Gen. David Petraeus has resigned his post as Director of the CIA. He explains his reasons in a letter:
Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. 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.
People immediately asked: “Do you really have to resign over an extramarital affair?” The question is a fair one: If a man is fulfilling all his professional duties fully, does a personal issue like this matter?
However obscured the answer is in any other areas of life, the particular pressures of the intelligence world bring into focus a universal truth: Every compromise, personal or professional, affects the whole man. A private affair calls into question an intelligence officer’s judgment and, if kept secret, opens him to blackmail or other sorts of pressure, thus endangering his security clearance.
Petraeus knew all this, of course, and still acted in a way he clearly feels to have been wrong. While it may not have been strictly necessary for Petraeus to resign (I’m sure we’ll learn more about this from the lawyers and others who regularly handle such cases), his case nonetheless brings into focus the necessary connection between the personal and professional.
The Petraeus affair can be taken, then, as yet another sign that the Clinton era is over. Clinton’s successful battle against impeachment succeeded on technicalities but at the basic level asserted that the personal really could be disentangled from the professional, that a peccadillo never could rise to the level of a firing offense.
We’ve been digesting this claim ever since. Shows like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos achieved immense critical success while offering extended meditations on—and rejections of—this idea. General Petraeus’ resignation offers a more concise, and very unfortunate, lesson on the same subject. Nor should it go unnoted that America just reelected a man who, whatever one makes of his politics, to all appearances acts with immense personal integrity.
November 9th, 2012 | 3:55 pm
In an age of biting cynicism, it is hard to take the resignation at face value. But be that as it may, you make a good point. To go one further: Petreus likely feels the burdens of leadership and asking the men and women under his direction for their 100% integrity to be one of his highest duties. In other words, he needs to look his people in the eye squarely when he asks them for their very best of themselves, professionally and personally.
November 9th, 2012 | 4:08 pm
The important question are when did the affair begin, when did it end (if it is over), and why is he choosing this moment to resign? Is he choosing to resign now solely because he had an affair, or is he resigning because he knows word of the affair is about to become public, and he wants to spare himself the embarrassment of having to resign in a public scandal?
November 9th, 2012 | 4:34 pm
One can only wonder what Newt Gingrich will say during his next media appearance.
November 9th, 2012 | 4:37 pm
The integrity of one man hardly signals an era — especially after an hysterical election cycle devoted to keeping all reproductive options available. This is a tragedy, but nothing like a trend.
November 9th, 2012 | 4:38 pm
It would be nice if it were true, but Petraeus’s resignation says nothing about the current standard of acceptable personal behavior among our elected politicians. Petraeus was head of the CIA. For obvious reasons, anyone with a security clearance (let alone the man at the top of the chain) can be stripped of that clearance for any personal behavior that tends to enable blackmail. Petraeus could not remain as head of an organization despite behavior that would have been cause for immediate removal of each and every subordinate in that organization.
November 9th, 2012 | 5:16 pm
It seems odd to me that he gave “having an affair” as his reason for resignation. Isn’t the official excuse for unexpected resignation usually “personal reasons” or something like that?
November 9th, 2012 | 6:21 pm
chew on this… He resigned to remove the power from this Adminstration’s threats. He can no longer be expected to take any blame for Benghazi with a lingering fear of a disruption to his personal life. Apples to oranges comparison between a General and a politician or lawyer. He will continue to or at least attempt to continue to live his life with integrity.
November 9th, 2012 | 6:27 pm
Is there no curiosity as to why this happened just days before he was to testify re Benghazi? The timing seems well beyond coincidental. One can certainly imagine WH/Admin internal security personnel having learned of the transgression and holding it for just when it would be needed most … like to prolong and complete a cover up.
Does it mean that happened? No. But my goodness to not even ask the question?
November 9th, 2012 | 6:38 pm
Hard to take Petraeus’ resignation at face value when he was supposed to testify before Congress next week on the murder of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya. With Petraeus’ resignation effective immediately, he will not testify next week.
November 9th, 2012 | 6:52 pm
A compromised man is a compromised man. In any office. The intelligence community is just more aware of this and acknowleges it in its security clearance requirements.
November 9th, 2012 | 6:58 pm
I find it to be downright strange.
November 9th, 2012 | 7:34 pm
I don’t see why he won’t testify. What is stopping him?
I also don’t see why anyone thinks he could be blackmailed. He has just told everybody his “secret”. As the democrats point out, we are not living in the 1950s.
