The resignation of CIA director David Petraeus, a retired Army four-star general, has the makings of a true Watergate repeat, with the proviso that no one died in Watergate.
Presumably Petraeus could, if he wished, if his loyalties are not entirely to the political figure of the moment, explain everything that happened in Benghazi, from the consulate’s reason for existence to the murders of Ambassador Stevens and the others.
But will he? “Betray US” was not invented by the Left, in their full-page ads in the New York Times, but by some of Petraeus’s fellow serving officers long before he won his stars. They felt that he was not a true leader, in that he did not look after his troops, that he put himself first, that he was a political soldier always.
At the time President Bush appointed him to save the bacon in Iraq, I hoped they were wrong, the few of them I knew, merely bitter over old slights or differences of opinion. And the general did perform memorably well in the Surge.
Now we’ll surely see the truth of his character. There would seem to be nothing preventing him from testifying to Congress. He himself has publicized the fault (infidelity) that might have prevented him from being candid, if others wished to use it to blackmail him into silence.
Now we’ll see whether the general really is a true leader of more than a winning moment in an otherwise lost campaign, a campaign lost by the man who would seem to have the most to lose in the Benghazi affair, President Obama.
UPDATE: PJMedia’s Michael Ledeen raises some obvious and not-so-obvious questions. For instance: “Don’t you love counterintelligence? You start with the theory that he was blackmailed out of office, and you quickly move to a theory that he was blackmailed into remaining in office. That’s why ‘wilderness of mirrors’ is such a good description…”
MORE: Michael Yon, who knows and has worked with both Petraeus and his mistress, Paula Broadwell (herself a former Army officer) offers his positive thoughts about them here.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Are not all general officers “political?” Is that not how they become generals?
I don’t know if being surprised by this particular general’s failings is an officer thing or not, but being an enlisted man, it is painfully obvious which officers are political, versus those who act with more consideration for their subordinates.
The latter are encountered much more seldom than the former. Simply a fact, sir.
So, no surprises from my viewpoint.
They don’t become generals, necessarily, by being political. But it’s generally understood that they have to satisfy the politicians to get a second and subsequent stars.
I agree that, when I was in the Army 1967-71, fewer officers were known for taking care of their troops than not, especially senior officers. But it was the ideal, especially for junior officers.
I’ll never forget the colonel high aloft in a helicopter above a fire fight I was in trying to micromanage me. I tried telling him his transmissions were breaking up, etc. When that only made him angry, I had the radioman change frequencies to get rid of him.