Petraeus Resigns

[Locutus]

Cites Extramarital Affair



Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus has resigned, citing "extremely poor judgment" for having an extramarital affair.

Petraeus told President Barack Obama of the affair on Thursday and offered to resign, a senior official told NBC News. Obama accepted his resignation in a phone call Friday afternoon.

"Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position," Petraeus said in a letter to CIA colleagues. "After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours."

"This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation," Petraeus said in the letter.
Mike Morrell, the deputy CIA director and a long time CIA officer, will likely be offered the job as acting director, multiple sources told NBC News. Morrell is a longtime CIA ****yst, who was traveling with President George W. Bush as his briefer when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and was later in the Situation Room with President Obama during the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, NBC News reported.


more


CIA Director Petraeus Resigns, Cites Extramarital Affair | NBC New York

Update: This thing stinks to high hell.

Will Congressional Republicans subpoena him to force him to testify?

http://weaselzippers.us/2012/11/09/breaking-cia-director-petraeus-resigns/

 

[karrie]

If you work with the CIA, and you can't keep an affair secret, yes, you'd damn well better resign. lol.

 

[earth_as_one]

This should be a non-issue. The only people this should concern is Petraeus, his mistress and his wife. Everyone else should butt out.

France is so much more ahead of the US when it comes to keeping personal and professional lives separate:

...At President Francois Mitterand’s funeral in 1996, his wife and his long term mistress stood side-by-side at the grave, accompanied by their respective legitimate and illegitimate children...
Mitterand’s Funeral « Iconic Photos

Petraeus's should only be forced to resign if he is incompetent or screwed up on the job. His personal life is beside the point.

 

[BaalsTears]

Petraeus worked for Obama. Good riddance to the general. He failed in Afghanistan and failed at CIA.

 

[Locutus]

Petraeus was slated to testify before Congress next week



This is only the latest in a string of groundshaking events demonstrating that the Obama administration hid information vital to the American people during the last days of the 2012 election cycle. The fact that the most respected soldier of his generation, Petraeus, would be leaving the administration during an Obama second term, had to be known by the White House prior to the election. And they said nothing in order to run out the clock.

The fact that Attorney General Eric Holder was considering stepping down from the administration had to be known by the White House prior to the election. Meanwhile, during the election cycle, the Obama administration claimed executive privilege in order to shield Holder from questions about Fast and Furious.


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CIA Director Petraeus Resigns Over 'Affair'

 

[Kreskin]

Obama was 'gracious' . Well done Mt President.

 

[Mowich]

Well done Mt President.

Oh! Is Obama going to be added to Rushmore??? :lol: Just couldn't resist, Kresin. :smile:

 

[Kreskin]

Oh! Is Obama going to be added to Rushmore??? :lol: Just couldn't resist, Kresin. :smile:

Added, are you kidding? The others will be removed first.

 

[taxslave]

So the head of christians in action is not very good a coverups. Or being discrete. Wonder what else will stand up and be noticed.

 

[gopher]

Another Republican bites the dust!

 

[Highball]

I have a question about all US Military Flag level Commissioned Officers. Don't they all take an "Oath of Office?" If so, do any of you think he may be ducking out on testifying about some recent events the Congress is begining to conduct hearings about? Just a thought. I'm thinking about potential Perjury possibilites?

 

[Kreskin]

Recent events are basically media speculation. Nevertheless, can't Congress call anyone?

 

[Locutus]

Anywayyyyy...a most excellent bit on this whole thing:




David Petraeus’s resignation marks the end of one of the great postwar military and government careers — his successful surge in Iraq being a n a l ogous to and as impressive as Matthew Ridgway’s salvation of Korea or Sherman’s sudden taking of Atlanta that saved Lincoln’s and the Union cause before the 1864 elections. In a book due out in late spring, The Savior Generals, I argue that his achievements were comparable to those of the best of history’s maverick commanders who were asked to save wars deemed lost — and did. But for now, the explanation of Petraeus’s resignation unfortunately raises more questions than it answers, in a number of significant ways:

1) Fairly or not, questions will be raised why this Washington-style Friday-afternoon resignation occurred after rather than before the election — a question that does not necessarily suggest that Petraeus’s did not take the proper nonpartisan course. But just days after this Tuesday, we are already beginning to hear of all sorts of “sudden” news: the Iranian attack on a U.S. drone; the plight of the Hurricane Sandy victims (400,000 still without power? gas rationing, tens of thousands homeless, exposure to cold?, etc.) as much more severe than we were led to believe; the sudden publicity of the “fiscal cliff”; and the Benghazi hearings. In that unfortunate politicized landscape comes the Petraeus bombshell.