Maybe he doesn’t want his head to roll in a public way once we learn about the Benghazi mess. I just watched the movie “Argo”, which shows how we used to be brave, sacrificial, valiant people. The hero was a mid-level CIA officer. Some of his counterparts were left to die on a rooftop in September. These were Petraeus’ people. They died on his watch.
November 9th, 2012 | 8:26 pm
I think it’s pretty obvious Petraeus took the fall on Benghazi. Obama knows someone has to do it, but when you’re a 4-star you don’t get court marshaled.
November 9th, 2012 | 8:53 pm
I would like to know what the author’s definition of “acts with immense personal integrity” is. Pres. Obama is a man who lied repeatedly about his opponent, about the true costs of his pet programs, about the cause of our Libyan ambassador’s murder, etc. His campaign was clearly run on an ends-justify-the-means paradigm, and I agree with others that the timing of Gen. Petraeus’s resignation is suspect.
November 9th, 2012 | 9:49 pm
How soon we forget! With regard to the President’s personal ethics, you omit the 20 year relationship with the Reverend Wright, the business dealings with Antoine Rezco over the Chicago mansion, and the long term relations with the terrorist Bill Ayers. Hard to see them under the bus, isn’t it? Then there is the authorship of his memoirs. The president has written nothing else memorable. The likelihood that these are ghost written is 100%. The latest adventure in real estate is the estate in Hawaii. Do explain his financial dealings if you know them. Based on his earnings and tax returns I think I could learn from this man.
Finally, explain to me all the “composite” figures (his word) in his memoirs. Aren’t fantasies usually found in novels and not memoirs?
November 10th, 2012 | 1:56 am
As the details of the affair begin to come out, the idea that this is about Benghazi looks more and more ridiculous. The term seems kind of quaint, but this is an old fashioned “sex scandal.”
November 10th, 2012 | 3:55 am
Common but depressing. I feel especially sorry for the betrayed spouses. The lover of Petraeus was Paula Broadwell, a West Point graduate and the author of Petraeus’s biography.
Last July a column in The New York Times published the following letter:
“My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is to manage a project whose progress is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership. (This might seem hyperbolic, but it is not an exaggeration.) I have met with him on several occasions, and he has been gracious. (I doubt if he is aware of my knowledge.) I have watched the affair intensify over the last year, and I have also benefited from his generosity. He is engaged in work that I am passionate about and is absolutely the right person for the job. I strongly feel that exposing the affair will create a major distraction that would adversely impact the success of an important effort. My issue: Should I acknowledge this affair and finally force closure? Should I suffer in silence for the next year or two for a project I feel must succeed? Should I be “true to my heart” and walk away from the entire miserable situation and put the episode behind me? NAME WITHHELD”
November 10th, 2012 | 6:36 am
He couldn’t attend funerals for Agency contractors who died at Benghazi, but he was able to appear at a movie premier with Ben Affleck and the dubious Huma Adebin (untroubled, apparently, by her ties to the Islamic Brotherhood), this man of integrity.
November 10th, 2012 | 5:06 pm
The Petraeus affair can be taken, then, as yet another sign that the Clinton era is over. Clinton’s successful battle against impeachment succeeded on technicalities but at the basic level asserted that the personal really could be disentangled from the professional, that a peccadillo never could rise to the level of a firing offense.
Except for the little problem that in terms of ‘job performance’ this ‘disentanglement’ is in fact a pretty clear and obvious reality. If you doubt me, then I invite you to tell us where you were in 1980 when President Carter was running against Ronald Reagan. You must have supported the former given his clearly greater efforts to lead a life that was moral in both the realm of spirtuality and personal behavior.
Fact is no human has a monopoly on goodness. We quite often encounter people who are great in one area but are horrible in others. The great boss who is loved by all his employees, but his family finds him distant and unhelpful. History, likewise, is full of men who were great generals, great leaders who lead dubious lives. I agree with Lincoln, I’d rather have Grant leading my army even if he rolls out of bed each morning with an empty bottle.
