RUTHFULLY YOURS

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The Petraeus Affair engages us on many levels, ranging from compromised security and political cover-ups to more fundamental questions of morality, duplicity, honor and human nature. Superficially, tales of adultery are always more fascinating when they are about good looking people in high places, both of which pertain here. It’s too soon to know how much deeper this plot will sink and how many other people may be involved, but as of Tues, Nov 13th, its disclosure is shaping up as the familiar saga of territoriality and competition between an alpha female and her perceived younger threat.

If you were creating a prototype for an ambitious, disciplined and determined go-getter, you would have conjured up Paula Broadwell, the athletic West Point graduate who fixed on David Petraeus as the subject for her PhD thesis, later turning it into a book with a journalist’s assistance. What started as a request for interviews and academic cooperation soon turned into a physical attraction and yada, yada, yada, you know the rest. What we don’t know is whether this began in Afghanistan or when Petraeus was already at the CIA, neither of which matters for the purpose of this essay. At some point during the affair, Ms Broadwell (or does she prefer the honorific Dr. as in Dr. Jill Biden?) became aware of Jill Kelley, another attractive married woman who is billed as a friend of Petraeus and someone active in helping wounded veterans and adorning Tampa society. As in stories we’ve read and seen in newspapers and movies, Alpha Paula regressed to the level of a high school cheerleader, sending nasty e-mails to Alpha Jill, warning her to keep her pom poms off this already claimed, adulterous, married general. Wily Jill, not wishing to descend into a catfight with her older challenger, instead resorted to the tried and true tactic of snitching to the FBI, conveniently contacting an agent who was already trying to win her favor by exposing his pecs and abs online.

To recap: we have one gloriously decorated Alpha male general, married to the scion of an illustrious military family, involved with a 40′ish married mother of two who is also a graduate of West Point and former homecoming queen; friendly with a younger married woman also involved with military men, who may or may not have been flirting with said general under the table or above, who tattles to the spooks about the nasty, sexually explicit e-mail she’s getting from an “anonymous” sender.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/11/11/missing-the-boat/?singlepage=true
The Smithsonian magazine has an article about seven famous people who might have sailed on the Titanic but who, for some reason or other, missed the boat. They included Theodore Dreiser, Guglielmo Marconi, Milton Hershey, J. Pierpoint Morgan, Henry Frick, and Alfred Vanderbilt.

Dreiser had shifted to the Kroonland to save money. Hershey, of candy bar fame, had the money and had actually made a deposit on a ticket, but some business matter detained him and he had to cancel. What seemed like bad luck at the time actually turned out to be good fortune. Had things proved otherwise, the Titanic would have proved an even bigger disaster; our grandfathers might have grown up in a world without Hershey’s bars.

Lefty Gomez once remarked, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” What constituted good or bad might have been obvious on the baseball diamond, but things were less obvious in the more complex arena of everyday life. The Chinese had a story to describe the ambiguity of fortune.

… there lived an old man on the northern frontier of China. One day, his horse disappeared … few months later, his horse came back with another horse that was even better. His neighbors came to congratulate him on his gain. But … the old man … said this “good luck” might turn out to be misfortune in the end. Strangely, he was right again. A few days later, his son fell from the new horse and broke his leg … since his son was lame after that accident, he was not chosen to be a soldier to fight in the following war so that he lived with family safely.

Fortune into misfortune. Misfortune into fortune. The loss of the USS Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea was the down payment on the victory at Midway. In exchange for Lexington‘s loss, the Zuikaku and Shokaku were too mauled to sail with Nagumo on that fatal 4th of June. But you wouldn’t know it as the Lady Lex was going down. The role that event played in the greater scheme of things had yet to be revealed.

Of course, if Nimitz had lost at Midway the Lady Lex’s loss would have been just a loss.

When Mariano Rajoy followed socialist leader José Luis Zapatero to become Spain’s prime minister in 2010, he may have thought he had won the electoral lottery. But what he may actually have done was replace the metaphorical Edward Smith as captain on the Spanish ship of state.

