Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.  He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press)

The news that President-elect Donald Trump called in disgraced retired Gen. David Petraeus for a job interview as possible Secretary of State tests whether Trump’s experience in hosting “The Celebrity Apprentice” honed his skills for spotting an incompetent phony or not.

Does Trump need more data than the continuing bedlam in Iraq and Afghanistan to understand that one can earn a Princeton PhD by writing erudite-sounding drivel about “counterinsurgency” and still flunk war? Granted, the shambles in which Petraeus left Iraq and Afghanistan were probably more a result of his overweening careerism and political ambition than his misapplication of military strategy. But does that make it any more excusable?

In 2007, Adm. William Fallon, commander of CENTCOM with four decades of active-duty experience behind him, quickly took the measure of Petraeus, who was one of his subordinates while implementing a “surge” of over 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq.

Several sources reported that Fallon was sickened by Petraeus’s unctuous pandering to ingratiate himself. Fallon is said to have been so turned off by all the accolades in the flowery introduction given him by Petraeus that he called him to his face “an ass-kissing little chickenshit,” adding, “I hate people like that.” Sadly, Petraeus’s sycophancy is not uncommon among general officers. Uncommon was Fallon’s outspoken candor.

The past decade has shown that obsequiousness to those above him and callousness toward others are two of Petraeus’s most notable character traits. They go along with his lack of military acumen and his dishonesty as revealed in his lying to the FBI about handing over top-secret notebooks to his biographer/lover, an “indiscretion” that would have landed a less well-connected person in jail but instead got him only a mild slap on the wrist (via a misdemeanor guilty plea).

Indeed, Petraeus, the epitome of a “political general,” represents some of the slimiest depths of the Washington “swamp” that President-elect Trump has vowed to drain. Petraeus cares desperately about the feelings of his fellow elites but shows shocking disdain for the suffering of other human beings who are not so important.

In early 2011 in Afghanistan, Petraeus shocked aides to then-President Hamid Karzai after many children were burned to death in a “coalition” attack in northeastern Afghanistan by suggesting that Afghan parents may have burned their own children to exaggerate their claims of civilian casualties and discredit the U.S., reported The Washington Post, citing two participants at the meeting.

“Killing 60 people, and then blaming the killing on those same people, rather than apologizing for any deaths? This is inhuman,” one Afghan official said. “This is a really terrible situation.”

Yet, on other occasions, the politically savvy Petraeus can be a paragon of sensitivity – like when he is in danger of getting crosswise with the Israel Lobby.

Never did Petraeus’s fawning shine through with more brilliance, than when an (unintentionally disclosed) email exchange showed him groveling before arch-neocon Max Boot, beseeching Boot’s help in fending off charges that Petraeus was “anti-Israel” because his prepared testimony to a congressional committee included the no-brainer observations that Israeli-Palestinian hostility presents “distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests” and that “this conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. … Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

So, telling the truth (perhaps accidentally in prepared testimony) made Petraeus squirm with fear about offending the powerful Israel Lobby, but he apparently didn’t hesitate to lie to FBI agents when he was caught in a tight spot for sharing highly sensitive intelligence with Paula Broadwell, his mistress/biographer. But, again, Petraeus realized that it helps to have influential friends. A court gave him a slap on the wrist with a sentence of two years probation and a fine of $100,000 – which is less than he usually makes for a single speaking engagement.

Military Incompetent Without Parallel

And, if President-elect Trump isn’t repulsed by the stench of hypocrisy – if he ignores Petraeus’s reckless handling of classified material after Trump lambasted Hillary Clinton for her own careless behavior in that regard – there is also the grim truth behind Petraeus’s glitzy image.

As a military strategist or even a trainer of troops, Petraeus has been an unparalleled disaster. Yes, the corporate media always runs interference for Official Washington’s favorite general. But that does not equate with genuine success.

The Iraq “surge,” which Petraeus oversaw, was misrepresented in the corporate media as a huge victory – because it was credited with a brief dip in the level of violence at the cost of some 1,000 American lives (and those of many more Iraqis) – but the “surge” failed its principal goal of buying time to heal the rift between Shiites and Sunnis, a division that ultimately led to the emergence of the Islamic State (or ISIS).

Then, in early 2014, the crackerjack Iraqi troops whom Petraeus bragged about training ran away from Mosul, leaving their modern U.S.-provided weapons behind for the Islamic State’s jihadists to play with.

In part because of that collapse – with Iraqi forces only now beginning to chip away at ISIS control of Mosul – the Obama administration was dragged into another Mideast war, spilling across Iraq and Syria and adding to the droves of refugees pouring into Europe, a crisis that is now destabilizing the European Union.

You might have thought that the combination of military failures and scandalous behavior would have ended David Petraeus’s “government service,” but he has never lost his skill at putting his finger to the wind.