2) We were beginning to sense that the crime of Benghazi (not listening to pre-attack requests for increased security; not sending help immediately from the annex to the besieged consulate; not rushing in additional military forces during the hours-long attack) and the cover-up (inventing the video narrative of a spontaneous demonstration gone wild to support a pre-election administration narrative of an impotent al-Qaeda, a successful Libya, a positive Arab Spring, and a cool, competent Commander in Chief, slayer of bin Laden, and architect of momentous Middle East change) were not the entire story of the 9/11/2012 attack: Why was there a consulate at all in Benghazi, given that most nations have shut down their main embassies in Tripoli? Why was there such a large CIA contingent nearby — what were they doing and why and for whom? Why did the ambassador think he needed more security when so many CIA operatives were stationed just minutes away? What was the exact security relationship between the annex and the consulate, and why the apparent quiet about it? Who exactly were the terrorist hit-teams, and did they have a particular agenda, and, if so, what and for whom? All these questions had not been answered and probably would have been raised during the scheduled Petraeus testimony — which is apparently now canceled, but why that is so, no one quite knows. And if Hillary Clinton departs, and perhaps Susan Rice and James Clapper as well, then the principals of the decision-making chain leave with more questions raised than answered. We are sort of back to a Watergate-like timeline of a scandal raised but not explored in a first term, only to blow up in the second.

3) If rumors are true that the liaison may have involved biographer Paula Broadwell, co-author of an extremely favorable biography of Petraeus, then there are additional ethical issues that, fairly or not, call into question Broadwell’s bona fides as an author and the portrait of Petraeus in her warmly received book. And if the FBI was involved, then additional questions arise over the reasons they also became interested — when, why, how, and on whose prompt?

4) Because of both Petraeus’s sterling reputation and his high office, infidelity takes on greater importance than if it were — how absurd to write this — merely that of a lesser figure like Bill Clinton, whose serial miscreant conduct was taken for granted, even when he was a sitting president. If the affair occurred while Petraeus was general, it contradicted the code of military justice; if while at the CIA, it posed a potential security breach.

5) For most of us, however, Petraeus is forever frozen as the hero of 2007–8, when, battered by the congressional hearings (Hillary Clinton’s “suspension of disbelief”) and ad hominem attack ads in the New York Times (“General Betray US”), he nonetheless pressed ahead and broke the back of the insurgency — in part due to his competence, his unmatched reputation, and the talented circle around him. After he came down from Olympus in 2008, his subsequent billets in Afghanistan and at the CIA took on political significance, given the Obama administration’s paradoxical and obsessive desire to affect his career by keeping him close by, and yet failing to appoint him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or supreme NATO commander — appointments that were offered to those of lesser stature. In 2007, the Left went after him as a “Bush general”; in 2009, the Right was disappointed in him for his sudden close, personal relationship with Obama; the truth was always that he sought to serve his country regardless of politics.


Down from Olympus - By Victor Davis Hanson - The Corner - National Review Online


h/t sda



​

 

[Walter]

Recent events are basically media speculation. Nevertheless, can't Congress call anyone?

Congress will go ahead with the investigation. The head of the CIA will be interviewed. Petraeus has focused attention on Beghazi and he won't be the last political casualty

 

[Walter]

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters On Petraeus: "Timing Is Just Too Perfect" | RealClearPolitics

 

[darkbeaver]

AIPAC done him in.

 

[coldstream]

Paula Broadwell was a very attractive woman.. a West Point graduate.

This all could have been handled as an undisclosed non event, something that represented no real security threat, and was an atypical personal indiscretion of a highly decorated general officer. But i think the Obama Whitehouse was out for Patraeus' head after the leaks surrounding the Benghazi fiasco entered into the Presidential race, apparently from CIA sources.

It's not the first or the last time that a very powerful and accomplished leader will be waylaid by a beautiful and ambitious woman. Go back to Helen of Troy and Paris.. usually comes to no good end though.

 

[Mowich]

I haven't being paying much attention to this Petraeus thing. So when I tuned into my version of Comedy Central namely CNN, I was a bit surprised to see that the story has gone way beyond Petraeus.

Somewhere deep in the bowls of Hollywood a screen writer chortles, fingers flying over the keyboard as he makes this into a movie of the week.

 

[Goober]

I haven't being paying much attention to this Petraeus thing. So when I tuned into my version of Comedy Central namely CNN, I was a bit surprised to see that the story has gone way beyond Petraeus.

Somewhere deep in the bowls of Hollywood a screen writer chortles, fingers flying over the keyboard as he makes this into a movie of the week.

Jill Kelley, Gen. John Allen

Some of the 20,000-plus documents and emails between the U.S. mission commander in Afghanistan and a Tampa socialite were “flirtatious,” a senior defence official confirmed today, as the sex scandal that claimed the scalp of CIA Director David Petraeus seems certain to ensnare another acclaimed military figure.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta revealed early Tuesday that Gen. John Allen was under investigation for his communications with Jill Kelley, the woman embroiled in the affair involving Petraeus and his mistress, Paula Broadwell.

The U.S. official said the FBI uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of communications – mostly emails spanning from 2010 to 2012 – between Allen and Kelley, who has been identified as a longtime friend of the Petraeus family and a Tampa, Florida, volunteer social liaison with military families at MacDill Air Force Base.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Gen. Allen was flirting with Kelley, or whether he was the recipient of flirtatious emails.

Allen succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011, and his nomination to become the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has now been put on hold.

 

[Mowich]

Seems another General had 20k-30k emails with the women that Brodwell threatened.

I couldn't believe all the connections between the ever-blossoming list of suspects, Goob. Truly, this is total movie-of-the-week fodder which makes the truth of the story even sadder. Whoever wrote - how the mighty have fallen - could have penned it for the General.