sept. 11 consulate attack resulted in the deaths of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. One person briefed on US intelligence said that reports focused on two main motives for the attack: inspiration from the violent protest that day at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, and the exhortation of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri to avenge the death of his second in command. The possibility of attackers trying to free detainees never came up, this person said.

This week, lawmakers are slated to receive a series of closed-door briefings on both Benghazi and the FBI investigation that turned up the affair between Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has one such briefing on Benghazi scheduled Tuesday. On Wednesday, leaders of the House intelligence committee—Rep. Michael Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the panel and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat—will be briefed by FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and acting CIA director Michael Morell.

If the FBI Petraeus investigation that started with an issue of "harassing e-mails" had become the fodder of the mainstream media prior to the election, it would have likely led, as some analysts have pointed out, to the Romney campaign and Republicans citing Petraeus's resignation (if it had been forced to occur prior to November 6) as a cover for alleged CIA bungling in Benghazi.

That might have shifted the focus of the last week of the election from Obama's enhanced presidential stature during the ruinous Hurricane Sandy and the positive jobs report to a focus on four deaths in Libya.

It is hard to think that this was not a goal of Cantor when he chose to bring up a grudge – with such potentially explosive electoral implications -- held by an FBI agent he did not even know to the head of the FBI, just days before the presidential election.



pretty funny
The David Petraeus scandal - quiz Have you been paying attention to the unfolding Petraeus revelations? Take our test …


Glenn Greenwald: While Petraeus Had Affair with Biographer, Corporate Media Had Affair with Petraeus


Veteran F.B.I. Agent Helped Start Petraeus E-Mail Inquiry
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, SCOTT SHANE and ALAIN DELAQUÉRIÈRE
Published: November 14, 2012

DOVER, Fla. — The F.B.I. agent who helped start the investigation that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as C.I.A. director is a “hard-charging” veteran counterterrorism investigator who used his command of French in investigating the foiled “millennium” terrorist plot in 1999, colleagues said on Wednesday.

The agent, Frederick W. Humphries II, 47, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley, the Tampa, Fla., hostess who was socially active in military circles there, about e-mails she found disturbing that accused her of inappropriately flirtatious behavior toward Mr. Petraeus. The subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his biographer, who agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails. It also ensnared Gen. John R. Allen, who now commands troops in Afghanistan, after the investigation discovered that he had sent “inappropriate communication” to Ms. Kelley.

Colleagues and news reports described the role of Mr. Humphries, in just his third year at the F.B.I., in building the case against Ahmed Ressam, who was detained as he tried to enter the United States from Canada in 1999 with a plan to set off a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport.

In May 2010, after he had moved to the Tampa field office, Mr. Humphries was attacked outside the gate of MacDill Air Force Base by a disturbed knife-wielding man. He fatally shot the man, and the shooting was later ruled to be an appropriate use of force, according to bureau records and colleagues.

Two former law enforcement colleagues said Mr. Humphries was a solid agent with experience in counterterrorism, conservative political views and a reputation for aggressiveness.

“Fred is a passionate kind of guy,” said one former colleague. “He’s kind of an obsessive type. If he locked his teeth onto something, he’d be a bulldog.”

That description would appear to fit his involvement in the current investigation.

Mr. Humphries passed on Ms. Kelley’s complaint to the cybersquad in the Tampa field office but was not assigned to the case. He was later admonished by supervisors who thought he was trying to insert himself improperly into the investigation.

Convinced that the case was being stalled for political reasons, Mr. Humphries in late October contacted Representative Dave Reichert, a Republican from Washington State, where the F.B.I. agent had worked previously, to inform him of the case. Mr. Reichert put him in touch with the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, who passed the message to the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III.

Lawrence Berger, the general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, who spoke with Mr. Humphries, said that Mr. Humphries only received the information from Ms. Kelley and never played a role in the investigation.

Mr. Berger said that Mr. Humphries and his wife had been “social friends with Ms. Kelley and her husband prior to the day she referred the matter to him.”

“They always socialized and corresponded,” he said.

Mr. Berger took issue with news media reports that have said his client sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley.

“That picture was sent years before Ms. Kelley contacted him about this, and it was sent as part of a larger context of what I would call social relations in which the families would exchange numerous photos of each other,” Mr. Berger said.

The photo was sent as a “joke” and was of Mr. Humphries “posing with a couple of dummies.” Mr. Berger said the picture was not sexual in nature.