During the presidential campaign, the windsock Petraeus was circumspect, which was understandable given the uncertainty regarding which way the wind was blowing.

However, on Sept. 1, 2015, amid calls from the mainstream U.S. media and establishment think tanks for President Obama to escalate the U.S. proxy war to overthrow the Syrian government, Petraeus spoke out in favor of giving more weapons to “moderate” Syrian rebels, despite the widespread recognition that U.S.-supplied guns and rockets were ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

The new harebrained scheme – favored by Petraeus and other neocons – fantasized about Al Qaeda possibly joining the fight against the Islamic State, although ISIS sprang from Al Qaeda and splintered largely over tactical issues, such as how quickly to declare a jihadist state, not over fundamental fundamentalist goals.

But more miscalculations in the Middle East would be right up Petraeus’s alley. He played an important role in facilitating the emergence of the Islamic State by his too-clever-by-half policy of co-opting some Sunni tribes with promises of shared power in Baghdad and with lots of money, and then simply looking the other way as the U.S.-installed Shia government in Baghdad ditched the promises.

Surge? Or Splurge With Lives

The so-called “surges” of troops into Iraq and Afghanistan are particularly gross examples of the way American soldiers have been used as expendable pawns by ambitious generals like Petraeus and ambitious politicians like former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The problem is that overweening personal ambition can end up getting a lot of people killed. In the speciously glorified first “surge,” President George W. Bush sent more than 30,000 additional troops into Iraq in early 2007. During the period of the “surge,” about 1,000 U.S. troops died.

There was a similar American death toll during President Barack Obama’s “surge” of another 30,000 troops into Afghanistan in early 2010, a shift toward a counterinsurgency strategy that had been pressed on Obama by Petraeus, Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Despite the loss of those 1,000 additional U.S. soldiers, the counterinsurgency “surge” had little effect on the course of the Afghan War.

The bloody chaos that continues in Iraq today and in the never-ending war in Afghanistan was entirely predictable. Indeed, it was predicted by those of us able to spread some truth around via the Internet, while being blacklisted by the fawning corporate media, which cheered on the “surges” and their chief architect, David Petraeus.

But the truth is not something that thrives in either U.S. politics or media these days. Campaigning early this year in New Hampshire, then-presidential aspirant Jeb Bush gave a short partial-history lesson about his big brother’s attack on Iraq. Referring to the so-called Islamic State, Bush said, “ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president. ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ was wiped out … the surge created a fragile but stable Iraq. …”

Jeb Bush is partially right about ISIS; it didn’t exist when his brother George attacked Iraq. Indeed, Al Qaeda didn’t exist in Iraq until afterthe U.S. invasion when it emerged as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” and it wasn’t eliminated by the “surge.”

With huge sums of U.S. cash going to Sunni tribes in Anbar province, Al Qaeda in Iraq just pulled back and regrouped. Its top leaders came from the ranks of angry Sunnis who had been officers in Saddam Hussein’s army and – when the “surge” failed to achieve reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites – the U.S. cash proved useful in expanding Sunni resistance to Baghdad’s Shiite government. From the failed “surge” strategy emerged the rebranded “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” the Islamic State.

So, despite Jeb Bush’s attempted spin, the reality is that his brother’s aggressive war in Iraq created both “Al Qaeda in Iraq” and its new incarnation, Islamic State.

The mess was made worse by subsequent U.S. strategy – beginning under Bush and expanding under President Obama – of supporting insurgents in Syria. By supplying money, guns and rockets to “moderate” Sunni rebels, that strategy has allowed the materiel to quickly fall into the hands of Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Nusra Front, and its jihadist allies, Ahrar al-Sham.

In other words, U.S. strategy – much of it guided by David Petraeus – continues to strengthen Al Qaeda, which – through its Nusra affiliate and its Islamic State spin-off – now occupies large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Escaping a ‘Lost War’

All this is among the fateful consequences of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq 13 years ago – made worse (not better) by the “surge” in 2007, which contributed significantly to this decade’s Sunni-Shia violence. The real reason for Bush’s “surge” seems to have been to buy time so that he and Vice President Dick Cheney could leave office without having a lost war on their résumés.

As author Steve Coll has put it, “The decision [to surge] at a minimum guaranteed that his [Bush’s] presidency would not end with a defeat in history’s eyes. By committing to the surge [the President] was certain to at least achieve a stalemate.”

According to Bob Woodward, Bush told key Republicans in late 2005 that he would not withdraw from Iraq, “even if Laura and [first-dog] Barney are the only ones supporting me.” Woodward made it clear that Bush was well aware in fall 2006 that the U.S. was losing.

Indeed, by fall 2006, it had become unavoidably clear that a new course had to be chosen and implemented in Iraq, and virtually every sober thinker seemed opposed to sending more troops.

