CIA chief Petraeus falls – for a girl

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Head spook and COIN pro admits affair (with biographer)

David Petraeus became head spook after retiring from the army

David Petraeus, one of the biggest stars of the US military, has resigned as director of the CIA after 14 months because of an affair discovered during a security check.

“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,” he said in his letter to staff.

The woman was later named as Paula Broadwell, who wrote a recent hagiographic book about him.

David Petraeus devised the strategy that turned around the US fortunes in Iraq after having supervised an overhaul of military strategy on counter-insurgency. He was the most famous, and perhaps most strategically astute, American military commander in recent times, since Colin Powell of the First Gulf War. Few could have imagined that his end would come as the result of a morals scandal, writes Fred Kaplan at Slate.

Like Powell, Petraeus was also touted as a potential presidential candidate. Detractors in the military and the White House regarded him as a “showboat” and excessively ambitious.

Paula Broadwell, who is also married, was a research assistant at Harvard who decided to turn her PhD dissertation into a book on Petraeus. “It had long been rumored that something was going on between Petraeus and Broadwell”, says Slate. “Her book is widely regarded as a valentine to the general.” — From the Slate piece by Fred Kaplan

The woman he fell for


 

3 thoughts on “CIA chief Petraeus falls – for a girl”

  2. This is what happened when you are ruled by the dick hanging between your legs n not the gray matter up in between your ears (the brain)…………………!!! This has happened to Presidents, Kings n leaders of the world n this will not be the last either.

  3. Let’s not get too hasty in CNN and FOx-like touting of Petraeus’ achievements.

    Michael Hastings, author of several books on the US military refers to the string of failures and even scandals behind Petreaus: a disastrous Iraqi training program, a worsening of the war in Afghanistan since he ran it, the attempt to convert the CIA into a para-military force, the series of misleading statements about the Benghazi attack and the revealed large CIA presence in Libya. To that could be added the constant killing of innocent people in the Muslim world without a whiff of due process, transparency or oversight.

    Commenting on the inquiry on the Marines urinating on the corpses of three dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, Hastings said that there was a breakdown in discipline and Petraeus who was top commander there should be put on trial.

    There you have it. Its more than just an issue of being ruled by the wrong head.

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