Comments on: CIA chief Petraeus steps down, having failed to keep his drone in his pants

By: TooGoodToCheck

TooGoodToCheck — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:48:00 +0000

You think no one in your company’s HR department has ever had an affair?

I believe that there was a compelling reason for Petraeus to step down. I don’t think that blackmail is that reason.

By: Jeffrey Swainhart

Jeffrey Swainhart — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 02:35:00 +0000

+1 on the headline.

By: Steve Laudig

Steve Laudig — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 00:28:00 +0000

If the investigation found unlawful leaks of ‘secret’ information will the perpetrators be prosecuted? Unlikely as there will be selective ‘non-prosecution’ of an inner circle darling/s.

By: KC Cramer

KC Cramer — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 20:17:00 +0000

I fully support boingboing.net’s coverage of the coverage of the CIA head Gen. Penis’ affair, as well as the fantastic comments both serious and comical. Bravo!

I should mention, however, that when I was telling my wife about what I had been reading here, she thought I said I had been following the story on “boinkboink” ;-)

By: Rachael Hoffman-Dachelet

Rachael Hoffman-Dachelet — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 17:46:00 +0000

The CIA uses gmail? For classified information? That doesn’t seem very likely to me somehow.

By: Chang Terhune

Chang Terhune — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 13:39:00 +0000

Actually, if Le Carre’s work is any indication shouldn’t spies be having second families and affairs all over the place? What would Control do?

By: Chang Terhune

Chang Terhune — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 13:38:00 +0000

All I can think to say in response to the “drone” comment in the headline is “That’s no moon.”

By: sburns54

sburns54 — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:01:00 +0000

But he’s a SPY! This is what spies do when they’re not spying! Didn’t any of these anti-spy-sex do-gooders watch James Bond, Matt Helm, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, etc.?

By: Guest

Guest — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 09:26:00 +0000

But a US governments employees perfomance at his job is not half as important as what he does with his genitals.

By: Mackay Bell

Mackay Bell — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:54:00 +0000

When she started doing push-ups on John Stewart’s show, I though there was something dangerously odd about her. I watched enraptured… and afraid.

By: SoItBegins

SoItBegins — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:25:00 +0000

Oh. Sorry. Didn’t quite catch that.

By: oldtaku

oldtaku — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 07:32:00 +0000

Jesus, who cares about a stupid affair – he should have been run out of office for felony duckfacing.

By: igpajo

igpajo — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 06:43:00 +0000

As to why she was trying to hack his Gmail account…something I saw on a TV show comes to mind. Can’t remember what show it was (“Fringe” or maybe “Strike Back”). There was a technique used by the “bad guy” under investigation where he was communicating with someone else using an e-mail account but they weren’t sending e-mails. Both parties knew the login and password, and would communicate using saved drafts. They never send the drafts, just edit, delete, or start new ones, saving them to the accounts draft folder. Every couple days or so the other party logs in and reads the new drafts, deletes it, starts a new one.
I wonder if that’s what she was doing.

By: smut clyde

smut clyde — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 06:40:00 +0000

David Petraus orders airstrikes on funerals.

And weddings, so he has plenty of experience in breaking up marriages.

By: allotrope

allotrope — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 06:20:00 +0000

Why is it so hard to believe he chose to resign out of his sense of honor? And once that choice was taken, is it that hard to believe almost anybody would decide to wait until after an important election? Your peccadilloes are not the president’s fault, but would still have been used as a club in the election.

I understand Obama’s opponents wish Petraeus hadn’t denied them the opportunity to use this bombshell during the campaign, but that doesn’t make it a White House conspiracy. It was the choice of a man who saw it as a personal matter.

By: Sean Blomgren

Sean Blomgren — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 05:16:00 +0000

I find this very suspicious considering that just a week earlier, Petraeus was being criticized for the CIA’s response to the Benghazi attacks, and to force his resignation in election season would have legitimized all of the Republican critique thrown at Obama for that attack.

By: Raimo Kangasniemi

Raimo Kangasniemi — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:51:00 +0000

I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Broadwell is revealed to be spy or a wannabe spy for some foreign state.

By: mccrum

mccrum — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:48:00 +0000

And here’s the now awkward video:
http://www.businessinsider.com/paula-broadwell-david-petraeus-biographer-daily-show-interview-2012-11

By: Ian Wood

Ian Wood — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:39:00 +0000

Seven Days, ya Whippersnapper.

By: spocko

spocko — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:34:00 +0000

If only he had used Ashley Madison (r) They should really get on this and get him as a spokesperson.
“Hi, I’m 4 star General David Patraeus, recently I had to resign as the head of one of the world largest clandestine spying agencies because even with all my resources I couldn’t hide an affair. I was too emotional and although the heart want what the heart wants, and the FBI takes advantage of this. If only I had gone to Ashley Madison to help me hide my affair, they will do the thinking with their big head while I was thinking with my little head. They are used to dealing with love struck busy executives like me and would have reminded me to put a password protected screen saver on my computer that had top secret military ops on it along with my love letters.
Don’t be like me don’t let your little head do the thinking for you, let Ashley Madison help, you’ll be glad you did.”

By: paulj

paulj — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:33:00 +0000

The old Hollywood joke has to be updated: did you hear about the CIA director who was so dumb he f**ked the writer?

By: mccrum

mccrum — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:26:00 +0000

So our top spymaster can’t keep his affair a secret? Of course he has to go, that’s one even a lot of regular guys seem to keep under wraps without any training.

By: spocko

spocko — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:26:00 +0000

Here is a photo of her when she was on the Daily Show promoting her book “All In” Nice arms.

By: Ian Wood

Ian Wood — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:14:00 +0000

So very weird.

As a kid–from roughly 14 to 16 years old–I lived next door to the general and his wife Holly (as in: their townhouse was joined to mine) in Lawrenceville, NJ for a couple of years while he was at the Woodrow Wilson School in Princeton. My mom is still on the Petraeus family Christmas letter list.

By: Incipient Madness

Incipient Madness — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 03:41:00 +0000

Such as the fact that Obama never really liked him and transfered him to maintain continuity.

By: travtastic

travtastic — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 03:18:00 +0000

He can’t possibly fulfill his duty as a well-paid war criminal if he has had an affair!

By: EH

EH — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 03:04:00 +0000

Because, regardless if the blackmail is still possible, he engaged in blackmailable behavior, i.e. he *was* blackmailable. “What else don’t we know that someone else does?” is how the logic goes.

By: Jim Schmidt

Jim Schmidt — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 03:03:00 +0000

Cory has his bananas, Xeni has her drones. I’m okay with this :)

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 03:02:00 +0000

Just apply MPAA movie ratings logic:

Air strikes, assuming you keep the cuts tasteful, are somewhere between PG and PG-13.

Affairs, depending on exactly how much ‘sexual nudity’ you show rather than insinuate, might need a bit of editing before they could hit an R rating and general distribution.

By: Snig

Snig — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 02:45:00 +0000

At one point he prioritized having a romantic relationship over keeping CIA information private. Would you want that guy running your spy ring? If you were the owner of a business/corporation, would you want him in charge of your company’s trade secrets, credit card records, personnel records, etc?