The senior military, especially CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid and his man on the ground in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, emphasized that sending still more U.S. troops to Iraq would simply reassure leading Iraqi politicians that they could relax and continue to take forever to get their act together.

Here, for example, is Gen. Abizaid’s answer at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Nov. 15, 2006, to Sen. John McCain, who had long been pressing vigorously for sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq:

”Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the corps commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, ‘in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?’ And they all said no.

“And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, sent a classified cable to Washington warning that “proposals to send more U.S. forces to Iraq would not produce a long-term solution and would make our policy less, not more, sustainable,” according to a New York Times retrospective on the “surge” published on Aug. 31, 2008. Khalilzad was arguing, unsuccessfully, for authority to negotiate a political solution with the Iraqis.

There was also the establishment-heavy Iraq Study Group, created by Congress and led by Republican stalwart James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton (with Robert Gates as a member although he quit before the review was competed). After months of policy review, the Iraq Study Group issued a final report on Dec. 6, 2006, that began with the ominous sentence “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.”

It called for: “A change in the primary mission of U.S. Forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly… By the first quarter of 2008…all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq.”

Rumsfeld’s Known-Knowns

The little-understood story behind Bush’s decision to catapult Robert Gates into the post of Defense Secretary was the astonishing fact that Donald Rumsfeld, of all people, was pulling a Robert McNamara; that is, he was going wobbly on a war based largely on his own hubris-laden, misguided advice.

In the fall of 2006 Rumsfeld was having a reality attack. In Rumsfeld-speak, he had come face to face with a “known known.”

On Nov. 6, 2006, a day before the mid-term elections, Rumsfeld sent a memo to the White House, in which he acknowledged, “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” The rest of his memo sounded very much like the emerging troop-drawdown conclusions of the Iraq Study Group.

The first 80 percent of Rumsfeld’s memo addressed “Illustrative Options,” including his preferred – or “above the line” – options such as “an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases … to five by July 2007” and withdrawal of U.S. forces “from vulnerable positions — cities, patrolling, etc. … so the Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.”

Finally, Rumsfeld had begun to listen to his generals and others who knew which end was up.?The hurdle? Bush and Cheney were not about to follow Rumsfeld’s example in “going wobbly.” Like Robert McNamara at a similar juncture during Vietnam, Rumsfeld had to be let go before he caused a President to “lose a war.”

Waiting in the wings, though, was Robert Gates, who had been CIA director under President George H. W. Bush, spent four years as president of Texas A&M, and had returned to the Washington stage as a member of the Iraq Study Group. While on the ISG, he evidenced no disagreement with its emerging conclusions – at least not until Bush asked him to become Secretary of Defense in early November 2006.

It was awkward. Right up to the week before the mid-term elections on Nov. 7, 2006, President Bush had insisted that he intended to keep Rumsfeld in place for the next two years. Suddenly, the President had to deal with Rumsfeld’s apostasy on Iraq.?Rumsfeld had let reality get to him, together with the very strong anti-surge protestations by all senior uniformed officers save one — the ambitious David Petraeus, who had jumped onboard for the “surge” escalation, which guaranteed another star on his lapel.

All Hail Petraeus

With the bemedaled Petraeus in the wings and guidance on strategy from arch-neocons, such as retired General Jack Keane and think-tank analyst Frederick Kagan, the White House completed the coup against the generals by replacing Rumsfeld with Gates and recalling Casey and Abizaid and elevating Petraeus.

Gen. David Petraeus posing before the U.S. Capitol with Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. (Photo credit: ISW’s 2011 Annual Report)

Amid the mainstream media’s hosannas for Petraeus and Gates, the significance of the shakeup was widely misunderstood, with key senators, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, buying the false narrative that the changes presaged a drawdown in the war rather than an escalation.

So relieved were the senators to be rid of the hated-but-feared Rumsfeld that the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Dec. 5, 2006, on Gates’s nomination had the feel of a pajama party (I was there). Gates told them bedtime stories – and vowed to show “great deference to the judgment of generals.”

With unanimous Democratic support and only two conservative Republicans opposed, Gates was confirmed by the full Senate on Dec. 6, 2006.

On Jan. 10, 2007, Bush formally unveiled the bait-and-switch, announcing the “surge” of 30,000 additional troops, a mission that would be overseen by Gates and Petraeus. Bush did acknowledge that there would be considerable loss of life in the year ahead as U.S. troops were assigned to create enough stability for Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni factions to reach an accommodation.

At least, he got the loss-of-life part right. Around 1,000 U.S. troops died during the “surge” along with many more Iraqis. But Bush, Cheney, Petraeus, and Gates apparently deemed that cost a small price to pay for enabling them to blame a successor administration for the inevitable withdrawal from America’s failed war of aggression.

