Understanding the Petraeus thing

[John F]

No new information here, just a sensible commentary on what we all now know.

The Siren and the Spook
By FRANK BRUNI
Published: November 12, 2012

There were remarks galore about her unusually toned arms and the way she dressed to show them off. I even spotted a comment about how much of her armpits one of her outfits revealed, as if underarm exhibitionism were some sort of sexual sorcery, some aphrodisiac, the key to it all.

What else could explain his transgression? Why else would a man of such outward discipline and outsize achievement risk so much? The temptress must have been devious. The temptation must have been epic.

That was the tired tone of some of the initial coverage of, and reaction to, the affair between David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, which had many people claiming surprise where there wasn’t cause for any, reverting to clichés that should be retired and indulging in a sexism we like to think we’ve moved past.

Broadwell has just 13 percent body fat, according to a recent measurement. Did you know that? Did you need to? It came up nonetheless. And like so much else about her — her long-ago coronation as homecoming queen, her six-minute mile — it was presented not merely as a matter of accomplishment, but as something a bit titillating, perhaps a part of the trap she laid.

There are bigger issues here. There are questions of real consequence, such as why the F.B.I. got so thoroughly involved in what has been vaguely described as a case of e-mail harassment, whether the bureau waited too long to tell lawmakers and White House officials about the investigation, and how much classified information Broadwell, by dint of her relationship with Petraeus, was privy to. The answers matter.

Her “expressive green eyes” (The Daily Beast) and “tight shirts” and “form-fitting clothes” (The Washington Post) don’t. And the anecdotes and chatter that implicitly or explicitly wonder at the spidery wiles she must have used to throw the mighty man off his path are laughably ignorant of history, which suggests that mighty men are all too ready to tumble, loins first. Wiles factor less into the equation than proximity.

Sure, the spotlight these men have attracted and the altitude they’ve reached should, theoretically, give them greater pause. But they’ve either become accustomed to or outright sought a kind of adulation in the public arena that probably isn’t mirrored in their marriages. A spouse is unlikely to provide it. A spouse knows you too well for that, and gives you something deeper, truer and so much less electric.

It has to be more than mere coincidence that Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House intern; Newt Gingrich with a Congressional aide (now his wife); John Edwards with a woman who followed him around with a camera, creating hagiographic mini-documentaries about his presidential campaign; and Petraeus with a woman who made him the subject of a biography so worshipful that its main riddle, joked Jon Stewart, was whether Petraeus was “awesome or incredibly awesome.”

These mighty men didn’t just choose mistresses, by all appearances. They chose fonts of gushing reverence. That’s at least as deliberate and damnable as any signals the alleged temptresses put out.

Petraeus’s choice suggests an additional measure of vanity. Broadwell exercises compulsively, as he does. She’s fascinated by all matters military, as he is. “Petraeus once joked I was his avatar,” she told The Charlotte Observer a while back. So by his own assessment, he was having an affair with a version of himself.

And yet it’s the women in these situations who are often subjected to a more vigorous public shaming — and assigned greater responsibility.

The Web site Business Insider posted an interview with an unnamed former colleague of Petraeus’s who knew Broadwell and characterized her as “a shameless self-promoting prom queen.” The colleague all but exonerated Petraeus by saying: “You’re a 60-year-old man and an attractive woman almost half your age makes herself available to you — that would be a test for anyone.”

The headline of The Washington Post story that weighed in on Broadwell’s wardrobe asserted that he “let his guard down,” a phrase that portrays him as passive, possibly even a victim. The story notes that his former aides considered him “the consummate gentleman and family man.” It goes on to say that Broadwell was “willing to take full advantage of her special access” to him.

An article in Slate asked “how could he — this acclaimed leader and figure of rectitude — allow such a thing to a happen?” The italics are mine, because the verb is a telling one. “She went a bit ga-ga for the general,” the article later observes, adding: “She may have made herself irresistible.”

Such adamant women, such pregnable men. We’ve been stuck on this since Eve, Adam and the Garden of Eden. And it’s true: Eve shouldn’t have been so pushy with the apple. But Adam could have had a V8.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/opini ... spook.html

[lennygoran]

And now there seems even more to understand.

"The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, is under investigation for alleged inappropriate communication with a woman at the center of the scandal involving former CIA Director David Petraeus, a senior U.S. defense official said on Tuesday."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/ ... 5Z20121113

Regards, Len

[John F]

That should make Jill Kelley regret she complained to her FBI pal about the emails from Paula Broadwell.

[BWV 1080]

The Sins Of General David Petraeus
Petraeus seduced America. We should never have trusted him.