In regard to his client speaking with Mr. Cantor, Mr. Berger declined to address the issue, saying only that his client “had followed F.B.I. protocols.”

“No one tries to become a whistle-blower,” he said. “Consistent with F.B.I. policy, he referred it to the proper component.”

A law enforcement official said that disclosing a confidential investigation even to members of Congress could violate F.B.I. rules. But the official said Mr. Humphries’s conduct was under review and that he had not been suspended or punished in any way.

On Wednesday afternoon, a man standing in the driveway of Mr. Humphries’s home who appeared to be him said, in response to questions from a reporter for The New York Times, that his first name was not Fred. The man then walked into the house, closed the front door and did not respond to the door bell’s being rung several times.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Nov 14, 2012 9:43 pm



:fawked: :fawked: :fawked: :fawked: :fawked: :fawked: :fawked: :fawked: :fawked: :fawked:

Best yet: http://zenpundit.com/?p=16827

Two Victories and Two Falls

My co-blogger Charles Cameron is fond of his “DoubleQuotes” postings that feature frequently uncomfortable juxtapositions designed to prod thinking. Here’s a wordier one from me:

….Planning for a second term has been under way for months, with Lew and Pete Rouse, the counselor to the president and Obama’s internal management guru, preparing lists of possible promotions and nominations. The staff process has been gossiped about by the staff, but details have been kept secret, even from insiders.

“They haven’t even made calls. People haven’t been asked,” said a Democrat familiar with the situation. “They’re more targets than they are potential nominees.”

Now, officials will start to cement their departure dates, and aides will sound out colleagues about possible new roles. Among the top current officials expected to go: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood might not be far behind — or may even beat them out the door.

There’s also a growing list of people the administration is looking to find spots for: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick most of all, as well as former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and outgoing North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad.

Obama has overseen one of the most stable cabinets in history — the only departures have been Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Gary Locke and John Bryson from Commerce. But what’s about to happen amounts to an almost full-scale second transition.


ImageImage

….At eleven o’clock in the morning, Nixon met with his staff in the Roosevelt Room. To many in the room he seemed oddly cool and quietly angry as he thanked them all for their loyalty and said something few of them understood. He said that he had been reading Robert Blake’s Disraeli and was struck by his description a century ago of William Gladstone’s ministers as “exhausted volcanoes” – and then mumbled something about embers that once shot sparks into the sky.

“I believe men exhaust themselves in government without realizing it” the president said “You are my first team, but today we start fresh for the next four years. We need new blood, fresh ideas. Change is important…..Bob, you take over.”

Nixon left then, turning the meeting over to Haldeman. The men and women of the White House stood to applaud his exit, then sat down. The chief explained what Nixon’s words meant: a reorganization of the administration. He told them that they were expected to deliver letters of resignation before the end of the day, then passed out photocopied forms requiring them to list all official documents in their possession. “These must be in by November 10,” he said. “This should accompany your pro forma letter of resignation to be effective at the pleasure of the President”. They were stunned. Speechless. Were they being fired? Haldeman said they would know within a month whether or not they could remain. At noon, the same drama was played out with the entire Cabinet, with Haldeman again passing out the forms.


Ironically, one of the many Cabinet secretaries Nixon ignominiously fired in his bid to centralize power in his White House staff was his former 1968 primary rival, HUD Secretary George Romney, father of 2012 Republican nominee, Governor Mitt Romney. A blow from which George Romney’s political career never recovered. Nixon’s relationship with Romney had been an acrimonious one, formally polite on the surface with public shows of confidence by Nixon and machiavellian intrigues behind the scenes to undermine Romney and reverse the policies he had been advancing in Nixon’s name.

This latest Cabinet reshuffle to build a “Team without Rivals”, comes in the context of an explosive story, the abrupt resignation Friday of CIA Director General David Petraeus, citing an extramarital affair and accepting responsibility for “extremely poor judgment” and “unacceptable conduct”. The affair, allegedly conducted with his official biographer, came to light during a still not fully explained FBI investigation into unauthorized accessing of Petraeus’ private email account. The resignation of the highly regarded General Petraeus comes just before he was expected to testify before Congress regarding discrepancies and questions in the administrations handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans. It also coincides with the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, declining to testify.

