Free Republic

He did his country a great service, but he also broke the law. If Donald Trump doesn't understand now, he will eventually. Integrity and truth ultimately do matter, and if he wants to be a successful president, he's going to have to appoint people to high office who won't violate the public's trust. That means appointing more men like Neil Gorsuch and James Mattis. And it means keeping David Petraeus out of the White House... It's no understatement to say that by the September 2008 -- when he turned over command in Iraq to General Raymond Odierno -- he was...

Interesting to note that Paula Broadwell "Was Not Charged with a Single Crime" Here's why: Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director James B. Comey listened as prosecutors did a mock run-through of the government’s case, a preview of how they would present their evidence to Petraeus’s lawyers in order, they hoped, to force a guilty plea. The presentation included felony charges: lying to the FBI and violating a section of the Espionage Act. A conviction on either carried potentially years in prison. They were also considering bringing the same charges against Petraeus’s biographer and former mistress, Paula...

An influential veterans group is blasting some of their former brass for taking positions that many feel are a violation of their oaths to protect the Constitution. The Special Forces Association forcefully rebuked calls for more gun control from both former CIA director and CENTCOM commander David Petraeus and retired Army general Stanley McChrystal. SFA is a 52 year old national organization composed of members who once served in the U.S. Special Forces. The organization drew up a membership resolution at their annual convention in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday, confirming prior statements of continued support of the U.S. “Constitution and...

General David Petraeus is forming a gun control group with Gabby Gifford’s husband Mark Kelly. The goal of the group will be to push national adoption of the same universal background checks that have failed in California, Colorado, Washington state, and Paris. In fact, Petraeus will be pushing the same background checks that Giffords’ attacker passed in order to acquire the gun he used to wound her on January 8, 2011. According to The Hill, Kelly announced the launch of the group by talking about military members’ commitment to “protect our constitution and homeland.” He suggested political leaders now need...

<p>It is striking to compare the words of a leader of America’s foreign policy establishment with those of a Muslim Brotherhood member-turned apostate—who today lives with a fatwa on her head for her heresies—when it comes to free speech versus Islamic supremacism.</p>

Retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor plans to vote for Hillary Clinton for president this year, but not because the longtime Republican and former top aide to then-Gen. David Petraeus has had a political conversion. He just thinks Republican Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president. “It will be the first Democratic presidential candidate I’ve voted for in my adult life,” said Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University. Clinton’s campaign hopes that there are many more national-­security-minded Republicans and independents who would vote for her, even grudgingly, rather than see Trump win the White House.

It was 6:30 a.m. at the United States Military Academy, the sun was rising over the Hudson River, and Paula Broadwell was in athletic gear. With a half-dozen women, she rotated between sprints and burpees. Sweating onto the pavement, the group was perched atop an overlook called Trophy Point, in the shadow of a 46-foot battle monument memorializing those killed in the Civil War. There is a female statue in bronze at the top, arms outstretched regally, who is said to represent “fame.” Ms. Broadwell was here in April for a 40th anniversary celebration for the academy’s first class of...

... Cooper obviously had the authority, access, and ability to access and shut down the server used by State Department employees, diplomats, and ambassadors to communicate with the Secretary of State. And apparently the server was also used by Bill Clinton’s aides for his business, as we reported last September. The Clintons are very interested in Cooper’s legal issues. Columnist Monica Crowley reported that the Clintons are now paying Cooper’s legal bills. That’s interesting, isn’t it? The “all in the family” approach of the Clintons to the operation of the private server makes a mockery of security. Not only could...

Nate Silver was a once respected pollster. His polls were accurate a lot of the time, though they always had a left wing bias. Now, Silver has completely lost it, predicting a Mark Zuckerberg-David Petraeus ticket. Not only does Silver predict such a ridiculous idea as a presidential ticket, he also claims that Zuckerberg-Petaeus would win 428 Electoral College votes.(GRPHIC-AT-LINK)Earth to Nate Silver, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t even 35 years old yet and therefore not eligible to be President of the United States. What dope Nate Silver is smoking, I’d like to get my hands on some. This guy has completely...

A new CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report, North America: Time for a New Focus, asserts that elevating and prioritizing the U.S.-Canada-Mexico relationship offers the best opportunity for strengthening the United States and its place in the world. "It is time to put North America at the forefront of U.S. policy," the report says. "The development and implementation of a strategy for U.S. economic, energy, security, environmental, and societal cooperation with its two neighbors can strengthen the United States at home and enhance its influence abroad." Chaired by David H. Petraeus, retired U.S. Army general and chairman of the KKR Global...

