The affair apparently began in the US.
You think he had an affair a year-ago and then had his girlfriend break into his email account and start an FBI investigation to get out of future Congressional testimony?
In any case, Congress is no less able to subpoena him then they were when he was still Director.
No, I’m saying he’s stepping down because of the inept handling of Benghazi . The affair was just a convenient excuse to step down. He would have stepped down regardless. imho
For once that you managed to pick a non-crazy one you want to keep her, uh? 
So the investigation into his gf’s emails happened to reveal his affair at the same time as he was planning on stepping down anyways? That hardly seems likely.
lol 
I suspect his prowness in managing the Iraq disaster had more to do with judicious bribes paid to the various factions. Remember all that cash shipped to Baghdad? Petraeus bribed the right people. You have to question the sanity of someone who behaves this way.
The problem at hand is that Petraeus, while busy banging his mistress, couldn’t be arsed to pick up the phone when his subordinates were calling for guidance on the Benghazi issue and four people died due to his negligence.
I’ll mark that down as an example of the difference between Israeli attitudes and American ones.
Not surprisingly you can read a lot of details about this investigation because with people criticizing the FBI for being intrusive and prudish, the Bureau is very motivated to explain its actions. And for whatever it’s worth this story makes the FBI’s actions seem pretty reasonable. The timeline looks like this: a woman who is friendly with the Petraeuses and has government connections starting getting harassing emails from an anonymous source, and she disclosed this to a friend in the FBI. The FBI figured out that the emails were calling from Paula Broadwell (a gift for the people who were calling her names upthread). As they looked at Broadwell’s inbox they found emails from Petraeus and they say they were concerned his email had been compromised or that someone was setting him up for blackmail. That wasn’t the case. As the investigation continued they looked into the possibility that Petraus had sent Broadwell classified material, and it doesn’t look like he did. The affair is supposed to have started after he retired from the military. So there were several potential criminal maters but no crimes committed, which is supposed to be why the FBI did not tell Congress sooner. To me, these sound like things the FBI did need to look into. It turned out there was nothing to them other than Petraeus having an affair with a woman who does come off as kind of nuts.
Yes, the more this story unfolds, the more everything seems reasonable. I must say, I shake my head ever so slightly, wondering why a woman with something to hide would send harassing e-mails to a State Dept liaison to the military. When you’re in a situation like that, you keep your yap shut and your nose clean.
I guess, though its sort of weird that the FBI went to what appears to be a large amount of effort over the course of several months to track down someone that was sending harassing emails to an unpaid military volunteer.
I’m not sure how long they were looking into this before they discovered the connection to Petraeus, because at that point it becomes a lot more serious.
Well, the original emails apparently didn’t name Petraeus (just accused the woman of having an affair). So the only real link to start with was that the woman was friends with Petraeus’s family. (though I guess the woman who received the emails might’ve guessed who they were referring to, either because she really was sleeping with Petraeus or just rumoured to be doing so).
From there, the FBI apparently went to the trouble of syncing up the IP addresses of the origins of anonymous emails to the movements of Broadwell and got a court order to get access to her account from that. They then monitored the account for a number of months, until they realized another account anonymous account that was emailing the first account belonged to Petraeus.
At that point the FBI’s interest makes sense, but before that it seems a weird amount of effort to go into an investigation of “5-10 harassing emails” sent back in May to a woman who, so far as I can tell, was just a volunteer social planner for military parties.
Broadwell seems like the type to strap on a pair of adult diapers and drive non-stop down to Florida to take out the threat. It’s a good thing she was caught.
Once the FBI looked at Broadwell’s email account it was all over. Broadwell has special access to the head of the CIA. They can’t have done much else.
It may also have something to do with our respective countries’ officer corps. Let me put in Trek terms: American generals are Picard; Israeli generals are Kirk.
I did a quick search for news articles about Israeli generals getting fired for adultry. No luck. Instead, I found this CNN piece:
Adultery not an offense in Israeli army
So Alessan’s POV makes perfect sense in his/her context.
Though again. Petraeus isn’t a General, Israeli or otherwise. He was forced out of a civilian position due to an affair that took place at least partially (and according to the FBI, entirely) while he was a civilian. What happens late at night in Kirya Compound isn’t really relevant.
“Not only is adultery not a punishable offense in the Israeli Army, some analysts and military officials even suggest an active libido makes a good officer.”
Let me guess. These are probably the folks that think they are good officers/analysts and have fucked around or would like to as well and get away with it.
QFT. I would assume a West Point graduate is intelligent enough to say to herself, at some point, “You know, I’m fucking a married CIA director, so maybe sending threatening emails to ANYBODY is a bad idea.”
Well, there were those guys at the Naval Academy that were running a car theft ring for fucks sake.
And then there was the girlfriend/boyfriend duo at the Airforce Academy. The girl got together with the other girls and had a “lets tell everyone our biggest secret” sleepover. At which said girl revealed boyfriend had proved his love to her by murdering his old girlfriend…because she asked him to.
And the NASA interns that stole moon rocks and tried to sell them on Ebay.
Amazing stupidity knows no bounds even when life has handed you a fantastic card apparently.
Here is Broadwell on The Daily Show in January. There are definitely a handful of lines that become very funny in hindsight. I guess we can take comfort in knowing that Petraeus’ pelvis is fully healed from that parachuting accident.