[V8] A fish stinks....

[Roger M. Woodbury]

Scott:  I am mildly surprised that this story continues to grow wings and sprouts as more and more disconnected people, places and events are drawn in. This is largely the manipulation of the mass media and a greater and greater ill-educated population hungry for salacious “news” to drool over.  

But the issues surrounding Patraeus and Broadwell are not minor and now exposed, are indeed shameful.  Whether or not the French would laugh is not really relevant. There are so many differences between the cultures in this country and in France that I haven’t time to count them.  

In this case, there is a published standard of behavior that Broadwell and Patraeus swore oaths to, promising that those standards of conduct would govern their professional and personal lives.  This code, in their case, originating at the US Military Academy and then continuing during service as military officers is further reinforced by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and is covered under Article (I think it is, 164), generally, “conduct that brings discredit upon the service.”  

Technically, Patraeus gets a pass. He was a civilian during the affair. Broadwell does not get a pass. She was an officer in the US Army Reserve and she must meet the standards she swore an oath to uphold.  She was promoted to Light colonel in August so she was screwing while still in the Army.  Not being on active duty is not really an excuse although undoubtedly there will be no prosecution involving her unless she was holding some sort of classified information on her computers which the FBI has seized.

It’s clear Patraeus committed a breach of security by his exercise of poor judgement.  He allowed Broadwell access to classified information that she was not entitled to see.  The reason this is obvious is that possessing a security clearance does not give anyone the right to view any or ALL classified documents.  Classifications merely indicate the individual has passed the background investigation necessary to hold the clearance, but the right to use the clearance to see classified material comes from having a “need to know” the information. Broadwell as Patraeus probably holds a top secret clearance, but as his biographer not on duty assigned to his command, she had no “need to know” ANY classified information she might have seen while in Afghanistan or anywhere else.  

It seems that the classified documents she had in her possession may have been some she was authorized to have and were not given her by Patraeus.  So, the inference is that Patraeus and seems likely true, that classified information came from someone other than Patraeus.

Broadwell removed classified documents from whatever secure facility they originated from and kept them in an unclassfied location: her personal computer. This is a violation of US Code also.  Probably not going to be an issue here, but will likely mean that her US Army commission and service will end right here and now, if it didn’t end in August with her promotion to Lt. Colonel. She was actually promoted to Lt. Colonel a bit late in the reserve promotion scheme...twenty years of total Federal service time and for an Academy graduate, probably a promotion at time of retirement.  Whatever.

The fact that sexual indiscretions are commonplace in human history is true but not really relevant here.  Patraeus made it a point throughout his thirty-seven year career to uphold the standards of the professional military officer and preached the importance of that to service members in his command. This is pretty well documented. So what happened was when he retired from the Army and became a very high profile official in the intelligence community, charged with supervising of the US Central Intelligence Agency, he felt comfortable about throwing out the standards of thirty-seven years for a little fast pussy, offering humiliation to his service, his country, his wife and his children.  Simply put he KNEW what he was doing was wrong FOR HIM, and he did it anyway, figuring good old Holly would never know.

This will soon fade away.  Patraeus will be called to testify before Congress about Benghazi, Broadwell will sink in oblivion after the tabloids announce her divorce from her Doctor husband, and Holly Patraeus will probably forgive her husband, choosing the comfort of the way things are the same way that Hilary Clinton did after being humiliated by her husband.  General Allen has nothing to do with this.  If he sent flirtatious emails to Jill Kelley, shame on him, but of no matter except to the tabloids.  It is Patraeus who violated his own code as well as that of the professional military service and as I said in my original email, someone wearing four stars on his collar is not allowed to make such mistakes.

During my time in uniform in various locations including one war, I saw a whole lot of screwing around.  It was common in SE Asia to have a local female perform all the normal duties of a wife, and I saw many who do it.  Well, it was way over there, and there was no press coverage, and no harm, no foul, right?  Well, I don’t agree.  In the case of Patraeus the colateral damage is to people who never should have been involved at all. They are the family members of both “players” as well as the rest of us who must be reminded once again that we in the US like to preach high standards of moral integrity to the rest of the world but are unable more and more to keep up any of those standards ourselves.

Roger

From: Scott Justusson 
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 7:27 PM
To: rmwoodbury at fairpoint.net ; cobram at juno.com 
Cc: V8 at audifans.com 
Subject: Re: [V8] A fish stinks....

Roger
When I see these things, I know the rest of the world laughs at us, especially the French.  A mistress while in office wouldn't even make the newspapers.  You take your 'wife' to functions, and your mistress is who you sleep with...  The larger scandals don't involve lust and infidelity, they are much more basic violations of trust and integrity....  And go back through every branch of military and all branches of government.  Examples are easy to find:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scandals_in_the_United_States

And, those are just the one's we know about.  I think the French have it right, there's nothing to see here, and Patraeus has nothing on many Commanders in Chief going back a long time.   Even JFK managed to handle Bay of Pigs at the very time he was known to partake in extramarital indiscretions.

I can't draw the connections you do to this 'ideal' standard of conduct, because lust goes back in World history so far, it makes the very thought of iimpeccable integrity, have no real value, only a symbolic idealism to a very well documented reality. 

Did his allowing her 'unfettered access' (pun intended) violate National Security interests?  I doubt it did anymore than having a large number of Military Officers in the room itself.

My .02

Scott J
92 v8




-----Original Message-----
From: Roger M. Woodbury <rmwoodbury at fairpoint.net>
To: cobram <cobram at juno.com>
Cc: V8 <V8 at audifans.com>
Sent: Mon, Nov 12, 2012 8:27 pm
Subject: Re: [V8] A fish stinks....


Oh, quite to the contrary. It is ALL about nookie.  It is a violation of the 
Universal Code of Military Justice for a service member to engage in conduct 
that is detrimental to the welfare of the service.  The military services 
uniformly stress the sanctity of marriage (yeah, I know that isn’t worth much in 
our culture today).  A General Officer is supposed to exemplify the highest 
standards of the best behavior and since Patraeus abandoned ANY sort of standard 
of conduct that preserves the overall concept of honor, from a military culture 
standard, he is right at the leading edge of the nose of the fish.

For that matter, the slut who opened her legs for him is also a commissioned 
officer (Reserve).  While The General is retired and probably committed his 
indiscretion after leaving the service, SHE didn’t.  I wonder if she might 
receive punishment under the UCMJ.  I hope so, but probably it won’t happen.

I feel for the Mrs Patraeus who has been a loyal military wife for thirty-seven 
years.  She deserved better and I hope she extracts a very high price, however 
the revenge loaf is sliced.  

Then there is the son who is a junior officer in the US Army.  It will be 
unlikely that he will enjoy a career of long duration now.  

As far as Benghazi is concerned, there probably are a whole lot of hands that 
need to be slapped over that, but Patraeus’ may not have a whole lot to do about 
it.  Rather the error was appointing an ex-military officer with little real 
background in the intelligence business to enter that snake pit.  If someone 
really needs hanging over Benghazi, she probably sits in an the SEcretary of 
State’s office.  T hose were “State’s” people, after all.

Oh, there are a whole lot of things to rant and rave about.  For my part, I wait 
for the soap opera to fade away.

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