Michael Hastings

The fraud that General David Petraeus perpetrated on America started many years before the general seduced Paula Broadwell, a lower-ranking officer 20 years his junior, after meeting her on a campus visit to Harvard.
More so than any other leading military figure, Petraeus’ entire philosophy has been based on hiding the truth, on deception, on building a false image. “Perception” is key, he wrote in his 1987 Princeton dissertation: "What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters — more than what actually occurred."
Yes, it’s not what actually happens that matters — it’s what you can convince the public it thinks happened.
Until this weekend, Petraeus had been incredibly successful in making the public think he was a man of great integrity and honor, among other things. Most of the stories written about him fall under what we hacks in the media like to call “a blow job." Vanity Fair. The New Yorker. The New York Times. The Washington Post. Time. Newsweek. In total, all the profiles, stage-managed and controlled by the Pentagon’s multimillion dollar public relations apparatus, built up an unrealistic and superhuman myth around the general that, in the end, did not do Petraeus or the public any favors. Ironically, despite all the media fellating, our esteemed and sex-obsessed press somehow missed the actual blow job.
Before I lay out the Petraeus counter-narrative — a narrative intentionally ignored by most of the Pentagon press and national security reporters, for reasons I’ll soon explain — let me say this about the man once known as King David, General Betray-Us, or P4, by his admirers, his enemies, and his fellow service members, respectively. He’s an impressive guy, a highly motivated individual, a world-class bull crap artist, a fitness addict, and a man who spent more time in shitty places over the past 10 years than almost any other American serving his or her country has. I've covered him for seven years now, and he’ll always have my respect and twisted admiration.
So it’s fair to say that P4 probably deserves something a little better than the public humiliation he’s about to endure. Sources who long feared him have already begun to leak salacious details; one told me this weekend that he took Broadwell along with him on a government-funded trip to Paris in July 2011. And questions about his role in the Benghazi debacle are also likely to deepen.
And Broadwell, too, is about to get slandered in a way no woman deserves. She’s the Pentagon’s Monica Lewinksy — and, despite Team Petraeus’ much advertised lip service to courage and integrity, it didn’t take long for his allies to swarm the press with anonymous quotes smearing the West Point graduate and married mother of two: that she wore “tight clothes,” as The Washington Post reported, or that she had her “claws in him.” In other words, how could Old Dave have resisted that slut’s charms?
Pretty shitty behavior, all around. As Petraeus ally and counterinsurgency scholar Dr. Andrew Exum might put it, stay classy!
But the warning signs about Petraeus’ core dishonesty have been around for years. 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 Post supporting 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.
He did it by papering over what the surge actually was: We took the Shiites' side in a civil war, armed them to the teeth, and suckered the Sunnis into thinking we’d help them out too. It was a brutal enterprise — over 800 Americans died during the surge, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives during a sectarian conflict that Petraeus’ policies fueled. Then he popped smoke and left the members of the Sunni Awakening to fend for themselves. A journalist friend told me a story of an Awakening member, exiled in Amman, whom Petraeus personally assured he would never abandon. The former insurgent had a picture of Petraeus on his wall, but was a little hurt that the general no longer returned his calls.
MoveOn may have been ill-advised to attack the general as "Betray Us" in Washington, but there was little doubt that many in the Awakening felt betrayed.
Petraeus was so convincing on Baghdad that he manipulated President Obama into trying the same thing in Kabul. In Afghanistan, he first underhandedly pushed the White House into escalating the war in September 2009 (calling up columnists to “box” the president in) and waged a full-on leak campaign to undermine the White House policy process. Petraeus famously warned his staff that the White House was “fucking” with the wrong guy.
The doomed Afghanistan surge would come back to bite him in the ass, however. A year after getting the war he wanted, P4 got stuck having to fight it himself. After Petraeus frenemy General Stanley McChrystal got fired for trashing the White House in a story I published in Rolling Stone, the warrior-scholar had to deploy yet again.
The Afghan war was a loser, always was, and always would be — Petraeus made horrible deals with guys like Abdul Razzik and the other Afghan gangsters and killed a bunch of people who didn’t need to be killed. And none of it mattered, or made a dent in his reputation. This was the tour where Broadwell joined him at headquarters, and it’s not so shocking that he’d need to find some solace, somewhere, to get that daily horror show out of his mind.
(This past summer, there were more attacks in Afghanistan than in the summer before the surge, a devastating statistic. I could keep going, but if you’re interested, check out The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan.)