The gambit worked especially well for Gates and Petraeus. Amid glowing mainstream media press clippings about the “successful surge” and “victory at last” in Iraq, Gates was hailed as a new “wise man” and Petraeus was the military genius who pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. Their reputations were such that President Obama concluded that he had no choice but to keep them on, Gates as Defense Secretary and Petraeus as Obama’s top general in the Middle East.

Petraeus then oversaw the “surge” in Afghanistan and landed the job of CIA director, where Petraeus reportedly played a major role in arming up the Syrian rebels in pursuit of another “regime change,” this time in Syria.

Although Petraeus’s CIA tenure ended in disgrace in November 2012 when his dangerous liaison with Paula Broadwell was disclosed, his many allies in Official Washington’s powerful neocon community are now pushing him on President-elect Trump as the man to serve as Secretary of State.

Petraeus is known as a master of flattery, something that seemingly can turn Trump’s head. But the President-elect should have learned from his days hosting “The Celebrity Apprentice” that the winning contender should not be the one most adept at sucking up to the boss.

(Now, with the whole Middle East in turmoil, I find some relief in this brief parody by comedienne Connie Bryan of Petraeus’s performance in training Iraqi troops.)

A version of this article ran in Consortium News.

Petraeus had passed on several 5-by-8 inch black notebooks containing classified information to Broadwell.

Despite his conviction, the former general remains a trusted adviser to the White House on its strategy in Iraq.

He will represent the United States on security issues at the Bilderberg confab in Austria beginning Thursday.

Unlike Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning, Petraeus was excused for his transgression because he is a valued insider and a key player in the global elite’s plan for a mass surveillance grid.

“Senators, generals, ambassadors, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the owner of The Atlantic were in the roster of powerful voices who wrote to a federal judge to ask him to go easy on” Petraeus, writes Cora Currier.

The list includes former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and Admiral Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Dave is also humanly flawed, as many are, for which he has paid a huge price both personally and professionally,” Mullen said.

Double Standard

This attribute and excuse, however, was not extended to Snowden or Manning.

Snowden fled the United States and applied for political asylum to 21 countries after he leaked classified NSA information on mass surveillance. Vice President Joe Biden pressured the governments of those countries to refuse his asylum petitions. Snowden was eventually granted asylum in Russia.

Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning) was convicted in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses following his disclosure to WikiLeaks over 700,000 classified and unclassified but sensitive military and diplomatic documents. Manning was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment and was dishonorably discharged from the Army.

Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of the website WikiLeaks where Manning’s cache of documents appeared, has been cloistered in the the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012. He applied for political asylum in the South American country but the British government says it will arrest and extradite him if he attempts to leave the embassy.

The fact David Petraeus will represent the United States at the Bilderberg meeting despite his criminal status demonstrates a double standard.

Government insiders handpicked by the global elite enjoy a special status while others, including a long list of whistleblowers, are routinely singled out by government for harsh and punitive treatment.

Petraeus Crucial to Surveillance Grid Agenda

In 2013, Petraeus attended the Bilderberg Group conference to push the “big data” agenda of the elite.

“The discussion about ‘big data’ is also likely to cover how social media can be used to launch more faux revolutions and social movements as it was in Egypt, which was aided in no small part by Google,”

Paul Joseph Watson wrote at the time.

As we have documented, the Internet of things is the process of manufacturing every new product with a system that broadcasts wirelessly via the world wide web, allowing industry and the government to spy ubiquitously on every aspect of your existence.

Petraeus has previously hailed the “Internet of things” as a transformational boon for “clandestine tradecraft”. In other words, it will soon be easier than ever before to keep tabs on the population since everything they use will be connected to the web, with total disregard for privacy considerations. The spooks won’t have to plant a bug in your home or your vehicle, you will be doing it for them.

It’s ironic that Petraeus is helping bolster the very same surveillance system that brought him down last year when details emerged of his extra-marital affair.

Kurt Nimmo, Global Research

This is an indicative story. David Petraeus is not an ordinary man. He is a professional military, a West Point graduate. The General has served in the ranks of special operations forces, he has commanded the 82 air-borne and 101 air assault divisions – the privileged units of US military. Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974. He earned the General George C. Marshall Award as the top graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College Class of 1983 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He subsequently earned an M.P.A. (master of public administration) in 1985 and a Ph.D. in international relations in 1987 from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Petraeus also served as an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the US Military Academy from 1985 to 1987. His Princeton dissertation was devoted to The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: a Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the post-Vietnam Era. The General went to Iraq twice, once in the capacity of Commanding General, Multi-national Force, Iraq. In 2007 Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senator and the majority leader of the Senate, said during the congressional hearings, «We'll now have our very best general in charge of the operations in Iraq,» Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement. «If it can't be done under Gen. Petraeus, then it cannot be done at all. We ought to give him a chance to succeed». The same year Petraeus got his fourth star; few American military have done it. There are many more 100-storey buildings in the United States than the military who have made it to the rank of full general. 

