Free Republic

Then-defense secretary Robert M. Gates stopped bagging his leaves when he moved into a small Washington military enclave in 2007. His next-door neighbor was Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, who had a chef, a personal valet and — not lost on Gates — troops to tend his property. Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn. “I was often jealous because he had...

David Petraeus’ ex-mistress, Paula Broadwell, left a female news photographer with a bloodied forehead Monday in a confrontation outside the biographer’s North Carolina home. The 40-year-old West Point grad smacked the photographer with the driver’s side door of her Nissan Pathfinder SUV. “I had my camera and in all the chaos the door slammed and I got hit in the head with the flash,” said Nell Redmond, a freelancer for the Associated press. Redmond suffered a small cut on her forehead in the incident, witnessed by a Daily News reporter. The encounter occurred just before 2 p.m. as Broadwell, wearing...

Fastidiousness is never a good sign in a general officer. Though strutting military peacocks go back to Alexander’s time, our first was MacArthur, who seemed at times to care more about how much gold braid decorated the brim of his cap than he did about how many bodies he left on beachheads across the Pacific. Next came Westmoreland, with his starched fatigues in Vietnam. In our time, Gen. David H. Petraeus has set the bar high. Never has so much beribboned finery decorated a general’s uniform since Al Haig passed through the sally ports of West Point on his way...

Paula Broadwell arrives back at her brother's Washington D.C. home with husband Scott Linked arm-in-arm, Paula Broadwell and her husband Scott were seen together yesterday evening for the first time since the news broke of her affair with shamed former CIA Director David Petraeus. Arriving at her brother's home in the Mount Pleasant suburb of Washington D.C. in a black SUV, the two put on what was a clear show of solidarity as they marched from the garage to the back door of the $2.3 million property. Since the scandalous revelations surrounding his wife first surfaced just over a week...

The cover up is worse than the original crime. When the president conspires with others in government to lie to the American people and claim "national security" as a defense, the congress has a duty and precedent to get to the truth. Lying to the America people and ordering subordinates to lie in a cover up attempt is historically recognized as high crimes and treason and IS definitely an impeachable offense. When the president of the United States commits high crimes and treason and then lies to the American people and conspires to hide it from congressional investigators and claims...

After yesterday's closed-door testimony of David Petraeus on the Hill, we now know for a fact that for two weeks the Obama Administration repeatedly and relentlessly lied to the American people about what they knew was the truth behind the September 11 anniversary attack on our consulate in Libya. Unfortunately, we also now know that they're going to get away with it. Within 24 hours of a coordinated assault that left four Americans dead, then-CIA Director David Petraeus was convinced the intelligence proved a local Libyan militia affiliated with al-Qaeda was responsible, and said so in his report. Then the...

Do you remember the tale of "The Gingerbread Man"? It's a children's story in which a gingerbread man runs away from the baker, lots of people try to catch him as he crows, "Run, run as fast as you can/ You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man." In the version I remember a fox finally does catch the braggart and eats him piece by piece.This week, in defending the public statements of his UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Obama said we should come after him, not her. Pugnacious remark--just like the gingerbread man's. Last time I recall a politician making...

Women love a man in a uniform. Men love a woman out of a uniform. Old verities stand affirmed by the intelligence that ousted the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General David Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But what man is really in command when face-to-face with a determined Paula Broadwell? The author of the appropriately titled "All In" conquered Petraeus in a way that neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda could. Terrorists aren't the only ones who target generals. Broadwell gives new meaning to "hagiographer." The overused term, which 99 percent of the time tells us more...

White House says did not heavily edit talking points on Benghazi ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 11:25am EST (Reuters) - The White House did not heavily alter talking points about the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, an official said on Saturday. "If there were adjustments made to them within the intelligence community, that's common, and that's something they would have done themselves," Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told reporters. "The only edit ... made by the White House was the factual edit as to how to refer to the facility." After a...

The punchline of this story is an unconstitutional US imperial war machine, dedicated to empire, contributing to a Globalist planet by destabilizing and causing massive chaos in the Middle East and Africa. In this criminal effort, one American soldier has stood out above the rest. He has been made into a heroic myth. He represents the best of the best. Seeing his character, his honor, millions of Americans have concluded that whatever our Armed Forces are doing, it must be right and good. If David Petraeus is our fearless leader, we're on the side of the angels. If he succumbed...