How did Petraeus get away with all this for so long? Well, his first affair — and one that matters so much more than the fact that he was sleeping with a female or two — was with the media.
(For the record: Who really cares whom P4 is sleeping with? The idea that the FBI was investigating his sex life says more about the FBI and our absurd surveillance and national security state than it does about King David’s morality.)
Petraeus’ first biographer, former U.S. News and World Report reporter Linda Robinson, wrote a book about him, then went to CENTCOM to work for him. Yes — a so-called journalist published a book about him, then started getting a paycheck from him soon after. This went largely unremarked upon.
Another huge supporter was Tom Ricks, a former Washington Post journalist who found a second career as unofficial press agent for the general and his friends. Ricks is the ringleader of what I like to call “the media-military industrial complex,” setting the standard for its incestuous everyday corruption. He not only built Dave up, he facilitated the disastrous liaison between Broadwell and Petraeus. Ricks helped get Broadwell a literary agent, a six-figure book deal, and a publisher.
Broadwell was sold to publishers as much for her looks as what she was writing — she was an attractive package to push Petraeus and his counterinsurgency ideas. Little, Brown editor Geoff Shandler once told me how “hot” he thought Broadwell was after she came in to meet him at his office, and indicated to me that Broadwell had made him somewhat aroused. Intellectual integrity all around, to be sure.
Ricks blurbed her in All In, and earlier had promoted her content on his blog — the oddly titled Travels With Paula, a headline he slapped to a story about the U.S. military’s total destruction of a small village in southern Afghanistan. Broadwell described the ultra-violent wipeout in favorable terms — and when she was confronted with an angry villager whose house had been destroyed, she wrote that the Afghan’s tears and anger were a “a fit of theatrics.”
This was the kind of bull crap Ricks and Broadwell had been pushing — and it not only wasn’t called bull crap, it was embraced as serious work. Ricks wasn’t the only offender, of course — Petraeus more or less had journalists from many major media outlets slurping from the Pentagon’s gravy train. The typical route was to have all the cash and favors funneled through a third party like the Center for a New American Security.
CNAS was a Petraeus-inspired operation from its inception in 2007, and it made its reputation promoting Petraeus’ counterinsurgency plans. No problem, right? Except that it put the journalists who were covering those same plans and policies on its payroll. For instance, New York Times Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker took money and a position from CNAS and still covered the Pentagon; Robert Kaplan, David Cloud from the Los Angeles Times, and others produced a small library’s worth of hagiographies while sharing office space at CNAS with retired generals whom they’d regularly quote in their stories.
But Petraeus’ crash is more significant than the latest nonsense sex scandal. As President Obama says, our decade of war is coming to an end. The reputations of the men who were intimately involved in these years of foreign misadventure, where we tortured and supported torture, armed death squads, conducted nightly assassinations, killed innocents, and enabled corruption on an unbelievable scale, lie in tatters. McChrystal, Caldwell, and now Petraeus — the era of the celebrity general is over. Everyone is paying for their sins. (And before we should shed too many tears for the plight of King David and his men, remember, they’ll be taken care of with speaking fees and corporate board memberships, rewarded as instant millionaires by the same defense establishment they served so well.)
Before Dave fell for Paula, we fell for Dave. He tried to convince us that heroes aren’t human. They are human, like us, and sometimes worse.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/the-s ... d-petraeus

[jbuck919]

But the warning signs about Petraeus’ core dishonesty have been around for years. Here's a brief summary: We can start with the persistent questions critics have raised about his Bronze Star for Valor.

I don't know what's going on there, but for all his ribbons (he ran out of room on the left chest so had to extend the display on the right), he is not highly decorated. The Bronze Star--his most important medal--is a middling-level award for valor. In contrast, his father-in-law General William Knowlton won the Silver Star no fewer than three times, and that is something. (Historically, if you want a case of a general copping rather than earning a decoration, there is the blatant one of Douglas MacArthur winning the Medal of Honor as a general, something that should be an impossibility unless he actually performs a hugely heroic combat deed.)

These kinds of criticisms of Petraeus strike me as elevating him to too high a platform in order to have more satisfaction in knocking him down. He's not that freaking important.

[Teresa B]

I have to admit being entertained by this scandal, although I'd like to say I was more absorbed by news articles on the fiscal crisis. And of course the Kardashian girls--oops I mean the Khawan/Kelley twins--live here in Tampa, so it's all over the news here, natch. Truly, it looks like understanding the Petraeus thing is no more complicated than understanding your standard sex scandal.

I fail to be shocked by bad behavior in so-called upstanding luminaries, because there is not a human animal on the planet that can claim not to have evolved from creatures with far less gray matter. (I suppose they can claim it, but it wouldn't be true, in any case.) The limbic system of the brain is still in there, and can supersede the "logical" aspects of cognition the instant the signal is transmitted from the purported seductress (whose limbic system has been in turn seduced by the powerful/influential/revered presence before her).

This has happened again and again. Why on earth do we keep being so darn surprised when the biggest among us fall the hardest?

Teresa

[John F]

This has happened again and again. Why on earth do we keep being so darn surprised when the biggest among us fall the hardest?

Cf. "Measure for Measure" by W. Shakespeare. When people, particularly men, believe they're somehow invulnerable to the law, too big to fail, they tend to behave as if this were actually true. That said, for a sex scandal it takes scandalous behavior by at least two.

[Tarantella]

This has happened again and again. Why on earth do we keep being so darn surprised when the biggest among us fall the hardest?