It is difficult to say if General Petraeus public career will survive this scandal that he has brought upon himself, an action which stands in jarring contrast to his sterling, some might say superhuman, record of service to America, or if he will, like George Romney, fade away. Certainly, the CIA badly needed to stop the revolving door on the Director’s office and have a strong, visionary, hands-on leader who could reform and invigorate the Agency not merely in terms of covert action but in terms of rebuilding of capacity in deep cover clandestinity and the acquisition of strategic intel. I do not often find myself in agreement with Senator Feinstein but she is correct, this resignation hurts because it is also a significant institutional opportunity cost for the IC. I too wish it had not been accepted - at one time it wouldn’t have been – but that is the President’s prerogative.

What however are the real issues? What should we be looking for?

Two things: As with Richard Nixon’s second term machinations, with such sweeping changes personnel changes in the offing for the Obama administration, ask yourself as events unfold: “Where is power flowing? And Why?”

If you do you will be in a better position to game out the direction of the next four years, especially in foreign policy and national security.


The White House has attempted to sell a story that the FBI doing a low-level harassment investigation stumbled upon a security breach and – on their own authority, mind you – tapped the email account of the Director of the CIA and kept him under surveillance and investigated his mistress and, oh, yeah, the President was only informed of this business after the election on Thursday. Wait! And the DNI ( a three star general whose career was primarily intel administration) on his own initiative called the CIA Director ( a four star general and former theater and combatant commander) in on the carpet and fired him told him to resign. Right.

No, what most likely happened was that the minute the special agents realized who was involved in their investigation and the magnitude of the implications, they stopped and informed their superiors and the matter went up the chain to the FBI Director’s desk. The FBI Director, a former prosecutor with a political antennae circumspect enough to be appointed by George W. Bush and have his term be extended by Barack Obama, would have duly informed the Attorney-General of the United States before proceeding further and – I expect – the National Security Adviser, White House Chief of Staff and the DNI. Worst case scenario thinking in terms of national security would have been one driver. Another would be the fear of an all too juicy story leaking and the media catching an unbriefed POTUS unaware on the campaign trail with a blockbuster scandal before the election. How would that have gone over?

I would further expect that we will in the next few days and weeks hear the most salacious contents of the emails between Petraeus and his biographer, leaked by anonymous officials, timed to coincide with difficult days of testimony regarding Benghazi or new appointments to the administration that could, on a slow media day, prove controversial.

Instead of being distracted by prurient nonsense unrelated to the stewardship of the Republic, time would be better spent scrutinizing the host of nominations to come, not as individuals but as “teams” for particular areas of national security and foreign affairs cutting across bureaucracies – ex. arms control, Russian relations, Mideast etc. What commonalities or congruencies emerge?

I suggest this because back when the Obama administration decided on their “pivot” to Asia, the people they selected for second to third tier workday management related to the Asia-Pacific region were all accomplished, decent, honorable public servants, but their greatest common characteristic was a lack of any professional expertise with China. We saw the same personnel gambit with the Bush administration in the run-up to the war with Iraq where the greatest disqualifier for a job with the CPA was familiarity with the Arab world, Islam or Iraq. When you want careful stratagems, you solicit the advice of experts; when you want grand and revolutionary gestures, the wheels of policy are better greased with bold ignorance. There’s a reason Nixon appointed William Rogers Secretary of State – he knew the State Department bureaucracy would largely oppose his foreign policy initiatives and he wanted someone ill-suited and uninformed in charge there who he could more easily manipulate and keep in the dark.

The sixties radicals used to assert “the personal is the political”; in the eighties, Ronald Reagan in staffing his first administration understood that “the personnel are the political” and picked people culled from Heritage and Cato. My intuition is that in the second decade of the 21st century, the inside circle of the Obama administration have discovered that ” the political are the patterns”.

The story unfolding is no longer the “smoking gun” or the compromising jigsaw piece but the entirety of the puzzle.

Note: a wealth of links at the original piece, check it out.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby compared2what? » Wed Nov 14, 2012 10:37 pm

yathrib wrote:I don't have the talent to do it, but I'm picturing a parody of Lou Reed's seminal "Walk on the Wild Side" that explains this scandal. It's too bad that it's Petraeus' wife who is named Holly, rather than one of the Florida (FLA) socialite twins.


Jill Kelley is WAY more the Holly-Woodlawn type, though.