Voters turned to him in hopes of alleviating the pain of Europe’s debt crisis. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Mr. Rajoy’s longtime rival, had stepped down as prime minister as the elections approached in the face of widespread resentment over Spain’s economic woes.

CENTER-SPONSORED PANEL CONNECTS-THE-DOTS ON BENGHAZIGATE,
SUGGESTS URGENT QUESTIONS FOR CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATORS

For more information or to schedule an interview, contact
Alex VanNess (office 202-835-9077) vanness@centerforsecuritypolicy.org

WASHINGTON DC, November 13 2012: The Center for Security Policy today hosted three of the nation’s preeminent analysts concerning the totalitarian, supremacist Islamist doctrine of shariah in an examination of its influence and impact on U.S. policy – including the scandal now known as “Benghazigate.” In a panel convened at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center in Washington, the author of the new book, Shariah vs. Freedom, Dr. Andrew Bostom, syndicated columnist and author Diana West and the former duty expert on radical Islam for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stephen Coughlin, Esq. connected the proverbial dots between the failing efforts of the Obama administration with respect to engaging with Islamists and submitting to shariah and the debacle that began in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 and continues to this day.

Video of the panel is available at www.youtube.com/securefreedom
A transcript will be posted at www.securefreedom.org by November 14, 2012. In addition, the video link, the transcript and an executive summary will be distributed to members of Congress on November 14, 2012.

Highlights of the panel moderated by Center President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. included the following:

Dr. Andrew Bostom, widely published expert on the history of shariah doctrine, noted that “Cynically ignoring sharia doctrines and practices that permanently endanger the life, liberty, and property of non-Muslims, US policymakers–epitomized by the murdered US Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens–have sacrificed US lives, and our nation’s principles.” Bostom’s third book on shariah was just published by Prometheus Books: Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism.

Stephen Coughlin, nationally recognized expert and briefer on the shariah threat to the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, commented, “As an explanation for the Benghazi attack, the YouTube clip is ridiculous. Understood in its own right however, the YouTube clip belongs to a cluster of activities that is just as disturbing as Benghazi.” Coughlin’s forthcoming book, Catastrophic Failure: The Big Lie in the War on Terror, will be published in January 2013 by the Center for Security Policy Press.

Diana West, investigative reporter and author, stated “In seeking the details of what happened on 9/11/12 in Benghazi, it’s vital not to lose sight of the real scandal, the policy the Obama Administration supported to overthrow anti-jihad allies in the region and re-align the US with the “bad guys” — the “rebels,” the “martyrs,” the al Qaeda forces, the Muslim Brothers, the whole jihad-happy crew in Libya and the wider Middle East. In Libya, Uncle Sam joined the jihad. In Benghazi, it blew up in our faces.” West’s next book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, will be published April 2013 by St. Martin’s Press.

The panel recommended that congressional investigators use three hearings this week, and others likely to be held down the road, to address a series of questions requiring urgent answers. Several of the most important of these questions are contained in the appended list below.

Mr. Gaffney said: “Now that the 2012 election is behind us and Congress is back in town, legislators must drill down not simply on the details of what happened during and following the murderous terrorist attack in Benghazi last September. They must examine that event as a microcosm of – and teachable moment concerning – the Obama administration’s pro-Islamist policies that gave rise to it. Getting answers to the questions our panel has posed will do much to shed light on both.”

