Monday, November 12, 2012

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

...some famous US General-turn-spymaster just did himself in over an affair with his [latest] biographer.

Suprised?

It isn't like having some young highly intelligent, high achieving, highly attractive person of your sexual preference feed your ego by following you around for ages endlessly asking about your thoughts on things s/he can put in a book all-about-you doesn't have DANGER written all over it in big fat adulterous letters.

Power is bizarre. 


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was surprised when the General was chosen to head up the CIA. The man was as close to a national celebrity as anyone outside of Hollywood could be. He was also a very self assured person who was used to giving orders and not taking advice.
All these things make him the very opposite of what I would think an efficient spymaster should be.
When I read a recent report that had a quote that real spooks are more "Smiley's people" than James Bond that just reinforced my views.
Now maybe they'll appoint someone to the post who is more unassuming, anonymous and experienced in the role.

Simon said...

hi Boris...very true, and now I think we need a warning on the cover of that "biography."
Caution, objectivity in doubt, and surge means viagra...;)

Boris said...

harebell,
There's indications that the CIA is starting to look more like a paramilitary group than a spy service. They've got their own fleet of armed drone aircraft (strike command) and carry out air strikes around the world, and employ large numbers of former special forces types, and generally do a lot of bangy-shooty stuff. Maybe the post-9/11 institutonal culture is more James Bond that George Smiley. Not entirely surprised the got a general too.

Simon, ya, I wonder how they didn't see that coming. Imagine being the FBI dude reading those emails!


Silverfox said...

The only real surprise is that Patraeus' little extramarital peccadilloes have become common knowledge at all, given that the FBI had no intention whatsoever of ever making the squabble between one woman he’s definitely had fling with sending some harassing and threatening emails to another woman, (she believed he also had something going with on the side), public.

In fact the only reason we do know is because that tasty bit of information was simply too good to pass up and not pass along to the Republican leader of the House by some anonymous whistleblower whose real intentions we can only hazard a guess at.

So it may be two and counting in this can of worms and I suspect the good General is in a full retreat because there’s probably more he’s diddled and fiddled along his way to the top as well as numerous others he may have tried to but not quite as successfully that may now be sufficiently emboldened by this little scandal to finally make that fact known.

Moreover, the FBI, the CIA, and the military are all going to be on the carpet and in for a good drubbing and drag through the mud before the dust finally settles on this one and some high placed people in all of them are going to have a very tough time convincing anyone that they didn’t know or didn’t deliberately try to keep a lid on it.

So he’s only the first and certainly not the last of the mainstream media’s iron men and political poster-boys that is going to turn out to have feet of clay or suffer a well-deserved fall from grace.

We might as well get used to it because once the finger pointing starts there’s inevitably more dirt under the carpet than whatever it took to simply get it going.

Steve said...

Its a coup d tat, the top ranks of the US military is undergoing wild churn. The question is who is behind it?

Renter said...

How young is young? She's 40 years old and successful in her own right! This framing of her being a sweet young thing doesn't work for me. This is much more like "two grown adults with very similar interests who are together a lot being separated from their families and succumbing to mutual pants feelings".

Anonymous said...

power the ultimate aphrodisiac.

lets get over people's sex lives. As long as they don't get blackmailed, no harm no foul on the national security front. On the home front with their domestic partner. However, I expect that his wife has known about a lot of such incidents over the yrs.

On the one hand we put a lot of emphasis on sex in our society & if you are caught banging some one other than your domestic partner everyone thinks you're a scum bag. On the other hand if the organization's game rules include a clause on no sexual fooling around, then hey he broke the rules.

The lovely ladies most likely use their "assets" to achieve their own goals. The men should watch out. If you are going to "stray" find a mistress who will keep her mouth shut.