Image

Image

Her sister can be Jackie Curtis.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby DrVolin » Wed Nov 14, 2012 10:54 pm

JackRiddler wrote:
It's fascinating what conflicting pictures we can draw from roughly the same set of facts. I view much of this in opposite fashion, and consider it disastrous that what meritocracy operates in governance has formed around the power to destroy and project death around the world, which has been the most destabilizing factor in the postwar age, and (to take one of your examples) drove rather than moderated the aftermath of the 1963 coup, to the point of genocidal murder of millions. There is a lot more to be said on the general outlines; but moving past these to the man, Petraeus is one of the primary criminals, in fact the commandant, of a war of aggression. I don't see an Eisenhower, I see a Keitel. At home, he was a potential Ludendorf, and we should welcome his neutralization; though of course he was only one of many such possible enablers. There may be a very nasty group behind his demise -- which merely ends his career rather than putting him at the well-deserved end of a rope -- but no mourning is due either to the man or to the values and institutions he represents (which of course endure beyond him).

.


I think we basically agree. Except that I draw a very clear distinction between the military hierarchy and the industrial part of the complex, owned and operated by the dynasts. The military establishment has served them, but not quite willingly, and not without setting some limits. The model for their post-war social contract was the Vietnam conflict.
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby justdrew » Wed Nov 14, 2012 11:22 pm

there's another aspect, I'd think a lot of minds up on capitol hill might be thinking about what else might be sitting in their own e-mail/texts/etc.

anyway, I would expect someone in Pet's position, that their entire "cyber" life is monitored, for general counterintelligence purposes, and when it was found that he had a new "secret" e-mail, that alone set-off alarms.
By 1964 there were 1.5 million mobile phone users in the US
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby compared2what? » Thu Nov 15, 2012 1:10 am

seemslikeadream wrote:
Did Cantor Intimidate FBI in Petraeus Affair to Support FOX Benghazi Propaganda Campaign?

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Yesterday, BuzzFlash at Truthout laid out the case that Eric Cantor was likely attempting a longshot last minute effort to tip the election for Romney when he contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director at the behest of a rogue FBI agent. We noted that Cantor was assisting an agent in undermining the agent's chain of command in doing so, based on the agent's charges of anonymous harassing e-mails being sent to a woman who he was sending shirtless photos of himself to.


Now THAT makes total sense to me. (That it was a political hit, I mean.)


Good for 82_28, who called right-wing shit on page one.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby vanlose kid » Thu Nov 15, 2012 1:29 am

"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby beeline » Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:09 pm

link

Petraeus believed terrorists behind Libya attack

KIMBERLY DOZIER , The Associated Press
Posted: Friday, November 16, 2012, 10:14 AM

WASHINGTON - Ex-CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers during private hearings Friday that he believed all along that the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya was a terrorist strike, even though that wasn't how the Obama administration initially described it publicly.

The retired general addressed the House Intelligence Committee in his first Capitol Hill testimony since resigning last week over an extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell, but he did not discuss that scandal except to express regret about the circumstances of his departure.

Lawmakers said Petraeus testified that the CIA's talking points written in response to the assault on the diplomat post in Benghazi that killed four Americans referred to it as a terrorist attack. But Petraeus told the lawmakers it was removed by other federal agencies who made changes to the CIA's draft.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said Petraeus said he did not know who removed the reference to terrorism. King said to this day it's still not clear how the final talking points emerged that were used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice five days after the attack when the White House sent her to appear in a series of television interviews. Rice said it appeared the attack was sparked by a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Petraeus disputed Republican suggestions that the White House misled the public on what led to the violence in the midst of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

"There was an interagency process to draft it, not a political process," Schiff said after the hearing. "They came up with the best assessment without compromising classified information or source or methods. So changes were made to protect classified information.

"The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda," Schiff said. "He completely debunked that idea."

Schiff said Petraeus said Rice's comments in the television interviews "reflected the best intelligence at the time that could be released publicly."

King said Petraeus had briefed the House committee on Sept. 14 and he does not recall Petraeus being so positive at that time that it was a terrorist attack. "He thought all along that he made it clear there was terrorist involvement," King said. "That was not my recollection."

Lawmakers said the affair with Broadwell that ended Petraeus' widely respected career came up only briefly at the top of Petraeus' 90-minute appearance before the House committee.

"The only thing he did in the beginning of his testimony is he did express deep regret to the committee for the circumstances for his depature" and reassure the committee that the Libya attacks had nothing to do with his resignation, said Rep. Jim Langevin, R-R.I.