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2012111217386/world/terrorism/national-guard-guns-aimed-at-serbs-in-service-of-albanian-mafia.html . National Guard Guns Aimed at Serbs in Service of Albanian Mafia This past September 11th, Western leaders hailed the “fully” and “irreversibly” independent Kosovo—still unrecognized by most UN members—for achieving additional “full independence.” The International Steering Group’s Civilian Office, which had the power to block laws or ministerial appointments, closed shop, and Dutch […]

http://www.state.gov/m/ds/index.htm The Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) is the security and law enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of State. DS is a world leader in international investigations, threat analysis, cyber security, counterterrorism, security technology, and protection of people, property, and information. Led by Eric J. Boswell, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security is responsible for […]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12429 Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal maintains a residence in Qatar, while the Taliban opened their first representation in a foreign country in its capital, Doha. A hateful wind emanating from the small Islamic emirate is now blowing toward Europe, a wind accompanied by an ocean of poisonous, oily, bloody money – all coming from the […]

The man behind the Mohammed movie begins his one-year prison sentence. http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/obamas-first-political-prisoner-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://www.timesofisrael.com/sharansky-rails-against-peres-for-thanking-russia-for-thousand-years-of-hospitality/
Sharansky rails against Peres, who thanked Russia for ‘thousand years of hospitality’
Why did world Jewry have to struggle on behalf of Soviet brethren if the country was so friendly to Jews, USSR-born ex-prisoner of Zion asks By Raphael Ahren |
Jewish Agency chairman and former cabinet minister Natan Sharansky (photo credit: courtesy JAFI)

Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky on Tuesday criticized President Shimon Peres for thanking the Russian people for “a thousand years of hospitality.” Centuries of discriminatory laws and pogroms clearly showed that the country was not always the most welcoming place for Jews, Sharansky noted.

“I really don’t understand what this means,” said Sharansky — who was born in the former USSR and spent years in a Soviet prison fighting for his right to immigrate to Israel — in response to Peres’s comments, which were made during a visit to Moscow last week. “For several hundred years, the Jews weren’t allowed to enter Russia, and after that there were 300 years during which a thousand anti-Jews laws were published. I have a book of a thousand laws against the Jews that were passed in Russia. And I am not even talking about pogroms,” he told Israel Radio.

“Why did world Jewry have to fight to liberate the Jews from the Soviet Union, if there was such great hospitality?” Sharansky added.

On Thursday, Peres attended the inauguration of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow and spoke very warmly about Russia’s treatment of the Jews.
Shimon Peres speaks at the opening of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, Russia. November 08, 2012. Photo credit: Mark Neyman/GPO/Flash90)

“I came here to say thank you. Thank you for a thousand years of hospitality,” he said. “A thousand years that the great country of Russia gave to my small nation. It is a historical thank you that remains fresh today.”

Many Jews tend to think of czarist Russia, and its successor state, the Soviet Union, as a place where Jews were systematically persecuted and at the best of times barely tolerated. But according to Hebrew University’s Jonathan Dekel-Chen, a leading expert on the history of Russian Jewry, the historical reality is too complex to be summed up in slogans.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/11/12/the-end-of-the-karl-rove-death-grip-signals-a-reagan-renaissance/ Liberals do not grasp the distinction between Ronald Reagan and (either) George Bush. This blind spot creates a massive confusion and hazard to their ambitions. Obama defeated neither the Reagan Narrative nor Team Reagan. Team Bush appropriated, and then marginalized, both. Obama beat Team Bush, not Team Reagan. The implications are huge. There was […]

He is the very model of a major U.S. General
With information vegetable, animal, and mineral
He know the royals of England, and can quote fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical

He’s very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical
And understands equations, both the simple and quadratical

On issues of religion he is really quite Canonical

With Predilections for the issues quite Koranical

For his military knowledge, though he’s plucky and adventury
Has only been around for the beginning of the century

In fact, he knows what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin”

And he can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin
When such affairs as sorties and surprises he’s more wary at
But he knows precisely what is meant by “commissariat”

He knows what progress has been made in modern gunnery
And he knows more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery
He has a smattering of elemental strategy and surge,

But couldn’t fight that elemental urge

They say in distant ports there’s nothing like a Broad, Well

That certain tumescence he couldn’t quell

But he is the very model of a patriotic general

He is a soldier at heart and will tell all

On Hillary’s sword he will not fall