Cf. "Measure for Measure" by W. Shakespeare. When people, particularly men, believe they're somehow invulnerable to the law, too big to fail, they tend to behave as if this were actually true. That said, for a sex scandal it takes scandalous behavior by at least two.

"A sex scandal". There's something so 19th century about that headline. How I wish there were a more modern, appropriate alternative:

General faces the bullet over marital misfire;
Biographer locates General's fifth star;
Explosive claims detonate General's career;
General 'Quick-Draw McGraw' destined for the door;
CIA General goes under covers;
General Betrayer goes clandestine;

I'm done!

[lennygoran]

There's something so 19th century about that headline. How I wish there were a more modern, appropriate alternative:

General faces the bullet over marital misfire;
Biographer locates General's fifth star;
Explosive claims detonate General's career;
General 'Quick-Draw McGraw' destined for the door
CIA General goes under covers;
General Betrayer goes clandestine;

I'm done!

Great job! Len

[BWV 1080]

If one wants to speculate the most logical explanation put forth ties Petraeus' statements of the attack on the Libyan embassy being a "flash mob" with the lack of traditional security (apparently some small private contractor was used) with Paula Broadwell's statement over the summer that there was a black ops interrogation facility at the embassy - is the CIA and administration covering up that the govt is still in the torture business, despite Obama's claims to the contrary?

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012 ... se-emails/

... according to the wingnuts, the President and his administration deliberately withheld military and security support from the "consulate," and ordered rescue teams to stand down while Ambassador Chris Stevens, and three others, were sacrificed on the altar of the President’s reelection campaign.

You may ask: why would Obama, then-CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus, and the Pentagon pull such a deadly and heinous betrayal? Although it is never said out loud – except by the nuttiest of the wingnuts – the clear implication is that the White House is inhabited by traitors. It all makes perfect "sense" if you fervently believe the President is a secret Muslim.

For those whose ears aren’t quite attuned to the dog whistling of the Fox News/Karl Rove media combine, we have Charles Krauthammer, who gives essentially the same tired old story a conspiratorial twist (with a dash of scandal): the administration, he avers, was holding the knowledge of his affair with Paula Broadwell over Petraeus’s head, supposedly forcing him to testify at a Sept. 13 congressional briefing that the "Innocence of Muslims" video was a significant factor in the Benghazi attack. Obama isn’t just a secret Muslim, you see: he’s a blackmailer, too.

It’s truly a sickening and singularly unconvincing narrative, not least because these three stooges of the War Party – McCain, Graham, and Krauthammer – all hailed the US intervention in Libya, while criticizing the President for being too "late and slow" about it. When radical Islamists allied with al-Qaeda were installed in Tripoli and Benghazi by NATO air power and mobs of howling savages on the ground, the War Party – personified by this tiresome trio – were over the moon. Now they’re complaining about the consequences of our great "victory" – "it’s a good day for Libya, America, and the world," Krauthammer crowed at the time. But was it?

When it comes to the Benghazi attack, all parties agree on one thing: the security arrangements provided for the CIA station/consulate were inadequate. Unarmed security guards employed by an obscure UK-based firm nobody had ever heard of, and the "protection" afforded by the February 17 Brigade, a key militia group that led the uprising against Qaddafi in Benghazi and was being "trained" by the CIA, were all the protection they had. Perhaps the State Department was confident the February 17 gang would defend them if attacked. The only problem was that the Brigade, itself a radical Islamist outfit, did nothing while the Ansar al-Sharia group – another, even more hard-line Islamist "militia" – stormed the diplomatic compound, and, later, the CIA station a mile or so away. Indeed, the consulate "guards" alerted the attackers as to the whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens and his staff, who had fled to the nearby CIA station after the initial assault.

Those "guards" came from a small outfit known as Blue Mountain Security. This was mainly a travel company catering to adventurous tourists until the "liberation" of Libya, when they managed to get around Libyan regulations on foreign security providers by partnering up with a "local" security organization. Except it wasn’t at all local: the Eclipse Group is a shadowy organization run by Iran-Contra co-conspirator and neocon loony Duane Clarridge, who boasts of running his own "private" CIA. It was this group, which just happened to have a license to operate in Libya, that gave Blue Mountain access to the Libyan security market.

...

[BWV 1080]

Charles Krauthammer has picked up on this idea

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/33 ... ony-blamin#

[jbuck919]

Why do you post an opinion piece that rightly debunks Krauthammer and the conspiracy-theory nature of this scenario and then post Krauthammer and imply that you agree with the conspiracy interpretation?

When it comes to the Benghazi attack, all parties agree on one thing: the security arrangements provided for the CIA station/consulate were inadequate.

That's probably the beginning and the end of the story, along with the fact that the attackers had knowledge of this weakness and took advantage of it, meaning that there is an intelligence security aspect to this as well. Petraeus is about to testify, and though it is a closed session, the Republicans on the committee won't waste any time exploiting the situation if it amounts to any more than that (they won't waste any time exploiting just that much, either).

