It’s not a love triangle…
I wonder if this sort of thing has long been as frequent at this level, or if for some reason there’s more of it lately. I also wonder if the proliferation of email has something to do with it. Email is so easy, so spontaneous, so tempting (ask Anthony Weiner if you don’t believe me). And it gives the illusion (to some people, anyway) of privacy.
After all, if your wife, for example, doesn’t have access to your email account passwords, she can’t see it. Trouble is, a lot of other people can, if they’ve a mind to. And if you’re in the intelligence business (or even halfway intelligent), you should be able to figure that out.
And you cannot ever count on all the parties involved to keep things to themselves. In this case, the email equivalent of a catfight broke out, and that was the cause of the denouement.
[NOTE: And although it’s probably true that in the olden days generals didn’t encounter women quite as often, they certainly encountered them. So the opportunity has long been there, as well as the old-fashioned camp follower. And then there was the ancient “Lock up your wives!” ditty about Caesar. Sex and soldiering, not an oxymoron.]
[ADDENDUM: More details on how the email thingee worked. Petraeus and Broadwell didn’t send each other emails, it turns out. They had a shared email account and could read each others’ unsent drafts, thus reducing the electronic trail. My guess is that they probably would never have been caught but for Broadwell’s angry emails to Jill Kelley.]
The interesting thing is that the key players involved all seem to be very intelligent.
Someone should remind the military that their duty is to FIGHT.
I blame the ghost of Nelson.
After the Regency Era came Victoria, but I don’t see the seeds of that.
Sex and soldiering is one thing. Pillow talk of General nature is another. There are enough sets of loose lips — three – in the Petraeus story to sink a fleet.
Good thing the war on terror keeps everyone at the FBI/Pentagon busy. Wasn’t there something recently about the badass girls at DHS under Janet Napolitano?
A long time ago i said that the left does not concede a fight to allow someone in place unless there is some dirt there… these generals are newbies compared to who they replaced in the past, and now, they are engaging that ‘insurance’ to remove them.
its a recipe to lose by
ie. we are in a very very very bad position if you can assess it and realize it. but given that most could not realize what was wrong with the Benghazi thing from the first few minutes and the ‘wrongs’ there, they wont ‘get’ this either.
all the pieces have been circulating, testing, building up, and getting into position tactically and strategically.
to read, is to read people just sweeping the options off the table out of hand for no actual reason. ie. the more likely the outcomes, the less they accept it as an option, which is what will insure THAT outcome
To give you an option that is not likely, but perfectly possible given the rules… china takes the islands off japan, Russia seizes the rest of Georgia, Iran attacks Israel, Pakistan hits India border area… turkey hits Syria… (and Egypt pisses the world off by destroying the pyramids and the sphinx as they did the statues carved into the mountain)
obama looks at the conflict the size of our new military, finds out about lightning weapon caches with tactical nukes in the US…
and he signs a treaty with the opponents giving up the war before it starts… he gets wisked off to another country, and then what?
regardless of what scenario you come up with, it will most likely ignore external states, and will ignore that if your fighting, you lost…
Obama signs agenda 21 into law which negates the courts power to negate agenda 21.
ie. he can remove the supreme court before the supreme court can review if its constitutional to remove them in an emergency
Bob From Virginia…
they know it but are not allowed… the 4 star general who was to disobey orders and help in Benghazi was relieved of duty by his second the second he was to act…
back to the generals…
the situation was clear to them. as long as they skewed their answers, the party protects them. can you imagine how long Barneys career would last IF the left stopped negating his own history?
even now the left are writing articles that the generals private life is his own and that an affair is a private thing!!! but they have yet to get the order to change their positions.
“We, the undersigned, proudly support Governor Mitt Romney as our nation’s next President and Commander-in-Chief.” It is then followed by the names of the 500 former military figures announcing their endorsement.
connect the dots as to who were the proteges of those 500 who retired?
even the peoples cube (run by an ex soviet who used to create party propaganda) knows whats going on more than the average american who does not study the stuff they would need to to know.
http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/this-is-how-it-s-done-petraeus-t10002.html
[From “The Naked Communist,” 1963 by Cleon Skousen]
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. [agenda 21?]
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. [lawfare]
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
not all of them… neo would cut it down.
but i bet most never took the time to check them off…
and note what the outcome socially would be and was
Obama’s MO, starting back in the days of his first political campaigns in Chicago, has been to find some legal loophole, or to find some dirt on his opponent–usually of a sexual nature or having something to do with his marriage–and to use it to eliminate that person as an obstacle to whatever objective Obama was aiming at.
Forget all of the sexual hanky-panky stuff, that is just the excuse for Obama’s actions.
What is really happening here is a post-Benghazi purge of key, high level military officers, the count so far–AFRICOM Commander, General Carter Ham, Mideast carrier battle group commander, Rear Admiral Gaouette, Gen. Petreaus, and now the American/NATO Commander in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen–for what reason is not yet clear–but they apparently somehow stood in the way of Obama attaining some particular result or objective.
P.S.–Obviously all this hanky-panky was common knowledge, and in the past and the normal course of events would ordinarily have just been ignored, but Obama apparently chose to use this “misbehavior” as leverage/a weapon against these officers.
Ever since the days of Monica my lefty ex partner (retired) has been saying that most of the truly heroic leaders among men are characterized by insatiable sexual appetites and that we must make allowances for their needs. Although I have not yet discussed PetraeusGate with him, I have no doubt that he would say that this is yet another example that proves his point. The only unusual aspect in this instance (he might say) is that it appears that the alpha women seem to be “giving as good as they’re getting” with these alpha males (no pun intended).
Walla Dalbo says: “..use it to eliminate that person as an obstacle to whatever objective Obama was aiming at…”
Let’s see, Jarret is in Iran, we’re pulling out of the Afghanistan and the whole ME theater, the election is over. Walla Dalbo is probably on to something. Seems to me the generals have served their purpose and can now be disposed of. Jarret can safely deliver the message to Iran that Obama has taken care of his end – humiliating his Middle East generals and forcing them into retirment.
In the first term, His Majesty needed a competent military force to appear to tough on terror and foreign policy. With the election being over, no pretenses are necessary, and he can pursue his own agenda in the ME.
Besides telling Iran we’ll keep Israel off their backs, I wonder what else Jarret is telling them?
I wonder when Sally Quinn in her WaPo religion blog will weigh in on this. We definitely need another layer of hypocrisy.
“That Hamilton woman!”
Alpha females, Alpha males, cats and dogs, and oh my. It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery buried in an enigma.