Petraeus has always been respected, especially among military, unlike Colin Powell, the hero of Desert Storm (everyone remembers the samples he showed as a proof of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction) or Wesley Clark, who commanded the NATO operation in Yugoslavia in 1999 and wanted to use force against Russian paratroopers in Pristina. 

From 2008 to 2010 David Petraeus headed the US Central Command, a theater-level Unified Combatant Command of the Department of Defense. Then he got his assignments in the Army as commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) to relieve General Stanley Allen McChrystal. The popularity of Petraeus was growing. Some even compared him with Dwight «Ike» Eisenhower. In 2008 rumors started to go around that presidential candidate Republican Senator McCain would choose David Petraeus as his running mate for vice president. It should not be surprising that General David Petraeus is being suggested as a possible Republican Party candidate in 2016 (as he was in 2012). On April 28, 2011 President Obama formally nominated Gen. David Petraeus to take over as CIA director. The candidacy was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. On September 6, General Petraeus took office. According to law, the General did not have to leave the military service, but he decided to retire and avoid talks about militarization of intelligence. The thunderstorm came a year after. On November 9, 2012, David Petraeus unexpectedly resigned. The reason was kept secret even for those whose duty was to be aware of what was going on. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had no advance warning of the David Petraeus scandal, «We received no advance notice. It was like a lightning bolt,» she told «Fox News Sunday» host Chris Wallace about the resignation of the man headed the agency key to US security. Later they found out that it was James Clapper, a retired Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force and then Director of National Intelligence, who advised Petraeus to leave. The reason was some secret FBI report about Petraeus being involved in extramarital affair and sharing secrets with people who had no access to classified information. The FBI report was submitted on November 6, 2012, right on the day of presidential election. Peter King, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, said it was «inexcusable» that the FBI had waited for months to inform the White House that it was looking into a key member of Mr. Obama's national security team. «Whenever General Petraeus's name came up I believe the FBI had an absolute obligation to tell the White House, and specifically the President, what this involved,» Mr. King said. There were a lot of things to be questioned. For instance, the whole investigation was based on the testimony of Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old party organiser from Florida, a supposed love-rival, who was obsessed by being bombarded with threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, an alleged Mr. Petraeus's mistress. Petraeus knew the both of them and sent them e-mails. He insists that the relationship was purely platonic. But media immediately picked up the story about a love affair between the 60-year old CIA Director, who had recently gone through cancer treatment, with the 40-year old Paula Broodwell, who was then called «the Pentagon Monica Lewinsky». The scoop happened to be short-lived. 

David Petraeus is married, he has two children. Paula Broadwell is the mother of two. She is an Army Colonel, a specialist on psycho operations. Broadwell met Petraeus in 2006 when he was a speaker at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She was a graduate student at the time. She began a doctoral dissertation that included a case study of his leadership with Petraeus fully cooperating. Broadwell then co-authored a biography of Petraeus, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, with Vernon Loeb that was published in January 2012. The book was highly praised by the New York Times and Foreign Affairs to become a bestseller. The attempts to accuse the General of being involved in extramarital affair looked ridiculous enough to be abandoned soon. Nonetheless, in April 2013 FBI agents searched the General’s house in Arlington, Virginia. Black books with confidential information were found in an unlocked desk drawer in Petraeus’s study. The General was told that he would face a two-year conditional sentence and a $40 thousand fine instead of 10-15 years behind bars in case he agreed to cooperate with the investigation. Cooperation meant the admission of the fact of divulging classified information by sharing it with Paula Broadwell. The former head of CIA refused. Barack Obama and other officials stated that they did not believe Petraeus divulged any secrets that could threaten the security of the United States. What made them target the General? Making a speech at the Denver University in the spring of 2013 Paula Broadwell suddenly leaked secret information the United States tried hard to conceal. According to her, the attack against the US consulate in Benghazi in September 2011 was provoked by the fact that «a couple of Libyan militia members were taken prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back,» she said. The CIA denied the information. FBI got suspicious because she could find it only from someone who had access to top secrets. 

David Petraeus has held the highest command and staff positions; he had a special way of thinking. He never kept away from extraordinary ideas and did not shy away from arguments with the state’s top officials. It was his idea to come to terms with Sunnis in Iraq, he openly challenged the Obama’s plans to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014. Instead he advocated a surge to increase the strength of forces up to 40 thousand. Having become the CIA director, Petraeus got access to the information of other secret services and State Department. He saw that the military provided the most reliable and full data while other services were often not aware of the situation or submitted sexed up and biased reports. Diplomats danced to the tune. Obviously, David Petraeus did not learn the lesson taking a page out of the book by his predecessor as the commander of the Afghanistan force General Stanley Allen McChrystal whose successful career was over after an interview with Rolling Stone in 2010 when he spoke in unflattering terms about White House officials who, according to him, didn’t know the first thing about what was happening in Afghanistan. He openly mentioned the names of Vice President Joe Biden, a special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan under President Obama and James Jones, then National Security Advisor. The General was urgently summoned to Washington where he had to apologize, repent and submit resignation. It’s worth to note that Afghan President Hamid Karzai indicated he did not want General McChrystal replaced describing him as the best commander in nine years of US military operations in Afghanistan. His opinion was shared by many in the US Army. 