There can be unseemly exposure of the mind as well as of the body, as the progressive mind is exposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a creature of the labyrinthine Dodd-Frank legislation. Judicial dismantling of the CFPB would affirm the rule of law and CongressÂ’s constitutional role. The CFPBÂ’s director, Richard Cordray, was installed by one of Barack ObamaÂ’s spurious recess appointmentswhen the Senate was not in recess. Vitiating the SenateÂ’s power to advise and consent to presidential appointments is congruent with the CFPBÂ’s general lawlessness. The CFPB nullifies CongressÂ’s power to use the power of the purse...

Video:Representative Peter King stated that former CIA Director David Petraeus stated that he knew the Benghazi attack was terrorism and that the talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice were different from the ones prepared by the CIA. Petraeus stated Rice's talking points were edited to demphasized the possibility of terrorism.

TAMPA — Her business card is utterly ordinary. No big titles. No hint of connections with the military and political elite. It lists her address, her phone number and her name in elegant script: "Honorable Jill G. Kelley." But the outsized portrait of herself that Kelley presents to the world will fit on no card. It's seen in her emails to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and others. She drops names. She mentions lunch at the White House in a casual aside, one of three visits she has made there in the last six weeks. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan...

Smoke has been used to mask the movement of military units to disorient or drive off attackers. In politics smoke screens are something said or done in order to hide the truth. The Petraeus scandal with the smoke provided by the liberal main stream media has redirected attention away from the murders of Americans in Benghazi. Scandal The surprised resignation of CIA director David Petraeus and the sideshow it created was the perfect smoke screen this administration needed. The continuous revelations created the drama that keeps the loyal Obama audience entertained. It has the sex, drama, and the execution of...

Scandal: David Petraeus' admission that he knew almost immediately that Benghazi was a terrorist attack raises anew our question: Was he coerced into telling lawmakers Sept. 14 that it was caused by a video? The tangled web that is Benghazi-gate got more tangled Friday when, according to Rep. Peter King, David Petraeus testified in a closed-door hearing that his agency determined immediately after the Sept. 11 Libya attack that "al-Qaida involvement" was suspected — but that the line was taken out in the final version circulated to and by administration officials. "No one knows yet exactly who came up with...

Glenn Beck's take on the sex scandal surrounding David Petraeus and his mistress on his program (11/12/12).

...When the CIA’s acting director, Michael Morell, testifies Thursday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he is expected to say that the agency never requested Europe-based special operations teams, specialized Marine platoons, or armed drones on the night of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official... ...That differs from what Fox News reported almost three weeks ago, and which has gone virtually unchallenged in the vacuum of official explanations about Benghazi since. Jennifer Griffin reported on October 26th, citing sources that were actually “on the ground” in Benghazi during the attack, that...

The (former) director of the CIA doesn’t know why the CIA's finalized talking points omitted a key detail? Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified in a closed-door hearing Friday morning that his agency determined immediately after the Sept. 11 Libya attack that "Al Qaeda involvement" was suspected --- but the line was taken out in the final version circulated to administration officials, according to a top lawmaker who was briefed""The original talking points were much more specific about Al Qaeda involvement. And yet the final ones just said indications of extremists," [Rep. Peter] King said, adding that the final version...

…if what Eli Lake at the Daily Beast reports is true. When the CIA’s acting director, Michael Morell, testifies Thursday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he is expected to say that the agency never requested Europe-based special operations teams, specialized Marine platoons, or armed drones on the night of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.The disclosure may put an end to one line of inquiry into the Benghazi affair about why reinforcements from the region were not sent on the night of the attack. “Assistance from the U.S. military was...

Jonathan Bachman/Reuters - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at a news conference in New Orleans November 15, 2012.Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation that ledDavid H. Petraeus to resign as CIA director, saying that the department was right to keep the inquiry secret from the White House until after last week’s presidential election.Holder’s first public comments on the controversy came as the CIA opened an internal inquiry of Petraeus’s conduct during his 14-month tenure as director. The move means that there are three active investigations related to a scandal...