Frank Rich: Petraeus Affair Just Gets Stranger

[kpete]

What’s also fascinating to me is how Paula Broadwell, who had no professional writing experience and didn’t actually write the unfortunately titled All In herself (there’s a credited co-author), had such tentacles not only into Petraeus’s world but into other elite circles in the political-media-Beltway arena. An interesting road map can be found on the book’s Amazon.com page, where we find over-the-top blurbs praising Broadwell by, among others, David Gergen (of CNN) and Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was a major cheerleader of both the Iraq War in general and Petraeus in particular. Did they know anything before the rest of us did? Did Vernon Loeb, the Washington Post editor who co-wrote All In? If you read Fred Kaplan, the military columnist for Slate who broke the news of Broadwell’s identity last week, it’s clear that Petraeus’s relationship to his biographer had raised many questions long before now. The questions that matter are not about sex but professionalism and possibly security: Petraeus apparently bent rules of procedure and decorum for Broadwell for an extended period of time, and was all but begging to be found out, it seems. .......hmmmmmmmmmmmm..........


http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/frank-rich-petraeus-affair-just-gets-stranger.html

[Pryderi]

1. 50 Shades of Grey: DC

[Fumesucker]

3. Factor that in with six degrees of separation

And you get the sixty four thousand dollar question.

[Canuckistanian]

23. No kidding

I sense the curtain has been raised just a little on the REAL world of DC power politics. This is a sick world of corruption, sex, gold-diggers and threatened blackmail.

We haven't heard the last of this.

[patrice]

2. This is a big deal. nt

[hifiguy]

4. Watching all of this unfold is going to be

fascinating.

[Hamlette]

5. I hated when they went after Clinton over sex and I hate this story too.

unless it's like what happened at BBC, sex is off limits. You trust the guy to run a war and the CIA you should trust him not to give his girlfriend secrets. If there is some evidence she is a foreign spy, maybe I care, but if they are both of age we should drop this now.

[TwilightGardener]

6. If Petraeus was screwing the hotel maid or his wife's friend, I'd agree

with you. That's tawdry stuff, but not really our concern once he's a civilian. But he was screwing a very well-connected woman who is using and spouting possibly sensitive/classified information about national security issues. And there may be a political angle. That makes it more interesting than an old skirt chaser skirt-chasing.

[Hamlette]

13. I haven't seen any evidence of that yet

lots of speculation but remember the FBI cleared him and he used his private email. Not sure how insecure that is but apparently the FBI found there was no security breach, real or potential.

[Indpndnt]

16. I'm interested to find out why Eric Cantor knew in August and what he planned to do with that info.

It's fascinating that this all broke right after the election. If Willard had won, would Cantor have used this to maneuver Petraeus about Benghazi? That's what I want to know. Where this goes. I have zero interest in the General and what he does with his little 'Private.'

[Canuckistanian]

24. THIS^^

His choice of paramour is very reckless.

[WinkyDink]

8. This is more than a garden-variety affair. Monica wasn't privy to Clinton's e-mails, e.g.

[Zoeisright]

19. ^^^ This

[smaug]

20. I despise BetrayUs

But I absolutely agree with you in this instance. It's time to get out of the 1890s mentality in this sort of activity. I understand from the reports of the FBI's investigation that no illegal or national security issues were found. It's not illegal, so why the resignation? Oh, and the FBI "whistleblower?" I hear the Nome office is quite 'white' this time of year. Permanently reassign him. And ostracize Reichert and Cantor - how dare they interfere in this! Pelosi should be haranguing Boner nonstop on demanding their removal from office, never to return to DC.

[Blue4Texas]

7. Broadwell ambition

[WinkyDink]

9. And isn't her surname interesting?

[Blue4Texas]

15. Symbols reflected in a script she wrote LOL

[MineralMan]

10. If there were an emergency and all the hotels in the DC

area and suburbs had to be evacuated immediately, very few married couples would be among the evacuees. Musical beds is the favorite game there. A helluva lot of people there are having affairs with each others' spouses in the DC area.

