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| One Cheer for Gen. Petraeus |
| 2015-01-13 |
| By Spengler [PJMedia]. The Obama administration is still deciding whether to bring felony charges against former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, according to Attorney General Eric Holder. As a senior DOJ official in the Clinton administration, Holder arranged a presidential pardon for fugitive tax cheat Marc Rich. As attorney general, he ignored the unconscionable use of the IRS against conservative-leaning organizations seeking tax-exempt status. This is a political prosecution. Petraeus’ supposed crime, leaking classified information to a girlfriend, is the sort of victimless infraction that never has been brought to the point of criminal prosecution at any time in the past. Petraeus’ offense, rather, is political: He is credited with the 2006-2007 surge that in Republican mythology won the Iraq War before President Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. One risks being run out of the Republican Party on a rail for questioning this mythology, but someone has to say that the emperor has no clothes. Petraeus improved the optics of the Iraq mess at the end of the second Bush administration, to be sure, but he also helped set in motion the catastrophe that has now engulfed the Levant. Mind you, IMO, Levant is was way overdue for a catastrophe The story already has been told in depth by Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Daniel Bolger, whose memoir Why We Lost appeared last year. I reviewed it in Asia Times Online after observing that not one of the mainstream media reviews mentioned the most important assertions in Gen. Bolger’s excellent book: First, that American success in imposing majority rule on Iraq in 2006 set in motion the Sunni insurgency, and second, that America’s sponsorship of the Sunnis in 2007-2008 (the “Sunni Awakening” built with American funds as part of the “surge”) made the insurgency intractable. ...Petraeus doesn’t deserve criminal charges. But he shouldn’t occupy a pedestal in the Republican pantheon, either. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 Everything in this administration must be viewed through the prism of political value. Petraeus is being chilled just as the new House and Senate are looking into Benghazi for example, and Brennan and Rice and ValJar are using the threat of prosecution to still any insight into what happened, and the complicity of Hillary/DoS, the WH and the clueless Champ. |
| Posted by: NoMOreBS 2015-01-13 14:04 |
| #3 Read up on the visceral attacks on Washington, Jackson, Grant, et al by contemporaries. It's what they accomplished that made their credentials. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2015-01-13 08:30 |
| #2 ..."occupy a pedestal in the Republican pantheon ?" I seriously doubt he would shame himself in such a manner. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-01-13 05:38 |
| #1 Let's not forget Sandy Berger stealing classified documents from the National Archives in 2003, by stuffing the down his pants - and then lying about it to Justice Department investigators. His punishment, according to Wikipedia: "Berger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material on April 1, 2005. Berger was fined $50,000, sentenced to serve two years of probation and 100 hours of community service, and stripped of his security clearance for 3 years." |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2015-01-13 04:17 |