Do you really think it has anything to do with a former affair ? Do you really think that the Obots did not vett him and find out about the affair before he was appointed ? Do you think the adm. Would time his departure on the day the President was making his case on the approaching fiscal cliff ?

What do you think really happened here ?


I'll give you my take.

This isn't a case of beauty killing the beast . More likely he decided to leave now with the looming Nov. 15 scheduled Senate and House close door hearings on Benghazi.
This abrupt resignation frees him from any blackmail so he can come clean on Benghazi . I'm convinced that the affair was being held as leverage against Petraeus by the adm.The news is saying that he now won't have to testify . BS . He will be called to testify under oath eventually .
Previously he testified to Congress on Benghazi ;and toed the company line that it was about a YouTube video . Then he was NOT under oath. This time he will be .
The adm. Has a lot at stake in this long and short term. Of immediate concern is that they would like to replace Evita with Ambassador Rice at State . Also short term ,the cover-up is unravelling rapidly and among the casualties are potentially Tom Donilon,Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs, Biden ,and who know?? Dare I say the President himself ?

Even if they survive ,their policy for the ummah is exposed. This is not only about Benghazi, but also goes to the administration's secret policy in the Arab Spring of aiding warlords , regardless of their Jihadist connections. Had the compliant press done an ounce of their homework ,or honestly reported what is well known in open source ,we would've seen a different outcome Tuesday (maybe) .

Hmmmm, I don't know. SIC says there are no plans for him to testify and insiders are saying it's all about the affair. Apparently the affair was with his biographer who is under FBI investigation for trying to gain access to his emails and classified info. Time will tell, either way Benghazi is going to dog this administration.

The stink is so great even he could survive it this time

Steve ,
Either he will testify next week ;or he will be a rebuttal witness at some future date . Will Petraeus talk? Yes, if he is called in under oath He can't dodge it . South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy has made it clear that Petraeus will be called .

Generals have affairs ;Patton had them ,Ike had them . They were not exactly secrets and it would be difficult to keep them secret.

Did Obama Ben Ghazi sic the FBI on him after he publicly said "we weren't the ones who denied military support to Americans under attack in Benghazi"? Did they time the announced resignation or were they blindsided ? Once he came clean on the affair and resigned ,they have nothing to hold him to the party line.

Oh I bet he testifies. I'm just waiting...

Yep, looks like he was brought down by a woman.

The FBI discovered Petraus e-mails "by chance" . Call me skeptical .

Now Evita won't testify because it 'conflicts with her schedule'.

Skepticism is good. Would say they can only dodge so long but then I remember F&F.

Check out this video of Broadwell addressing an alumni association... about the 35-36 min mark (don't waste your time with the rest ) . She gets a question about Benghazi and reveals a possible motive to the attacks that I frankly have not heard anywhere else .She says the CIA station had taken prisoners ? Was there a secret detention operation there ?
How would she know ? Was it real info that she was given by Petraeus ;or perhaps false info fed to her ?

Alumni Symposium 2012 Paula Broadwell - YouTube


Who was Broadwell ? She is a West Point grad, Army vet and national security professional... that sounds like a potential spook to me ;and of course ;sexual blackmail is a tried and true method of spycraft .

The FBI was investigating the CIA director and Obama wasn't informed until Thursday ? Is that plausible ?

So Bengazhi, a base for special rendition then, and Patraeus resigning; is that a smokescreen before the whole thing became too hot. I'm a cynic and so a resignation so soon after the election, a lot of smoke there

Yeah they are trying to make us believe that the CIA Director and former 4 star General was using personal Gmail for company business ? Please !

No, if the CIA director was being investigated you can bet your a$$ the White House knew.

You are just not comfortable with the idea that the President might know something you don't, are you? Why is it you will not allow him to do his job?

Bwa ha ha!! If he had done his job the ambassador would have had the security beefed up as he requested. Why don't you just let Congress do their job and get to the bottom of this?

