David Petraeus affair scandal part of a White House cover up?

Paula Broadwell regrets her affair with David Petraeus. Will the public buy it?

Paula Broadwell, David Petraeus mistress returns home with her husband. Still together for now.

Paula Broadwell, David Petraeus mistress turns up in public with husband.

Jill Kelley would like to remind you that Paula Broadwell is a criminal.

Oh really? Jill Kelley got to visit the White house three times in the last three months with her twin sister. But how?

Jill Kelley writes pleading emails to Tampa mayor claiming she is receiving threats all night.

So what’s Fred Humphries the shirtless FBI agent really hiding?

Paula Broadwell’s emails to Jill Kelley revealed. Very catty indeed…

David Petraeus’ wife can’t believe the shame Paula Broadwell has caused.

As information begins to seep out as to the actual details of an illicit affair between the head of the CIA, David Petraeus, a widely decorated and revered army veteran and that of Paula Broadwell, an equally well regarded army officer, questions are beginning to be asked if the revelation of their affair was purposefully timed to cause great embarrassment to Petraeus, thus allowing the White House to side step delicate upcoming testimonials pertaining to Senate enquiries into the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which saw four Americans killed including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

The attack it is thought by some is the result of complicit collaborations with Al Qaeda and Syrian rebels which Petraeus is believed to have orchestrated that backfired on US operatives. Something that hardly stands to rest well with the public who have been led to believe that they are at war with Al Qaeda, never mind now collaborating with them.

That said it may well be that the White House in seeking to save face has decided at this opportune time to reveal Petraeus’ affair to the public despite it being said to be widely known by insiders for months. Which forces the question why did the FBI wait so long to release details of Petraeus’ affair to Congressional heads and later the public? And why for that matter is President Barack Obama is resisting from acknowledging whether he knew of the scandal weeks prior to its public revelation and whether he may have delayed the release of such information until the Presidential elections were conveniently over, even if Republicans probably had more to lose with that story dwarfing Mitt Romney‘s desperate attempt at the White House. Or did they?

Which raises other tenuous question, why was it even necessary for the affair between Petraeus and Broadwell to even be brought to anyone’s attention at all in the first place?

If internal investigations at the time had decided they had no criminal case why then drop the bomb the way it was, especially since no laws had been broken, unless of course it was perceived that Petraeus had to go (discussed below)and his indiscretion served as the perfect foil against a man who by now had too much on the White House whom by now may or may have not decided that their man in Havana as a matter of expression had now become a liability.

And then there’s this via The New Yorker which adds mystery to recent disclosures and who exactly knew what and when and for that reason why:

But what, exactly, was this F.B.I. employee trying to expose? Was he blowing the whistle on his bosses? If so, why? Was he dissatisfied with their apparent exoneration of Petraeus? Given that this drama was playing out in the final days of a very heated Presidential campaign, and he was taking a potentially scandalous story to the Republican leadership in Congress, was there a political motive?

One view brought forth by the atlantic is the idea that as time moved forward and the administration had increasingly allowed the CIA to begin to operate covert paramilitary missions, including drone strikes which would have once been outside its ambit that had by now surreptitiously become common fodder questions began to arise if whether the CIA had now put itself and the White house by extension at peril:

The militarization of the CIA raises various questions. For example, if the CIA is psychologically invested in a particular form of warfare–and derives part of its budget from that kind of warfare–can it be trusted to impartially assess the consequences, both positive and negative, direct and indirect?

But in case you’re inclined to scoff at the idea of transparency and let the government and its department heads do the dirty work you have no real interest in learning about comes the following:

These drone strikes are a radical departure from America’s traditional use of violence in pursuit of national security. In contrast to things like invading or bombing a country as part of some well-defined and plausibly finite campaign, our drone strike program is diffuse and, by all appearances, endless. Every month, God knows how many people are killed in the name of the US in any of several countries, and God knows how many of these people were actually militants, or how many of the actual militants were actual threats to the US, or how much hatred the strikes are generating or how much of that hatred will eventually morph into anti-American terrorism. It might behoove us, before we accept this nauseating spectacle as a permanent feature of life, to fill in as many of these blanks as possible. You can’t do that in the dark.

In the end setting foreign policy and going about imperialistic expansion at the guise of liberty and democracy has become a means to an end within itself almost to the complete disregard of laws and standards that the US is so often claiming that it wishes others to adhere to, and maybe it was just time for David Petraeus (who was probably being kept tags on) to finally go as head of the CIA as the heat of complicit behavior became too much for various insiders to muster….

Even David Petraeus must be ruefully smiling at the irony, live by the sword, die by the sword…