[BWV 1080]

Why do you post an opinion piece that rightly debunks Krauthammer and the conspiracy-theory nature of this scenario and then post Krauthammer and imply that you agree with the conspiracy interpretation?

When it comes to the Benghazi attack, all parties agree on one thing: the security arrangements provided for the CIA station/consulate were inadequate.

That's probably the beginning and the end of the story, along with the fact that the attackers had knowledge of this weakness and took advantage of it, meaning that there is an intelligence security aspect to this as well. Petraeus is about to testify, and though it is a closed session, the Republicans on the committee won't waste any time exploiting the situation if it amounts to any more than that (they won't waste any time exploiting just that much, either).

Yes but the point is that security was inadequate and there was a coverup because the admin and the CIA were trying to keep the prison secret

[jbuck919]

Why do you post an opinion piece that rightly debunks Krauthammer and the conspiracy-theory nature of this scenario and then post Krauthammer and imply that you agree with the conspiracy interpretation?

When it comes to the Benghazi attack, all parties agree on one thing: the security arrangements provided for the CIA station/consulate were inadequate.

That's probably the beginning and the end of the story, along with the fact that the attackers had knowledge of this weakness and took advantage of it, meaning that there is an intelligence security aspect to this as well. Petraeus is about to testify, and though it is a closed session, the Republicans on the committee won't waste any time exploiting the situation if it amounts to any more than that (they won't waste any time exploiting just that much, either).

Yes but the point is that security was inadequate and there was a coverup because the admin and the CIA were trying to keep the prison secret

I get the point. My point is that it makes no sense as an explanation, since if there was a deep dark secret going on at Benghazi, security would have been even tighter than normal. Also, the Islamists would be milking the "torture chamber" angle for all it is worth. Every time something anomalous happens, people seem to need an explanation beyond the mundane facts.

Update:


The New York Times

November 16, 2012
Benghazi, Not Petraeus Affair, Is Focus at Closed Hearings
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — David H. Petraeus, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers on Friday that classified intelligence reports revealed that the deadly assault on the American diplomatic mission in Libya was a terrorist attack, but that the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.

Mr. Petraeus, who resigned last week after admitting to an extramarital affair, said the names of groups suspected in the attack — including Al Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa and a local Libyan group, Ansar al-Shariah — were removed from the public explanation of the attack immediately after the assault to avoiding alerting the militants that American intelligence and law enforcement agencies were tracking them, lawmakers said.

In his first public appearance since he resigned last week, Mr. Petraeus testified before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in back-to-back closed-door hearings as lawmakers from both parties continued to wrestle with questions about the Obama administration’s handling of the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans and why its public portrayal conflicted with the intelligence agencies’ classified assessments.

“They knew right away that there were terrorists involved in the operation,” said Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

During his testimony, Mr. Petraeus expressed regret for his affair. Lawmakers did not ask him about it. In addition to what the administration knew about assailants, they focused their questions on possible security lapses at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, particularly given a spate of attacks this year in Benghazi against the American Mission, the British ambassador’s convoy and the Red Cross.

State Department officials have said five diplomatic security officers were at the mission on Sept. 11, including two traveling with Mr. Stevens. They were initially up against more than 50 fighters, armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, who easily breached the compound and set fire to it.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said Mr. Petraeus’s testimony showed that “clearly the security measures were inadequate despite an overwhelming and growing amount of information that showed the area in Benghazi was dangerous, particularly on the night of Sept. 11.”

But many of the questions from lawmakers dealt with how the intelligence services and the administration over all responded to a request from the House committee for unclassified talking points about what happened, in advance of a closed briefing by Mr. Petraeus on Sept. 14, three days after the attack.

The issue took on added resonance after Republicans criticized the ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, for suggesting on Sunday talk shows five days after the assault that the siege in Benghazi was a spontaneous protest rather than an opportunistic terrorist attack.

Democrats leapt to Ms. Rice’s defense on Friday, saying she was simply following the unclassified talking points provided to her. “I really think Ambassador Rice is being treated unfairly,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee.

The talking points initially drafted by the C.I.A. attributed the attack to fighters with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the organization’s North Africa franchise, and Ansar al-Shariah, a Libyan group, some of whose members have Al Qaeda ties.

Mr. Petraeus and other top C.I.A. officials signed off on the draft and then circulated it to other intelligence agencies, as well as the State Department and National Security Council.

At some point in the process — Mr. Petraeus told lawmakers he was not sure where — objections were raised to naming the groups, and the less specific word “extremists” was substituted.

“The fact is, the reference to Al Qaeda was taken out somewhere along the line by someone outside the intelligence community,” Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican, said after the House hearing. “We need to find out who did it and why.”