What you mean to say, of course, is that you can’t distangle your personal reality form your professional one. You are one person so if you’re faithful to your company but unfairthful to your wife, you are missing something that a man who is faithful to both has. But that is properly a question for the man himself and the bouncer at heaven’s gates. If you’re the company the primary question is the man’s faithfulness to the company. I can say therefore President Clinton was a very good President, yet he was a flawed man and the country would not have been better off had he been impeached. In fact, even if he had not been elected due to ‘personal peccadillos’ the country would not have been better off. I can also say, without contradiction, that Clinton’s ‘personal pecaddillos’ were a real flaw for him which cost him something. In the big scheme, though, he is and was hardly that much of a sinner that many others would have been merited in tossing the first stone at him.
We’ve been digesting this claim ever since. Shows like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos achieved immense critical success while offering extended meditations on—and rejections of—this idea.
Well except in the Republican Party. Gingrich barely suffered at all for his notable ‘pecaddillos’. McCain encouraged everyone to celebrating the happy meeting of his current wife and their wonderful romance….only Joe Carter I believe noticed that both were married to other people when this love story began. Rudy Guiliani was more or less keeping his mistress in the mayor’s mansion. More generally, unless a person is actually having an active affair, there’s almost no question about previous affairs or the circumstances that lead to previous marriages to end.
True you can say Romney had zero question of his martial fidelity and neither has Obama…yet I don’t think either won their nomination by assuring their party that no ‘bimbo eruptions’ would happen.
The Sopranos does illustrate that there’s limits to how much one can ‘tangle’ their lives….but I think you misread the show. The series ended where it began. Tony was an active father, ‘respectable’ member of the community leading an admirable life. His ‘double life’ isn’t making it impossible for him to do these ‘jobs’ well. He is perfectable capable in talking to and guiding his daugher and son, romancing his wife, holding enjoyable cookouts for neighbors and friends. His ‘double life’ took its toll not on the ‘jobs’ he was doing as much as on his soul….as ‘normal’ as he ended the series, he remained as his doctor finally discovered, a psychopath unable to really understand his reality or his connection to other people.
November 10th, 2012 | 5:20 pm
Curtis Talon, Allen, Dan,
You seem to think just because he resigned he won’t be called to testify on Benghazi. Perhaps you’re unaware of hte fact that all the time Congress calls people who previously held high posts to testify about things that happened during their tenure. Reigning is no magic way to avoid testifying and I would expect to see his testimony proceed.
peg
I also don’t see why anyone thinks he could be blackmailed. He has just told everybody his “secret”. As the democrats point out, we are not living in the 1950s.
There does seem to be more to this story. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/10/david_petraeus_affair_fbi_investigation_uncovered_affair_with_paula_broadwell.html goes through what different sources are saying. It seems like an element to this may be that he was using a personal email account (possibly gmail) to conduct this affair…high level officials do not have the freedom we have with ‘personal email’ accounts given the incentive foreign gov’ts have in hacking into them. Recall all the special arrangements that had to be made to accomodate Obama’s desire to keep using his Blackberry when he was first elected.
Leslie,
I doubt you’re able to coherently articulate any actual lie Obama told about Libya. Try, if you can.
Michael Parrino, MD
Finally, explain to me all the “composite” figures (his word) in his memoirs. Aren’t fantasies usually found in novels and not memoirs?
According to Wikipedia:
You can read the entry on composite characters for yourself. It is hardly unprecedented in works of non-fiction. More importantly, I don’t see how this supports your argument for dishonesty. If the guy is telling you at the beginning that he is using composite characters, you can disagree with the style but you don’t have a claim to being deceived!
November 11th, 2012 | 10:44 am
Nothing I said is contradicted by your response regarding composite figures. As for Libya, for two weeks he insisted that it was a spontaneous reaction to a video trailer that few have ever seen.
When I got to a protest I always carry a mortar and a few RPGs in case things get serious.
Regarding Obama I think that you are a true believer and discussion serves no purpose. I will not respond to further comments by you.
November 11th, 2012 | 10:54 am
A grave error of judgement do you think, by the Lords of the Admiralty not to dismiss Nelson, when his affair with Lady Hamilton became public knowledge, instead of allowing him to fight the battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar – a man whose loyalty to his country was not to be trusted?
November 11th, 2012 | 4:23 pm
The President of the United States of America lied to the Cardinal Archbishop of New York. He allowed the profane standards of Hollywood to promote his campaign. He lied about the death of an American ambassador. He obviously anticipates the time in which one or both of his daughters might have an abortion. He lied about the Affordable Health Care bill’s consequences. He allowed his Vice President to lie about the teachings of the Church. The President lied about Gov. Romney’s record and personal generosity. The President supports what is now called after-birth abortion — or any kind of abortion at any time.
