Posted on 11/10/2012 1:58:15 PM PST by billorites
David H. Petraeus’s “Rules for Living” appeared on The Daily Beast Web site on Monday, posted by his biographer, a fellow West Point graduate 20 years his junior named Paula Broadwell. The fifth rule, beneath his familiar portrait in full military regalia, began: “We all make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them.”
Mr. Petraeus took his own advice on Friday and resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency after admitting to an extramarital affair; officials identified the woman in question as Ms. Broadwell. The full back story is not yet clear, though his affair came to light after F.B.I. agents conducting a criminal investigation into possible security breaches examined his computer e-mails. The decision to step down was his.
Few imagined that such a dazzling career would have so tawdry and so sudden a collapse. Mr. Petraeus, a slender fitness fanatic, is known as a brainy ascetic. He and his wife, Holly, whose father was the superintendent at West Point when Mr. Petraeus graduated in 1974, and their two grown children had long been viewed by military families as an inspiration, a model for making a marriage work despite the separation and hardship of long deployments overseas.
After he began the C.I.A. job in September 2011, the couple settled into a house in the Virginia suburbs and began the closest thing to a normal life together that they had had in years, even if the basement he had designated for a home gym was commandeered for secure C.I.A. communications gear.
After years in war zones, Mr. Petraeus told friends, he was amazed to eat dinner most nights with his wife and to discover weekends again. He told friends that on the day his daughter was married last month, he went for a 34-mile bike ride.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
He did not do the honorable thing; he only resigned after the FBI discovered the affair. It was incredibly stupid thing for him to do. Does he not understand that the Chinese and Russians knew of this affair within days, if not hours, of the first act? Just like we know who all their leaders are fooling around with, they watch our folks and keep a dossier on them too. I bet you ten dollars they held their breath with anticipation when O nominated him to head Langley, giddy at the prospect of having this kind of dirt on the head of our spy agency.
It was a colossal failure on his part. As a commander he knows the value of operational security; but he chose to ignore it and placed people’s lives at risk.
First, you don't know what he did or didn't do. Second, while there is a time and place to fall on your sword, you only get to do that once. If every military officer resigned when there was some political decision they did not like no one would make it past colonel.
The CIA first put out a statement that no one in the agency refused a request for help from our Bengazi people. Bill Kristol interpreted that as throwing the President under the bus. Later, the CIA put out another statement about responding within minutes to the attack, which seemed to take the heat off the administration. What I wonder is why the change.
2b? That's teenager texting mode!
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