After the hearings on Friday, administration officials disputed the notion that politics or other motives caused the changes.

“The points were not, as has been insinuated by some, edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack,” said a senior official familiar with the drafting of the talking points. “There were legitimate intelligence and legal issues to consider, as is almost always the case when explaining classified assessments publicly.”

Some intelligence analysts worried, for instance, that identifying the groups could reveal that American spy services were eavesdropping on the militants — a fact most insurgents are already aware of. Justice Department lawyers expressed concern about jeopardizing the F.B.I.’s criminal inquiry in the attacks. Other officials voiced concern that making the names public, at least right away, would create a circular reporting loop and hamper efforts to trail the militants.

Democrats said Mr. Petraeus made it clear the change had not been done for political reasons to aid Mr. Obama. “The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.

Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, said that Mr. Petraeus explained to lawmakers that the final document was put in front of all the senior agency leaders, including Mr. Petraeus, and everyone signed off on it.

Ms. Feinstein, read the final unclassified talking points to reporters:

“The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.

“This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.

“The investigation is ongoing, and the U.S. government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens.”

[jbuck919]

NPR ran a segment this morning which has a different, and I think, convincing take on where the finger should be pointed in this case (this has been bothering me all along). I can't post it directly. You have to scroll down to "FBI and the Petraeus Affair: Back to the old days" to get an audio replay.

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/r ... hp?prgId=7

Also, I have a question about how the FBI got involved in the first place. If I suddenly started receiving harassing e-mails without being a person of national security importance (as Jill Kelly is not), would I be entitled to a full-blown investigation by a "special" agent of the FBI which involved getting a court order to hack someone else's e-mail? No, the ordinary local police department would tell me to get a new e-mail address and learn to use the delete button. Shouldn't there be some kind of internal ethics investigation going on with Humphries as the subject?

[John F]

As I mentioned earlier, the story is that Jill Kelley, the second woman in the case, told a friend who was an FBI agent about the harassing emails. It was an old boys/girls network with which Kelley seems to be well connected. As for why this escalated into an FBI investigation, I suppose Kelley's FBI friend would have to explain that, but I don't suppose it was on Kelley's say-so.

[jbuck919]

As I mentioned earlier, the story is that Jill Kelley, the second woman in the case, told a friend who was an FBI agent about the harassing emails. It was an old boys/girls network with which Kelley seems to be well connected. As for why this escalated into an FBI investigation, I suppose Kelley's FBI friend would have to explain that, but I don't suppose it was on Kelley's say-so.

The point is that it may have been on Humphries' say-so.

[John F]

So?

[jbuck919]

So?

I'm assuming that a veteran special agent (the FBI does not have any "regular" agents) is trusted by his superiors when he says he needs to start an investigation. If the investigation was started as a personal favor that would not have been available to just anyone, as this seems to have been, that is an abuse, even if such things happen all the time. We shall see.

[Proton]

But the warning signs about Petraeus’ core dishonesty have been around for years. Here's a brief summary: We can start with the persistent questions critics have raised about his Bronze Star for Valor.

I don't know what's going on there, but for all his ribbons (he ran out of room on the left chest so had to extend the display on the right), he is not highly decorated. The Bronze Star--his most important medal--is a middling-level award for valor. In contrast, his father-in-law General William Knowlton won the Silver Star no fewer than three times, and that is something. (Historically, if you want a case of a general copping rather than earning a decoration, there is the blatant one of Douglas MacArthur winning the Medal of Honor as a general, something that should be an impossibility unless he actually performs a hugely heroic combat deed.)

These kinds of criticisms of Petraeus strike me as elevating him to too high a platform in order to have more satisfaction in knocking him down. He's not that freaking important.

Ah yes, over the course of a 37 year career, Petraeus has amassed quite an impressive array of REMF* ribbons (Always worn on the left...those that you see on the right side are Unit Awards). And I'm willing to bet $10000 that my 87 year old cousin, who earned his Bronze Star in '45 while crossing the Rhine, just might take issue with your critical assessment of that decoration.



* Rear Echelon (In observance of local standards of decorum, let's just stipulate that MF does not stand for "Magnificent Fighters")

(edited to fix a "smiley")

[jbuck919]

But the warning signs about Petraeus’ core dishonesty have been around for years. Here's a brief summary: We can start with the persistent questions critics have raised about his Bronze Star for Valor.

I don't know what's going on there, but for all his ribbons (he ran out of room on the left chest so had to extend the display on the right), he is not highly decorated. The Bronze Star--his most important medal--is a middling-level award for valor. In contrast, his father-in-law General William Knowlton won the Silver Star no fewer than three times, and that is something. (Historically, if you want a case of a general copping rather than earning a decoration, there is the blatant one of Douglas MacArthur winning the Medal of Honor as a general, something that should be an impossibility unless he actually performs a hugely heroic combat deed.)