"New State Department Emails Reveal Blumenthal Advised Clinton that former Rep. Eric Cantor Committed a Possible ‘Felony’ by Disclosing Petraeus Classified Information".... ‘Will a grand jury be empaneled by the Justice Department? When will Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee… begin an investigation of this matter?’ – November 13, 2012 Blumenthal advised top Obama debate advisor that Romney would ‘falsify, distort, and mangle facts;’ advised Clinton on Libya turmoil disclosed in ‘internal govt discussions high level’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on January 7, 2016, it obtained a new batch of documents from the Department...

In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae. The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or "Trotskyized," all the images of any past kingpin who became politically incorrect. The Obama administration seems obsessed with doing the same to retired Gen. David Petraeus. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is now thinking of retroactively taking away one or two of Petraeus' four stars. The potential demotion in rank, opposed by the Army, is intended as further punishment for the misdemeanor to which he pleaded guilty last...

In was an interesting coincidence that as the Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough III was writing to the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, among others, that Hillary Clinton had above-top-secret SAP (Special Access Programs) information on her private email server, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the Daily Beast reports, is preparing to demote Gen. David Petraeus, former CENTCOM commander and CIA chief for mishandling similar SAP information while in uniform.

Who ever knows how, or if, “the law” will apply to Democrat royalty? It sure looks as if Hillary Clinton committed perjury with her sworn statement that she turned over all of the official correspondence from her secret email server, and deleted only the yoga routines, cookie recipes, wedding reception plans, and so forth. What the Associated Press reported on Friday afternoon sounds like the “game over” moment Democrats have been fearing since the Clinton email scandal came to a boil: The Obama administration has discovered a chain of emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to turn over when she...

Jill Kelley, the Florida housewife whose complaint over threatening emails revealed David Petraeus´ affair, has visited the White House three times in the past three months, it has emerged. In by far the most astonishing example of her determination to reach the top, the shrewd socialite and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam, were invited to two ´courtesy´ meals in the Executive Mansion mess hall as a guest of a White House aide, an Obama administration official has revealed. She met the mid-level aide through her work with MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, where she also rubbed shoulders with the

The word inside the beltway is that a longtime adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton is urging her to hire outside legal counsel and look into cutting a deal with the Feds over the e-Mail scandal currently dogging her presidential campaign, it was reported Tuesday. According to the report Mrs. Clinton was told she needs to act quickly because, contrary to reports that the FBI probe into her use of a private e-Mail server may drag on for months, the investigation may actually wrap up by year’s end. The NY-T’s is reporting that Mrs. Clinton received Top-Secret e-Mails on her unsecured,...

Former US military commander David Petraeus said Wednesday fighters from Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate could be used to take on the Islamic State group as he warned that his nation's hesitation to enforce "red lines" in Syria had damaged US credibility. The decorated four-star general said a controversial move to harness fighters from a group linked to Al-Qaeda -- which was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks -- was "an option that has some prospect for achievement". Petraeus, who was feted for changing the course of the Iraq war in 2007, said the focus was not on cooperating with the...

To take down the so-called Islamic State in Syria, the influential former head of the CIA wants to co-opt jihadists from America’s arch foe. Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus. The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast....

The latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give more weapons to current members of al-Qaida. The Daily Beast reported that former CIA director David Petraeus, still somehow entrenched in the DC Beltway power circles despite leaking highly classified secrets, is now advocating arming members of the al-Nusra Front in Syria, an offshoot of al-Qaida and a designated terrorist organization. Could there be a more dangerous and crazy idea?

How bad is it getting for Hillary when the best her defenders came come up with is Harold Ford Jr.'s formulation: okay, so the words most associated with her are "liar," "dishonest" and "untrustworthy" but, hey!—she's not "unpatriotic." On today's Morning Joe, after Ford resorted on Hillary's behalf to the last refuge of scoundrels, Joe Scarborough hit him with a killer question: does Ford think David Petraeus—who was convicted of a crime for improperly passing classified material--is a patriot? Ford had to acknowledge that he is, but when Harold tried to distinguish Hillary's actions from Petraeus', Scarborough swept in to...