Good Riddance Petraeus

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pundit-Tears-for-Petraeus-by-Ray-McGovern-121110-349.html



Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.


Good Riddance Petraeus
By Ray McGovern
OpEdNews Op Eds 11/10/2012 at 12:21:53

A day after the surprise announcement that CIA Director David Petraeus was resigning because of marital infidelity, the pundits continue to miss the supreme irony. None other than the head of the CIA (and former bemedaled four-star general) has become the first really big fish netted by the intrusive monitoring of the communications of American citizens implemented after 9/11.

It is unclear whether it is true that, according to initial reports, Petraeus's alleged mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell, was caught trying to hack into his e-mail. What does seem clear is that the FBI discovered that she had "unusual access" (to borrow the delicate wording of this morning's New York Times) to Petraeus during his time as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan from July 2010 to July 2011. The potential for compromise of sensitive information is equally clear.

Among those lionizing/eulogizing Petraeus on the morning after his resignation was Washington Post columnist (and longtime CIA apologist) David Ignatius, who argued that Petraeus "achieved genuinely great things." Ignatius lamented Petraeus's admission of the extramarital affair with the poignancy you might find in a novel by Leo Tolstoy or Victor Hugo about an admirable but ill-fated hero. Not surprisingly, Establishment pundits are disconsolate that their beloved David Petraeus has been brought down in such a tawdry way. They are already at work trying to salvage his legacy as the implementer of George W. Bush's much-heralded "successful surge" in Iraq (even though the sacrifice of nearly 1,000 more dead U.S. soldiers did little more than provide a "decent interval" between Bush's departure from office in 2009 and the final U.S. withdrawal/defeat at the end of 2011).

Ignatius, too, was a writer who was embedded with Petraeus and was dazzled by his charm. Ignatius wrote that he "spent nearly three weeks traveling with [Petraeus] during his CENTOM assignment, and saw how he fused the political and military aspects of command, as he met with sheiks and presidents and intelligence chiefs, in a way that should have been captured in a textbook for future commanders."