These kinds of criticisms of Petraeus strike me as elevating him to too high a platform in order to have more satisfaction in knocking him down. He's not that freaking important.

Ah yes, over the course of a 37 year career, Petraeus has amassed quite an impressive array of REMF* ribbons (Always worn on the left...those that you see on the right side are Unit Awards). And I'm willing to bet $10000 that my 87 year old cousin, who earned his Bronze Star in '45 while crossing the Rhine, just might take issue with your critical assessment of that decoration.



* Rear Echelon (In observance of local standards of decorum, let's just stipulate that MF does not stand for "Magnificent Fighters")

(edited to fix a "smiley")

Unit citations are also medals/ribbons and I was unaware that they were worn on the right for any other reason than running out of room on the left, but you may be right.

My father had no valorous decorations but as an enlisted man he had four rows of ribbons on his chest with some repetitions by the time he was promoted to E-9 (sergeant major). The reason for this is that he was in almost continuous service from the very end of WW II (in the navy). In fact, he served in the Navy (on a carrier), then as bandsman in the Air Force and the Army, and I am mainly an Air Force brat though there is little interesting about that time that I ever care to report (it explains why I lived on Guam). A highly unusual career. Anyway, his last promotion board asked him about his unusual display for a bandsman. It just happens if you behave yourself and are in the right place at the right time.

The problem with the apparent need for generals to have a full chest that covets at least one medal for valor is that officers can often serve more than adequately without every being put in situations that require heroic action; yet, there is a perceived need for decoration to prove that one has the chops. I am reminded of the movie Patton where said general unnecessarily exposes himself to fire more than once thinking somehow that he is magically protected when Omar Bradley has enough sense to find a helmet when he is un-eagerly under fire.

Bottom line? I consider Petraeus's display ludicrous, but it is not at all uncommon. As for his Bronze Star, there is this account, which I present for what it is worth without knowing whether it is fair or not.

http://www.businessinsider.com/patraeus ... le-2012-11

The most that has been publicly documented about Petraeus in real, actual combat is a mortar shell that landed near him in Iraq in 2003.

Yet he came away from the conflict with a Bronze Star for Combat Valor.

It's not uncommon to see a valor award on an upper level military officer, but a lot of those were earned in their days at lieutenants or, for former enlisted Mustang officers, their time as low-ranking 'straight-leg' grunts.

One Army Colonel, recently interviewed for an article in Time Magazine, described Patraeus as "a remarkable piece of fiction."

That Colonel is Douglas MacGregor, a famed tanker who once directed and took part in an intense 23 minute tank battle against Iraq's Revolutionary Guard. The battle yielded 70 enemy tanks destroyed, and no U.S. casualties.

In 1997, an official at the Army's National Training Center called MacGregor, "the best fighting man the Army's got" — which may be why MacGregor has continuously called Patraeus' resume into question.

In another interview, MacGregor said of Patraeus, "(He's) never pulled a trigger and killed the enemy in combat and has never been in direct fire combat."

MacGregor's criticism is a break from the usual praise heaped upon Patraeus from the media, the military, and politicians as a whole. As early as Nov. 10 Reuters described Patraeus as "a star on the battlefield." Newsweek stated in 2004, "It's widely accepted that no force worked harder to win Iraqi hearts and minds than the 101st Air Assault Division led by Petraeus."

Even politicians got in on the Patraeus-loving mix: "Petraeus will stand in the ranks of America’s greatest military heroes," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a statement just a few days ago, according to Politico.

What's not up for dispute here is Patraeus' career as an administrator of war — indeed, that subject is worth a whole other post. Good administrators can get a bronze star for meritorious service, but a bronze star for valor takes combat ... and then some valor within that combat.

Patraeus did take mortar fire, according to USA Today, and he was hit once with a bullet, when another soldier tripped and negligently discharged his rifle, hitting Patraeus in the chest.

Patraeus earned his Bronze Star with combat valor in 2003/4 for his time as a major general (two-star) in Iraq — which is odd enough, considering most combat valor awards involve actual combat and actual valor, something from which the military takes great pains to keep its generals at a distance from.

In a perfect world, the media might have caught this glaringly questionable award, but if you ask Buzzfeed's Michael Hastings, there are reasons the media never asked any questions about Patraeus.

So we here at Business Insider did the responsible thing and filed a Freedom Of Information Request for Patraeus' bronze star award citation.

In the meantime, here are a few actual Bronze Star with Combat V stories, taken straight from citations:


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/patraeus ... z2CtGRJ1Ul

[jbuck919]

The New York Times

November 21, 2012
Petraeus, Suddenly With Plenty of Free Time, Ponders His Next Move
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ARLINGTON, Va. — Here on an expensive but otherwise unremarkable street in the suburbs of Washington, David H. Petraeus is managing a new life in the doghouse.

