A Visual Aid (Sujatha)

To the unfolding soap opera of the Generals and their paramours

(From Gawker):

Paging Oliver Stone. On second thoughts, not enough battlefield scenes. Maybe we should get Baz Luhrmann to turn this into a Moulin Rouge-like spectacle.

 

 

Comments

[John Ballard]

The media is having a ball with this circus.
I have to share this comment from one of my Facebook friends...

and now ..... voluptuous twin sister enters stage left.

about the only thing this scandal doesn't have that would keep it from eclipsing the profumo affair would be cristine keeler's axe-wielding jamaican drug dealer beau, "lucky" gordon.

[Sujatha]

Maybe Shirtless FBI Guy could play that part.

[Ruchira]

How does one do one's job while writing "twenty to thirty thousand" flirty e-mails to a socialite thousands of miles away in Tampa? A respected military leader turned CIA director decides to sleep with a woman and exchanges torrid e-mails. This is a tawdry and comical soap opera and the distraction has given Obama some time to ponder how he should approach Boehner and McConnell.

The long military quagmire is driving our generals batty. All the more reason to get out of Afghanistan.

[Elatia Harris]

Ruchira, I see those astonishingly numerous emails as a triumph of multitasking. People who aren't made crazy by multitasking always like to add one more thing to assure fitness. My father dictated 10 letters at a time -- line 1 would be different for everyone, and so would the rest be different. The copy was perfect. He enjoyed this, the way a juggler enjoys adding one more ball just when you think he can't. And he started doing it when he read Napoleon dictated 7 at a time. Betcha this was an amusing challenge for the General. Until it really really crashed

[Ruchira]

Maureen Dowd has a wrap up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/dowd-reputation-reputation-reputation.html?hp

[John Ballard]

Wow!
This part hits like a ton of bricks:

Petraeus’s Icarus flight began when he set himself above President Obama.

Accustomed to being a demigod, expert at polishing his own celebrity and swaying public opinion, Petraeus did not accept the new president’s desire to head for the nearest exit ramp on Afghanistan in 2009. The general began lobbying for a surge in private sessions with reporters and undercutting the president, who was trying to make a searingly hard call.

Petraeus rolled the younger commander in chief into going ahead with a bound-to-fail surge in Afghanistan, just as, half-a-century earlier, the C.I.A. had rolled Jack Kennedy into going ahead with the bound-to-fail Bay of Pigs scheme. Both missions defied logic, but the untested presidents put aside their own doubts and instincts, caving to experience.