Monday, November 19, 2012

Petraeus Scorecard

Ooh, my head is spinning.  Let me see if I can sort out the big-and-small in L'Affaire Petraeus.  In no particular order, and surely not complete:
  • Whether we should be delighted to be rid of a guy who had turned the CIA into a covert fourth branch of the military (and legitimated drone attacks--though these may be two separate issues).
  • Whether should be scandalized (or darkly amused) at the ease with which the security state (in the avatar of the FBI) bit its own tail.
  • Whether we should care at how fast the media (and we the readers) jumped to probably-wrong conclusions about the Marine general and the topless FBI guy.
  • Whether "support the troops" includes feeding cavier to the top brass.
  • Whether an honorary consul is entitled to inviolability?
  • Whether Jon Stewart is the "worst journalist in the world"?
  • Whether we should be darkly amused that the world is still neck-deep in social-climbing arrivistes, resume-padding-vixens, rogue cops, self-promoting alphas, vain and foolish alphas (more than one category may apply). 
  • What we should make of the fact that ten gazillion journalists new all along that Petraeus was a self-promoting jerk, but never bothered to tell us until last week?
  • Whether anybody other than Chuck Norris can turn water into bottled water?
  • Whether Tom Ricks is doubling down to protect his franchise?   Cf. link.
  • What to make out of the fact that Eric Cantor behaved like a gentleman?
  • Whether we should be surprised that men think with their--oh, forget it, this one is too easy.
Did I miss anything important?

2 comments:

Toni said...

I think you just about covered it. Damn. Everything one tries to say about L'Affaire Petraeus is a double entendre.

dilbert dogbert said...

I am more interested in how a domestic dispute turned into a FBI investigation. WTF!!
My take is there should be a couple fewer FBI agents in Florida/DC -Pronto.