He is seeking forgiveness from his furious wife, missing his old job as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, fighting off cabin fever — and plotting a comeback.

Friends say that Mr. Petraeus, who resigned from the C.I.A. on Nov. 9 because of an extramarital affair, so far has offers to teach from four universities, a grab bag of book proposals from publishers in New York and an interest in speaking and serving on corporate boards. He has hired Robert B. Barnett, the Washington superlawyer, to handle his future, and friends say he has not even ruled out becoming a talking head on television.

But no one in Mr. Petraeus’s tight circle of defenders disputes that for now the world of one of the nation’s most celebrated generals has shrunk spectacularly. Once talked of as a future Republican candidate for president, the former commander of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan spends his days largely at home in self-imposed exile, e-mailing and talking to friends on the phone. He works out on a stationary exercise bike, unable, at least in the first days of the scandal, to get out for his daily runs.

Friends say he remains as ambitious as ever, but sounds different.

“Basically he’s the same guy but considerably more subdued, in terms of his spirit,” said Mr. Petraeus’s close friend Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army. “And that’s understandable. His voice doesn’t have the same peppiness in it.”

Friends fret that a man used to a turbocharged schedule — not to mention motorcades, secret trips to the Middle East and invitations to the best tables in Georgetown — has too much time on his hands.

“I asked him whether he’d seen a certain article, and he said: ‘No, send it my way. I’m looking for something to read right now,’ ” said a close friend who asked not to be identified discussing Mr. Petraeus’s private life. “He kept such a grueling schedule. This is unchartered territory for him right now.”

Another friend, who also asked not to be named, had similar thoughts. “Several of us are concerned,” the friend said. “He’s a very active individual. He needs to stay active.”

Mr. Petraeus’s friends say his first priority is to make things right with Holly Petraeus, his wife of 38 years, and their two grown children, but Mrs. Petraeus has not been keeping her husband company at home during the day. A spokeswoman for the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she works, said on Wednesday that Mrs. Petraeus has been at the office every day since the scandal broke.

Mrs. Petraeus, who runs the agency’s Office of Servicemember Affairs as a consumer advocate for military families, wrote two blog posts for the agency’s Web site this week: one with a co-worker warning about deceptive mortgage advertisements, and another, written solo, about the perils of buying a flood-damaged used car. “Once you’ve signed the contract you’re committed, so Know Before You Owe!” she concluded.

Her expertise, USA Today reported earlier this year, comes from the financial mistakes she and Mr. Petraeus made as newlyweds: buying a red sports car that spent more time in the shop than on the road, putting down a deposit on an apartment they had not seen, acquiring a foosball table as their first piece of furniture.

Now the man who married up — Holly Petraeus was not only the daughter of the superintendent of West Point when Mr. Petraeus was a cadet there, but the descendant of military officers going back to the Civil War — is taking it a day at a time with his wife. “They will weather this storm,” said John A. Nagl, a friend of Mr. Petraeus and a retired Army lieutenant colonel who fought in Iraq. “And that’s mostly because Holly is a deeply forgiving soul.”

Their house, on a verdant Arlington street of $1 million and $2 million homes — for security reasons, the address is listed in no public property records — is expected to be Mr. Petraeus’s center of operations at least until the first of next year, the earliest his friends say he could venture out from the wilderness with a Barnett-approved new job or position.

Mr. Barnett’s clients have included Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, fired by President Obama in 2010 as the NATO commander in Afghanistan, and Oliver L. North of the Reagan-era Iran-contra affair.

Mr. Petraeus, who remains under investigation by the C.I.A. for whether he misused the perquisites of his position to facilitate the affair, is in the meantime, friends said, mulling over how he became entangled with Paula Broadwell, whom he met when she began researching a book on him.

“The way he describes it, he said, ‘You know, I wasn’t sure right away that she was writing a biography; I thought it was a book on Afghanistan,’ ” said one of the friends, referring to Ms. Broadwell’s decision to turn her unfinished dissertation into a book on Mr. Petraeus. The friend did not explain how Mr. Petraeus could have had such a view. “It sort of developed over time, and he realized belatedly that it was about him.”

When Ms. Broadwell told Mr. Petraeus that her book advance was well into the six figures, the friend said Mr. Petraeus decided, “Well, I better help her to get it halfway right rather than pushing her away to have something come out that was half-baked.”

Mr. Petraeus has said that he broke off the affair over the summer, but friends said he told them he continued a relationship with Ms. Broadwell to help her with her dissertation. “He was trying to put it back on a more professional plane,” the friend said. “He thought he could do that.”

Friends say Mr. Petraeus will never write a book about his experiences, although one confidant said the former C.I.A. director is considering a book on what the friend termed “leadership.”

As Mr. Nagl put it: “He’s the most ambitious guy I’ve ever seen. I’m absolutely confident he’s going to succeed again.”

[John F]

How uninteresting. To me, anyway. Sorry.