Petraeus sneaked into the Capitol away from photographers and television cameras to provide his testimony before the House committee, which met in a secure room several floors below the main area of the Capitol Visitors Center where tourists gather when they are visiting Congress.

Petraeus, formerly one of the most respected U.S. military leaders, was whisked inside the hearing in a manner more suited to covert operative , through a network of underground hallways leading to a secure room.

During previous appearances before Congress, CIA directors typically have walked through the building's front door. Petraeus later headed to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The secretive movements attested to the circus-like atmosphere of the scandal that has preoccupied Washington, even as the possibility of war looms in Israel and the U.S. government faces a market-rattling "fiscal cliff" that could imperil a still-fragile economy.

Lawmakers spent hours Thursday interviewing top intelligence and national security officials, trying to determine what intelligence agencies knew before, during and after the attack. They viewed security video from the consulate and surveillance footage by an unarmed CIA Predator drone that showed events in real time.

Petraeus has acknowledged cheating on his wife of 38 years with a woman later identified as Broadwell. The FBI began investigating the matter last summer but didn't notify the White House or Congress until after the election.

In the course of investigating the Petraeus affair, the FBI uncovered suggestive emails between Afghanistan war chief Gen. John Allen and Florida socialite Jill Kelley, both of them married. President Barack Obama has put a promotion nomination for Allen on hold.

The CIA on Thursday opened an exploratory investigation into Petraeus' conduct. The inquiry "doesn't presuppose any particular outcome," said CIA spokesman Preston Golson. At the same time, Army officials say that, at this point, there is no appetite for recalling Petraeus to active duty to pursue any adultery charges against him.

Petraeus, in his first media interview since he resigned, told CNN that he had never given classified information to Broadwell. She has said she didn't receive such material from Petraeus.

But the FBI found a substantial number of classified documents on Broadwell's computer and in her home, according to a law enforcement official, and is investigating how she got them. That official spoke only on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The Army has now suspended her security clearance.

,,,

Associated Press writers Nedra Pickler, Larry Margasak, Adam Goldman, Lolita C. Baldor, Pete Yost, Donna Cassata and Robert Burns contributed to this report.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:51 pm

VIDEO: Rachel Maddow on McCain\'s Cratering Relevance


Other things McCain might have learned if he didn't skip the Benghazi hearing
byLaura ClawsonFollow

But John McCain wants us to believe Susan Rice is dangerously incompetent for accurately delivering CIA talking points?
Sen. John McCain has been on a rage bender against United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, claiming her comments five days after the killings in Benghazi were totally outrageous and irresponsible and how dare she.
Here's what Rice said:

...we'll want to see the results of that investigation to draw any definitive conclusions. But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy—
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

SUSAN RICE: —sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that—in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.

And here's what the CIA's talking points for Rice said:
"The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.
Kinda similar, no? So basically John McCain's entire hissy fit about how Susan Rice is not fit for office and he's going to filibuster her because Americans died and it's somehow her fault is because five days later she competently delivered CIA talking points. Of course, we all know it's really because he's still bitter he got trounced in 2008.
(Via The Maddow Blog)
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: David Petraeus resigns as CIA chief citing affair

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:59 pm


Natalie Khawam Got Hefty Loan From Defense Department Lobbyist

WASHINGTON -- Jill Kelley, a central figure in the sex scandal involving former CIA Director David Petraeus, tried to parlay her friendship with the general into a huge commission for helping facilitate a coal project in South Korea, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. Negotiations with Kelley ended after she demanded an $80 million fee for leveraging her connections, the paper said.

That deal may have gone bust. But Kelley's identical twin sister, Natalie Khawam, profited from her own lobbying connection. Bankruptcy records show that Gerald "Jerry" Harrington, a Rhode Island lobbyist and Democratic fundraiser, loaned Khawam $300,000 that she was unable to pay back.

Khawam dated Harrington while she lived with her sister in Tampa, Fla., attending the many parties Kelley hosted for military officers stationed at nearby MacDill Air Force Base. At the time Harrington, too, had plenty of connections with the military. But not the social kind.

Since 2010, Harrington's lobbying firm, Capitol City Group, has made $1.14 million from clients with lobbying interests in military spending and defense bills, according to disclosure reports.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/1 ... 41022.html

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