The resignation of Petraeus as CIA chief took place in the heat of the events in Libya. On September 11, 2012 the US consulate in Benghazi was attacked. Four US citizens were killed, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens who had the reputation of being the man behind the overthrow of the regime led by Muammar Ghaddafi. On November 15, the House intelligence committee was to hold a private grilling of the CIA director over the events in Benghazi. Petraeus was going to answer any questions asked, as well as ask the questions of his own to go into details of the matter and have a clear picture of what happened. In particular he was going to raise the issue of State Department «playing its own game» in Benghazi to involve Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department computer expert Sean Smith and two CIA contractors: Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. On November 6, President Obama won his second term. Any leak related to the Benghazi events would have been inopportune. Obama was very proud of the Nobel Peace Prize he received in 2009 for «extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples». On his part, Petraeus was adamant to go the whole hog and bring the investigation to the end to make head or tail of it. But on November 6 he was asked to resign. Then accusations followed. 

Three years have passed. FBI and the US Department of Justice remembered him again. It looked like his career was over, the reputation in the puritan America was damaged and he no longer had a chance to work for the government. Not that easy. General Petraeus can fight his final battle during the 2016 presidential race. Hillary Clinton is going to be the leading candidate to run on the Democratic ticket. As a Republican, David Petraeus has something to say about it. 

It’s known that the United States intelligence offered Gaddafi to leave without bloodshed with immunity guarantees. State Secretary Hillary Clinton blocked it. It could have been a reason for attacking the US consulate in Benghazi leading to the death of the ambassador and three other Americans. Today those in the White House who took corresponding decisions have no reason to be proud of US policy in Libya and other countries. Besides, some time ago another scandal broke in the United States. It looks especially intriguing against the background of what happened with Petraeus. Emailgate is an American political controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s conduct while Secretary of State. In early March 2015, a report New York Times revealed that throughout her time as Secretary of State, Clinton used her own private e-mail address and server located at Clintons’ ranch rather than government-issued departmental ones. She said that the emails were deleted, like if nothing happened. Then it became known that two assistants close to the Secretary of State also used unprotected email servers. Neither the Federal Bureau of Investigation, nor the Department of Justice has commented on the matter as of now. 

Obviously, all these revelations coincide with the start of presidential race in the United States. 

«Perception» is key, David Petraeus wrote in his 1987 Princeton dissertation: «What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters — more than what actually occurred». Did the general know then that he would have to go through it all himself to prove how right he was?

The CIA, started in 1947 with veterans of the war-time Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and military personnel, who were soon supplemented by economists and international relations graduates of America’s top Ivy League universities, is now attempting to promote itself as a “made-for-television” futuristic high-tech spy and covert warfare agency, operating intelligence-gathering and armed drones from over 60 bases around the world. All that is missing from the CIA’s over-inflated view of itself are the X-Men and Jason Bourne. 

The record of the CIA speaks otherwise. The agency has become a bloated and ineffectual spy agency that is heavy on inflating intelligence reports while being responsible for major intelligence failures.

Recent major failures of the CIA in its drone operations in the Middle East and Africa have some congressional sources wondering what is afoot with the CIA.  Under Petraeus's watch the CIA has experienced its worst foul ups since those that occurred when it failed to foresee the Iranian embassy hostage situation and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Petraeus's first major failure, Lebanon, involved Hezbollah's exposure of the CIA's agent network in the country. The CIA station chief, Daniel Patrick McFeely, has been outed as the CIA station chief at the U.S. embassy in the Awkar neighborhood of Beirut. Not only was Hezbollah able to out McFeely, who operates as "official cover" as part of the embassy staff, but they identified his predecessor, Louis Kahi.

By conducting surveillance of meetings at Pizza Huts and Starbucks in Lebanon between CIA case officers and agents, Hezbollah — and their Iranian allies — were able to construct the CIA's network that included over 1000 top Lebanese politicians, academics, medical doctors, journalists, military personnel, and celebrities. Essentially, the CIA's network in Lebanon has been largely rolled up. According to Al Manar television, the code names of the agents, names like Nick, Jim, Youssef, Liza and Jonah, were also exposed.