Reality is, is it their job? I thought their job was to approve the budget and legislate. I'm not stopping anyone from enquiring into anything, I am suggesting that executive authority rests with the President and he should be left to exercise it, what the Congress is doing is indulging in a political witchhunt, chasing smoke trails of their own making. Do you think he doesn't have the facts on Benghazi? That he knows whether someone failed in their job? Perhaps it was Petraeus, or Evita, interestingly both are moving on. Has it claimed two scalps so far?

The reality is yes, oversight is the job of Congress.

Even that good liberal Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, agrees Congress should have been involved.

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The top Senate Democrat on intelligence issues said Sunday she would investigate the FBI's handling of the inquiry, and why the matter wasn't shared earlier with Congress.

"It was like a lightning bolt," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D. Calif.) on "Fox News Sunday." "This is something that could have had an effect on national security. I think we should have been told."

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You do get that even though Obama does do his job quite often as the imperial president that he is not king. He's still subject to oversight himself.

Executive authority is not well understood. Congress legislates, the Executive implements. Oversight is checking the programs are implemented not chasing after every little detail. What Congress is about is micro managing

I understand executive authority just fine, and when the sh*t hits the fan it's Congress' job to investigate. Period.

How many fans do you have over there it seems you spend all your time investigating shlt

The President cannot have a secret foreign policy unilaterally implemented without oversight. Many members of the Reagan Adm ended up in jail because the policy known as Iran/Contra was executed in secret.

I can't believe you think it would be perfectly acceptable for an imperial President . As I understand it executive authority in your system rests in the crown of England , Would you accept a decision by the monarch that was not discussed with the PM and the Parliament ? No... I didn't think so.

Your understanding of our system is imperfect. The executive authority in our systems rests in the Executive Council, the Governor-General(representative of the crown of Australia not Britain) acting upon the advice of Ministers of the Crown. Each of those Ministers of the Crown are elected representatives, not appointed officials, who must answer to the parliament as a whole, and only to select committees on a few specific occasions where the parliament delegates its authority. For practical day to day operations, the Prime Minister oversees the process and the Ministers in caucus agree the course of action

A good example of how it works is that a Royal Commission has just been instigated to examine child abuse in various institutions and will be wide ranging enough to enquire into police handling of cases. No Parliamentary Select Committee could investigate in sufficient detail. Parliament has delegated its authority to a judicial process. This has gotten beyond a state process because bodies have acted across state borders to usurp the course of justice

In 1975 the monarch of Australia sacked the PM and the government of the day because they no longer had the confidence of the people and could not guarantee supply, the equivalent of your fiscal cliff. This forced an immediate election at which the people upheld the action taken. Your ideas of what we might accept or not accept are way off

Good summary Clete. Tom is at least trying to understand what makes Australians tick. Having said that I also think he is one of the very few that makes the effort.

There is so much misconception over there about Australia.

The Crown of England, The Privy Council of England, The Parliament of Great Britain... whatever. They all have zero ability to influence our parliament. We are a sovereign nation. We make our own laws.

Tut

And since Britain hug us out to dry in WWII our focus has shifted and our ties are a little looser.

Yes Tom does engage in discussions with us, the others are more local focused, this is why I took some time to correct his impressions

To sum it up... your Executive Council is accountable to Paliament. For the same reason ;our POTUS/CIC cannot engage in a secret foreign policy without Congressional oversight. The whole Libya adventure was ill-conceived from the beginning ;and one of the big omissions was the President's vagrant violation of the provisions of the 'War Power's Act ' ,which actually allows him some flexibilty for independent action .But the act is very clear that after a short period ,the President has to make a full report .

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how many fans do you have over there it seems you spend all your time investigating shlt

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If the Obama administration wasn't so full of sh!t there would be no need for investigations. Back in 2006 when Dems took control of the House and the Senate I recall that part of their campaign agenda was they were going to investigate the hell out of everything, even impeach Bush. I'm not moved by your objections to getting to the bottom of this.

People died, Obama lied - time to come clean.

Besides ;another 4 star is collateral damage. The leadership at DOD and CIA are going down faster than the Stalin purge that began with the Tukhachevsky set up .