He is a paladin of the culture of death.
Integrity? Simply because he hasn’t cheated on his wife? Is that the sole standard for integrity?
November 11th, 2012 | 5:31 pm
Doctor Parrino
You asked/stated:
Finally, explain to me all the “composite” figures (his word) in his memoirs. Aren’t fantasies usually found in novels and not memoirs?
I didn’t think you wanted me to take you seriously but if you insist, exactly how is your question even sensible? A fictional novel contains fictional characters. You don’t have ‘composite characters’ in novels because all the characters don’t exist to begin with! As I pointed out, composite characters have been used in non-fiction work, even journalism (though journalists tend to frown upon it there).
Since you proceeded this with a shrill screed about the President’s ethics, one can only conclude you’re trying to claim it’s unethical to use composite characters in a autobiographical work. This is a strange assertion to make, esp. when the author himself warns the reader that composite characters are being used for purposes of privacy protection and to make the narrative flow faster. You’re free as a matter of taste to be against it, but you haven’t made anything like an ethical case.
As for Libya, for two weeks he insisted that it was a spontaneous reaction to a video trailer that few have ever seen.
Can you produce a single quote from President Obama from 9/12/12 to two weeks after where he asserts this, let alone ‘insists’ it?
Regarding Obama I think that you are a true believer and discussion serves no purpose. I will not respond to further comments by you.
Heh, did this tactic work for you during medical school?
November 12th, 2012 | 12:24 am
“That is what we saw play out the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity.” Barack Obama, address to the United Nations, 9/25/12
November 12th, 2012 | 12:27 am
In case you are not sure that he is connecting the video to the Embassy attack, he says further, “There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There is no video that justifies an attack on an Embassy.” Also, Barack Obama, address to the United Nations, 9/25/12
November 12th, 2012 | 12:53 pm
Sharon,
You seem to have forgotton, there were protests throughout the Muslim world including rioters that actually attacked the Egyptian (not Libyian) embassy. Pakistan even had a ‘love the prophet day’ in response to the video which produced even more riots that would have resulted in even more attacks on their ‘embassy row’ if not for the massive use of military police. You’ve conflated statements about a host of incidents, which no one disputes happened, with a statement about the Libyan consulate attack.
In case you are not sure that he is connecting the video to the Embassy attack, he says further…
Embassy does not equal consulate. An embassy is usually in the capital city of a country, a consulate is a smaller office usually there to help citizens with legal problems from the host country (i.e. lost passports, legal charges filed against them etc). The US will have only one embassy in a country but can have many consulates.
Regardless the statement you identified does not speak about the Libyan attack but about generic attacks on embassies which did happen in multiple spots, the most notable was in Egypt where protesters scaled the walls and pulled down teh American flag. There was also a lesser reported incident a month earlier where the German embassy was attacked by a single man with a hammer and homemade nail bomb. There were also multiple violent protests that would have resulted in embassy attacks had not riot police forced the mobs back.
In multiple statements Obama made specifically about the Libyan consulate after the attack he directly said he was not going to comment about the nature of the attack or the motive until all the facts were in.
You can read the actual transcript of the full UN speech here:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/25/transcript-obama-address-to-un-general-assembly/
Without going thru it paragraph by paragraph you’ll note that it wasn’t just about Libya but about the entire Arab Spring, the multiple protests, Syria and Libya. Witness the actual paragraph which you pulled Obama’s statement out of context:
Notice that the video is linked to specific incidents in Lebanon, Tunis and Pakistan but not to Libya (again the Egyptian embassy was also attacked and was technically the only US embassy attacked on that day)
November 12th, 2012 | 6:17 pm
Conspiracy theorists will want to check out this video of Bob Woodward discussing Petraeus on Meet the Press yesterday. Woodward says that Petraeus went to Libya quite recently and did his own very thorough on-the-scene investigation of what happened in Benghazi, which he was scheduled to testify about this week but now will not. Woodward said that what Petraeus discovered and would have testified to would “essentially back up the White House.”
November 12th, 2012 | 6:19 pm
Here is the link to the Meet the Press video I mentioned above.
November 12th, 2012 | 8:08 pm
Obama’s Ambassador to the U.N. on “Meet the Press,” September 16, 2012:
“First of all, let’s be clear about what transpired this week. In Cairo, in Benghazi, in many other parts of the region, was a direct result of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting. We have also been very clear that there is no excuse for violence, we have condemned it in the strongest possible terms.”