[riderinthestorm]

11. K&R. Great read as its pretty wide ranging conversation about the weeks events.

I like this part (even though it isn't about Petraeus)...

"You write this week about the GOP's estrangement from reality on everything from climate change to polling data. Do you see any way back for them from Truthiness to truth?"


"No. Are the real powers in the GOP going to forswear the echo chamber of Fox News (no matter how much apostate conservatives like David Frum beg them to)? Are they really going to abandon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, analysts like Michael Barone, and pollsters like Rasmussen that tell them what they want to hear? Are they going to heed climate change science? Are they going to acknowledge that they don’t have just an “outreach” problem with minorities and women but policy problems that extend beyond the party’s harsh line on immigration (which is corrected easily)? I see no signs. Those who got this election wrong and whom I discuss in my “Fantasyland” piece — typified by Karl Rove and Peggy Noonan — aren’t really giving an inch. They are trapped in their own gated community of aging white America and don’t know how to even ask directions to venture beyond it into 21st-century America. Other Republican grandees are calling the defeat “narrow” or blaming it wholly on Romney’s moderation and inept campaign operation. Obama’s victory has only temporarily nicked the conservatives’ bubble, not burst it."

[2naSalit]

17. Of course they have no intent

to change. Zealots cling to the notion of victimhood when things don't go their way and/or they are blatantly wrong. How could it be that nobody else can see how they've been wronged by fairness?

[Wellstone ruled]

12. If Rich thinks there a story

under sheets,then it has legs. Brookings Institute,Gergen,and who else? This was to be the Repuks October surprise,covering Izza's ass. Inquiring minds need to know.

[2naSalit]

14. She's being portayed as an

obsessed whack-job. That may be so but I still think that too many details about her are coming out without much fanfare about the second person, it takes two to tango and nobody's willing to say anything unpleasant about the general.

I don't buy it.


http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/broadwell-depicted-as-aggressive-and-unhinged.html?test=true

[Sheldon Cooper]

21. The old 'nuts and sluts' formula for discrediting any woman

that gets tangled up with a powerful man.

[2naSalit]

25. That's one of the first

red flags that caught my attention. He's a hero while she's the whackoslut. But in defense of the idea that she's a whackoslut, http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/13/travels_with_paula_i_a_time_to_build

However, http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021801412

I think they're both shills and are trying to cover their asses because they got busted for that and copped to an affair as a distraction. And she's not copped to the affair since hasn't made a statement and nobody knows where she or her family are... maybe a rendition event of some kind not ordered from the WH but the HR_Rs? I think they were exposed by somebody and now it's cover up time. Petraeus isn't saying much, all he said was an "extramarital affair" and hasn't disclosed who that was with. I think it's all a distraction, even though some of the banter is amusing, the facts are facts and many facts are missing at this point.

I wonder where the Broadwell clan is. Are they house guests of the defeated candidate or the alleged victim of the nasty emails? Camping out with HamRove? Or "disappearing" as we speak? The more I hear, the more suspicious it seems.

[ljm2002]

18. "...the unfortunately titled All In..."

...now that is hilarious!

[ThoughtCriminal]

22. Can I add here: Stop appointing Republican darlings to be "Bi-Partisan"?

Really. It's not helping and you end up with corrupt, incompetent tools that end up screwing up something vital.

[bullwinkle428]

27. +1000. (•cough•StanMcChrystal•cough)

[quaker bill]

28. It is interesting

Setting up Dems for sexual compromise has been a trick in the repug kit for sometime. It is clear to me that they never had a shot with BHO as he is just too disciplined for that. Perhaps Petraeus was as far up the ladder as they could get. If they had the dirt and thought they could use it to lean on him at the Bengahzi hearings, all that is pretty much done at this point.