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Originally Posted by tomder55

To sum it up .... your Executive Council is accountable to Paliament. For the same reason ;our POTUS/CIC cannot engage in a secret foreign policy without Congressional oversight. The whole Libya adventure was ill-conceived from the beginning ;and one of the big omissions was the President's vagrant violation of the provisions of the 'War Power's Act ' ,which actually allows him some flexibilty for independent action .But the act is very clear that after a short period of time ,the President has to make a full report .

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No Tom it is only convention that keeps the tie alive, like your President our Govenor-General is Commander in Chief. The office signs into law the bills the parliament has passed but can refuse and send them back. But you see we rarely get into the situation where there is unilateral action. The office is A-political, it has no alliegences to a party and a prominent person is usually appointed.

I hope you get that report in due course and it clarifies why your embassy was so vunerable. I see there is now more fallout from this Patraeus affair, you may need a clean sweep at the top of the military

No kidding... starting with all the political appointees like Leon Panetta ;and probably most of the Joint Chiefs . Also I can only think of a small handful of commanding Generals who have served well in the last decade. There are many very qualified Jr Officers who could step up and fill the General ranks .

No army can beat the US, but a bunch of cat fighting females can strip the stars off the generals.

It goes deeper than that . Our Generals generally have not been held accountable for their own failures . Tom Ricks writes about it in this month's Atlantic . He's right ;and these idiotic scandals just illustrate the degree of the problem .

General Failure - Thomas E. Ricks - The Atlantic

That is because every failure you have is a political failure, your army doesn't fail in the field so much as it fails in the fan room. Your generals have support only so long as they have results. You think junior officers could do as well. Guts and glory maybe, but a cool head and keeping themselves out of the mire. Patraeus was successful because he rethunk strategy, now he is crucified for being human. When will you yanks learn to keep it buttoned up?

I love the smell of B/S in the morning, it smells like victory

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Patraeus was successful because he rethunk strategy

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That's correct .Early in in Iraq you did not see the insuregency in Petraeus sector near Mosul that you saw in the rest of the Sunni and Shia sections of the country. That wasn't an accident . He thought ahead about what needed to be done when the invasion phase was over . Something that the author points out that Generals like Tommy Franks didn't .

You missed the point, it was Patraeus experience that counted, something junior officers lack

Ummm I think the Army is run by the Colonels an LT Colonels . The Generals are supposed to have strategic vision ,a trait I haven't seen often in the current crop .

Meanwhile it's great to see Evita has her priorities straight.
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Hope she has a great time wine tasting Down Under .

Generals are flawed like all us humans and deserve no higher pedestals than any of us. He screwed up with his tabloid behavior. But we are no better with our tabloid mentality.

We hate it when our heroes are caught with their pants down.

The sexual angle is a side show .it does the adm a favor by diverting from the bigger stories related to Benghazi .

Well Tom, conspiracy theories aside, do you think it was staged to divert attention with Patraeus the sacrificial goat or does this just mean the administration in inept in its selection of its various leaders?

What was an ambassador doing at an unprotected consulate that had security issue before? With no contingent of bodyguard?

Exactly... except it was not a consulate... and I defy you to find any adm quote using the word . What they continue to call it is a 'mission'.You should ask yourself some more questions . Why did Petraus have secret meetings with Turkish intelligence on Sept 3 ?

AFP: CIA chief visits Turkey for regional talks: official

Why a couple days later did Ambassador Stevens meet a Turkish counterpart on Sept 11 before the attack?
We know that one of Stevens jobs was to oversee the destruction of Qdaffy's cache of weapons. In truth ;some of the inoperable ones were indeed destroyed . But the CIA operation there was to divert the weapons through Turkey ,to arm anti-Assad insurgents . It was also there to recruit insurgents to fight in Syria.

So Tom as you have all the facts would you care to back it up with some references and why would Al Qaeda object to the rebels in Syria being armed. It all seems a little twisted to me. If what you want to tell us is the CIA is up to its old tricks arming terrorists and overthrowing regimes, this is not news. Are you sure there weren't weapons closer than Libya with which to arm Syrians, after all the conflict has been going on for eigtheen months. Your next theory will no doubt be that Gaddafi had to be overthrown to arm Syrian rebels when no doubt he would have done it for free