November 12th, 2012 | 8:10 pm
…and, the President’s ambassador added, “This is a spontaneous reaction to a video and it’s not dissimilar but perhaps on a slightly larger scale than what we have seen in the past with the [Salman Rushdie's novel] ‘Satanic Verses’, with the [2006 Danish newspaper] cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.”
November 13th, 2012 | 2:35 am
Does publius need me to point out he failed to meet my challenge to find a single quote from President Obama where he ‘insisted’ Libya was a result of the video?
Even Susan Rice’s comment hardly amounts to ‘insisting’ upon anything when you actually note the full transcript (which you can see at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49051097/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/september-benjamin-netanyahu-susan-rice-keith-ellison-peter-king-bob-woodward-jeffrey-goldberg-andrea-mitchell/#.UKH3BIdZWNA if you wish)
November 13th, 2012 | 7:00 am
This whole Petraeus/Broadwell/Kelley/Allen story is becoming bizarrely complicated. I can see why the powers-that-be delayed publication—they were trying to figure out “who’s on first”.
November 13th, 2012 | 7:42 am
In Cairo, in Benghazi, in many other parts of the region, was a direct result of a heinous and offensive video
publius,
First, we know Ambassador Rice was speaking based on information given to her in CIA briefings. Second, except for Benghazi (it now seems) the demonstrations in about twenty cities were sparked by the video.
I am just not getting the conspiracy theories on this one. They are not based on facts but on partisanship.
November 13th, 2012 | 10:52 am
President Obama: “And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There’s no video that justifies an attack on an embassy” . . . right, an embassy is not a consulate, so Egypt merits attention and Benghazi does not. OK, got it. It’s more serious when an embassy is breached due to a “video” but no big deal when a consulate is attacked and four Americans, including an Ambassador are killed, due to, what…?
A CIA drone was flying overhead observing the terrorist attack on the consulate and the six-seven hour battle that ensued. A special ops force was sent to repulse the terrorist attack within a few hours, after repeated pleas for help due to rocket fire and mortar attacks, not due to a “spontaneous demonstration.” It should be noted that special ops forces tend not to respond to “demonstrations.” The CIA has denied that the agency ever told Rice or any member of the administration that this was anything less than a coordinated attack. The members of the National Security Council watched the events as they happened via a drone circling overhead, and knew there was no “spontaneous demonstration” due to a “video.”
Five days later Susan Rice was sent out to all the Sunday morning talk shows and claimed the murder of four Americans was the result of a “spontaenous demonstration” due to a “video.” She was either sent out to lie, or this administration is in as much disarray as Reagan administration was during the Iran Contra Affair.
November 13th, 2012 | 1:52 pm
publius
I think I see the problem here. See I try to get at the truth by taking stock of the facts I’m aware of and then going out there and trying to accumulate more facts that might be relevant to the issue at hand. Your strategy seems to be to take the facts that are out there and subtract from them until you arrive at a picture that you like.
right, an embassy is not a consulate, so Egypt merits attention and Benghazi does not. OK, got it. It’s more serious when an embassy is breached due to a “video” but no big deal when a consulate is attacked and four Americans, including an Ambassador are killed, due to, what…?
None of which was said by Obama in the speech. As you can see if you bother to read the transcript, the speech dealt more or less with ‘all things Middle East’ which at that time included not only Libya but the riots/protests, the attacks on the Egyptian embassy, as well as the civil war in Syria. If you read the transcript you’ll notice that Obama opened the speech with several paragraphs about Libya and the murdered ambassador, none of which reference the video as a cause. No fair reading of Obama’s speech can be made that slights the killing of the Ambassador.
A CIA drone was flying overhead observing the terrorist attack on the consulate and the six-seven hour battle that ensued. A special ops force was sent to repulse the terrorist attack within a few hours, after repeated pleas for help due to rocket fire and mortar attacks, not due to a “spontaneous demonstration.” It should be noted that special ops forces tend not to respond to “demonstrations.”
Not sure if you are just making these facts up or not but since no one has really argued Libya was just ‘demonstrations’ I think the bigger question is what or whom exactly do you think the above refutes?
Five days later Susan Rice was sent out to all the Sunday morning talk shows and claimed the murder of four Americans was the result of a “spontaenous demonstration” due to a “video.”