The U.S. corporate media has refrained from publishing the names of the CIA station chiefs or the cover names of their Lebanese agents. In more and more cases, the U.S. media has run from its duty to report all the facts about intelligence-related matters, succumbing to either appeals or threats from spy agencies that they should not write about intelligence-related matters because of some nebulous and non-provable “threat” to national security.

Almost simultaneous to the Lebanon roll up, Iran announced it discovered a network composed of at least 42 CIA agents operating within its territory, operatives that worked in nuclear and other scientific centers, the military, biotechnology, and various universities. Iran's chief prosecutor has already indicted fifteen of the 42 for espionage on behalf of the CIA.

On November 26, a U.S. air strike killed 24 Pakistani military personnel on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan. The incident, which frayed already poor relations between the United States and Pakistan, resulted in the U.S. being expelled from the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan, one from which CIA drones were launched, with few successes and many failures, against "terror" targets in Pakistan's volatile mountainous frontier region bordering Afghanistan.

The debacle that resulted in the loss of the Shamsi drone base was followed by the biggest intelligence failure to date, the downing by accident or hostile action, including through possible electronic warfare “spoofing,” of an RQ-170 Sentinel stealth-enabled drone over Iran. President Barack Obama was under pressure to launch a commando raid on Iran to retrieve the state-of-the art technology drone or bomb it and its security detail once it was discovered to be in Iranian hands. Obama chose to ask the Iranian to return the drone to the United States, something Tehran has refused to do, without, at the very least, an official apology.

Obama had on his hands a “Jimmy Carter moment” and his Republican opponents eagerly jumped on him for not sending in a commando team to retrieve the drone or order air strikes to destroy it. Obama left himself open to charges that he is a weak and ineffectual president because he allowed the RQ-170 to fall into the hands of not only the Iranians, but, as the rhetoric from his political enemies has alleged, the Russians and Chinese, as well. The right-wing claims that Russia or China, or both, will attempt to re-engineer the CIA’s expensive toy, what is known as the mysterious "Beast of Kandahar," in order to leap frog the United States in stealth drone technology by years.

And just when Obama did not need any more bad news from his problematic CIA director, news came that an Air Force-operated MQ-9 Reaper drone on counter-terrorist and counter-piracy duty in the Indian Ocean crashed and burst into flames on landing at the international airport on Mahe island in the Seychelles. Most Air Force Reapers are remotely-piloted from Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The CIA’s drone wars, which are supplemented by the U.S. Air Force’s own Global Hawk, Predator, and Reaper operations, are increasingly being seen around the world as America’s use of technology to commit the “joy stick and button” mass murder of people accused of being terrorists. In fact, the CIA and the Air Force have no idea who they are killing when its drones launch their deadly payloads. The building anger against the United States will continue to place the CIA’s professional and increasingly amateurish personnel in danger in conflict zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya and in rear echelon support countries like Djibouti, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Saudi Arabia.

The CIA’s political influence operations around the world are also being exposed every day. Run in tandem with international financier George Soros and his network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and not-for-profit foundations, the CIA’s attempts to foment rebellions through “themed revolutions” and election engineering are becoming better understood, ironically through the media that Soros and the CIA champion the most – social networking. From the streets of Egypt and Syria, where the CIA’s and Soros’s involvement in artificially-created uprisings is no longer a secret, to Russia, Venezuela, Belarus, and China, where political intervention by the CIA and its team of Soros “do-gooders” is now being met with strong opposition, the cat is out of the bag. 

While the CIA has for decades enjoyed the luxury of hiding behind NGOs, missionaries, aid workers, and journalists, the Internet has allowed CIA influence networks to be exposed and its agents, shills, and dupes to be identified. Time magazine has named as its “Person on the Year” for 2011 the generic “protester.” However, as the CIA’s worldwide operations become further exposed, the “protester” lauded by Time will no longer be a paid provocateur working for the CIA or Soros – taking orders and money from Human Rights Watch and Global Witness — but one who is genuinely protesting the interference and aggression of the United States. And that protester will be found not only in Cairo, Moscow, Caracas, and Beirut but in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Petraeus, considered an “academic general” by combat troops who have served under him, comes to the CIA after launching bloody military “surges” against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. A product of the elitist Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University, Petraeus has been a long-time favorite of neo-conservative nationalistic American political leaders like Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Petraeus’s actual front line combat experience as a flag-rank officer is so thin and his leadership qualities so political in nature, many of his troops have called him General “Betray Us.”

Petraeus’s first actual experience commanding troops in combat was when he served as commander of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in its 2003 assault on Baghdad. In his subsequent role as commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MSTCI) under the U.S. “viceroy” for Iraq, Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul “Jerry” Bremer, a prized underling of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Petraeus was in charge of training Iraqi security forces in the ill-advised neo-conservative “de-Baathification” process. The Iraqi security training program was rife with contract fraud and placing Petraeus at the CIA runs the risk that the previous levels of contract fraud at the CIA, witnessed during the tenure of Porter Goss, will return to the halls of Langley, Virginia.

Three top generals in Iraq, including Petraeus, all supporters of the Iraq occupation and “surge” policies crafted by the neo-conservative nest of conspirators at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, were implicated in contract fraud in occupied Iraq. U.S. veterans of the Iraq occupation stated that there was no guidance from the US-run Civilian Police Assistance Training (CPAT) program on issuing police equipment to the Iraqi police. The Iraqi police training program involved three U.S. Army generals — Joseph Fil, the Commanding General of the CPAT team; Kevin Bergner, the deputy commander of coalition forces in northwestern Iraq in 2005; and Petraeus, the MSTCI commander. However, Petraeus faced no criminal probe over the training malfeasance, with ethics-tainted Senator McCain frequently lauding the record of the "great General Petraeus."

One warehouse run by Lee Dynamics International (LDI) was to procure, store, and distribute equipment for the Iraqi police. However, the contract, for which LDI received billions of dollars, was non-existent because it was Iraqi police officials, not LDI personnel, who were in charge of the LDI warehouse. Petraeus, who was in charge of CPAT and MSTCI, did not ensure any accountability for LDI and other contractors. LDI, formerly known as American Logistics Services, was suspended by the U.S. Army after it was caught paying bribes to US Army officers in Kuwait. In December 2006, Major Gloria Davis, a U.S. Army contracting officer in Kuwait, allegedly shot herself in a suicide after being accused of accepting $225,000 in bribes from LDI. The firm was also accused of paying bribes to Army officers in Iraq who were in charge of training the Iraqi police. The officers identified in the investigation of LDI worked closely with Petraeus.

Days before his supposed suicide by a "self-inflicted" gunshot wound in a Camp Dublin, Iraq trailer, West Point Honor Board member and Iraqi police and security forces trainer Col. Ted Westhusing reported in e-mail to the United States that "terrible things were going on in Iraq." He also said he hoped he would make it back to the United States alive. Westhusing had three weeks left in his tour of duty in Iraq when he allegedly shot himself in June 2005.

It is noteworthy that after Westhusing's death, two top Army generals, both responsible for training Iraqi forces, Petraeus and Fil, the then-Commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, were quickly transferred without much fanfare to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and Fort Hood, Texas, respectively.

It is with Petraeus’s legacy of fraud; waste; abuse; indiscriminant targeting of civilians; possible acquiescence in the murder of witnesses, including American citizens; and adoption of neo-conservative “New American Century” imperialistic dogma, that Obama has decided to place the CIA under his Afghanistan commander’s control.

The appointment of the author of military “surge” tactics and the associated disregard for civilian casualties through the use of drone attacks and Special Forces assassination operations, means that the CIA will be persuaded to sign on to the Petraeus doctrine of “kill first and ask no questions later.” A clear sign that the Obama administration will continue an aggressive military approach in Afghanistan is the appointment of Petraeus’s old “surge” partner in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, the former ambassador in Baghdad, as the new American ambassador in Kabul . Crocker replaces retired General Karl Eikenberry, known to be a critic of Obama’s and Petraeus’s policies in Afghanistan. With former Democratic Congressman Panetta replacing Gates at the Pentagon, the Obama administration is clearly seeking to stamp its own imprimatur on the Pentagon. Outgoing Defense Secretary Gates resisted White House desires to put “boots on the ground” in Obama’s new war zones, including Libya and elsewhere.

Petraeus, as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, the Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility – which extends form Egypt to Pakistan – and Afghanistan, has been an advocate of Israeli-style “pre-emptive” military action, beyond traditional counter-insurgency tactics that take into consideration “winning of the hearts and minds” of both combatants and civilians in conflict zones.

Petraeus’s almost maniacal approach to the killing of civilians was evidenced when he offended Afghan President Hamid Karzai after Petraeus suggested that Afghan parents may have burned their own children in order to exaggerate deaths and casualties arising from a NATO strike on a village in Konar Province in northeastern Afghanistan this past February. Petraeus casually dismissed charges that his forces had targeted children and women, angering Karzai and other Afghan government officials. Petraeus also continued to wage a civilian casualty-intensive covert ground and drone war in neighboring Pakistan, angering that nation’s government.

Petraeus’s record as commander of CENTCOM and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan actually severely damaged U.S. relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Normally, such a poor military and diplomatic record would ensure a quick retirement for Petraeus. However, Obama, who has bent over backward to please America’s military-industrial-intelligence complex, has saw fit to name Petraeus to head the CIA.

As far as Panetta, a former White House chief of staff for President Clinton is concerned, military veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq agree: Panetta will be a political “hack” cheerleader for the White House and he will raise no objections to continued American military adventurism around the world, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Libya, sub-Sahara Africa, Latin America, the Arabian peninsula, and Iran.