Except she didn’t, I posted the transcript and she says repeatedly that information from the field is still coming in and any narrative she gives is tentative on the ongoing investigation. If your purpose is to tell a lie then you tell the lie. In other words the purpose of telling a lie is to make a statement that is false with the intent to get people to believe its true. If you’re saying the statement is all based on preliminary information that is developing then you’re not really lying.
Your timeline also doesn’t add up. I suggest you consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_the_U.S._diplomatic_mission_in_Benghazi
The attack on the consulate happened at 9:40 PM local time. In the battle there was a CIA ‘quick reaction’ force located a mile away. The attackers set the consulate on fire and when the reaction force go there they could not locate the Ambassadore in the smoke. The body of Stevens was found at 1 AM by local citizens and taken to the local hospital by them where he was pronounced dead. There was no ‘six hour battle’. At 4 AM another attack happened at the CIA annex which was 1.2 miles away and housed those who had escaped from the consulate attack AND had a group of Libyan forces as well as American forces who had arrived at the Benghazi airport from Tripoli.
No evidence has been presented that a drone observed the attack nor were there special forces in the area. CIA security teams are not special forces
At least one witness did see earlier in the day (remember the attack came at night) a group of about 20 people chanting against the film. It still remains unclear whether there happened to be protests against the film before the attack that had no relationship to it other than being within 24 hours of it, whether the protest was a planned diversion to provide cover for an attack, Or whether the witness was just mistaken and there was no protest at all. Given the numerous protests in multiple cities, it certainly wasn’t implausible to believe it had something to do with it. Even at this point it’s unclear exactly who attacked the consulate. The descriptions given sound less like a terrorist attack and more like a militia attack, the Libyians certainly thought so launching anti-militia protests after the attack and calling for local warlords to disarm their bands.
November 13th, 2012 | 1:59 pm
Interesting how things end up running into each other:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/12/petraeus-mistress-may-have-revealed-classified-information-at-denver-speech/
The attack may have been neither about the video or about terrorism but may have been intended for the ‘CIA Annex’ which was reportedly holding militia members. In other words, it may have been a jail break.
November 16th, 2012 | 11:11 am
David Nickol and Boonton,
Your version of events is beginning to unravel. According to accounts on ‘CNN’ and in ‘Politico,’ General Petraeus told lawmakers that the CIA believed Benghazi to be a terrorist attack from the beginning.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83966.html#ixzz2CP0YSpBM
November 16th, 2012 | 7:21 pm
Sadly the hearing was behind closed doors and classified leaving us to rely on what partisan lawmakers claim was revealed. However I notice that the pattern here continues.
My method of getting at the truth: Assemble the facts and see what they say.
Your method: Assemble the facts and delete the ones you don’t like.
You left out of your comment a few other things that Petraeus said. Specifically that two sets of points were assembled by the CIA. The classified set which asserted it was a terrorist attack and an unclassified set the dropped the terrorist claim to avoid revealing that eavesdropping by the intelligence agencies had picked up more specific information on the attack.
We are still waiting for you to support the assertion that Obama ever ‘insisted’ the attack was due to the video, or for that matter even Susan Rice.
November 16th, 2012 | 10:28 pm
Boonton, with all due respect, your method seems to be to parrot the ever shifting Obama administration line. Your ability to keep track of these shifts is impressive, I will concede.
The Libyan government had already claimed it was a terrorist attack without alluding to “eavesdropping.” The fact that the attack occurred on 9/11 was a dead giveaway to most observers, except those intent on protecting the President and his oft-repeated claim that he had decimated al Qaeda.
Again, five days after the attack, Susan Rice was dispatched to tell the nation that that a spontaneous demonstration over a video led to the attacks: “This is a spontaneous reaction to a video and it’s not dissimilar but perhaps on a slightly larger scale than what we have seen in the past with the [Salman Rushdie's novel] ‘Satanic Verses’, with the [2006 Danish newspaper] cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Rice was also instructed to take the unusual step of appearing on all of the Sunday morning shows that day, and repeat to the American people the “unclassified” talking points as opposed to the accurate “classified” talking points. Apparently you, and the Obama administration, believe it is OK to mislead the American people so as to not reveal our secret “eavesdropping” efforts. [I am sure, btw, that al Qaeda has no idea we listen in on their conversations] How about a simple “no comment” if that was the concern? Whatever happened to the President’s pledge to run the most transparent administration in history? George Orwell would be proud….
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