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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...

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — Former CIA Director David Petraeus reveals that he “screwed up royally” in having an affair with his biographer.

TAMPA — Frederick W. Humphries II helped make the FBI's cases against a would-be bomber on the West Coast and a university student in Tampa. But the investigation he is most certainly going to be remembered for is one that led to the downfall of CIA director and retired Gen. David Petraeus. Humphries was revealed Wednesday night as the Tampa FBI agent who took the complaints from socialite Jill Kelley that started a cyberstalking investigation and uncovered Petraeus' affair with biographer Paula Broadwell. [SNIP] "He and his wife have been social friends of Mr. and Mrs. Kelley for years," the...

Governor Sarah Palin posed the question “Who is running our country?” in her latest Facebook note: Who is running our country? We’ve got a CIA Director sharing security info with his mistress using an unsecure gmail account. We’ve got the delusional Susan Rice blaming the death of an ambassador on a Youtube video. We’ve got Iran firing on one of our drones a week before the election. We’ve got the White House either ignorant of or covering up all of this. Who is minding the store? Everywhere we look we see the rank incompetence or corruption of the people who...

The Daily Telegraph of London, citing an unnamed Republican source, reports it has learned Jill Kelley's financially-challenged twin sister, Natalie Khawam, once dated former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Reached by phone, Crist said: "Consider the source." "Didn't happen," he said. "I may have met her." Crist said he met Jill Kelley and her husband Scott, and retired Gen. David Petreaus and wife Holly for a dinner at Bern's Steak House. He said Jill Kelley had arranged the dinner. Asked what he thought of Jill Kelley, Crist said: "I think she's a delightful person."

An amabassador, his aide, and two navy seals have been killed (Two Supreme Court Justices have been killed.) The CIA Director gives apparently misleading testimony, albeit not under oath, to Congress regarding these mens' deaths, in addition to having possibly given contradictory information to a woman with whom he has had an affair. (Now a college professor, who clerked for one of the two men, who's also having an affair with one of his students, is given a brief by her, that states who probably, wanted to see these two men dead.) A potential rival of the mistress gives information...

A women in Tampa calls the FBI. "I am getting harassing emails from some unknown person telling me to 'Stay away from my man'. I am not sure who she is talking about. What should I do?" Well of course, the FBI launches a major investigation that included many months of work. What else would you do?

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned as CIA director last week after admitting an extramarital relationship, could possibly face military prosecution for adultery if officials turn up any evidence to counter his apparent claims that the affair began after he left the military...

WOULD DAVID PETRAEUS BE GOOD VP FOR ROMNEY? YES NO NOT SURE Vote View Results

The United States' top commander in Afghanistan has warned that a planned Koran-burning event in Florida could put US troops in danger. Gen. David Petraeus added his voice to mounting protests from both the US and abroad over the Dove World Outreach Center's plans to burn Korans on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. His comments ratcheted up the pressure on once-obscure pastor Terry Jones to call off the event. The controversy comes as some 120,000 US and allied troops are waging a counter-insurgency campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, a campaign whose goals include...

IRAQ HEARINGS: Sen. Obama Questions Gen. Petraeus (LONG WINDED)

Last June, I noted Gen. David Petraeus's MoveOn.org-like take on Guantanamo Bay -- close it because it causes us problems and violates (unspecified) Geneva Conventions -- and his willingness to attribute to the Palestinian war on Israel "justifications" for the existence of Hezbollah. Now this from Foreign Policy (via Judeosphere): On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli---http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1318/Is-Petraeus-an-Islamic-Tool-Part-2.aspx

Charles Krauthammer observes: You have the best generals in the world – McChrystal on counterterrorism and Petraeus on counterinsurgency – the best in the world who know exactly how this is done and who conclude you cannot do a counterterrorism strategy, only counterinsurgency. And all of a sudden he is relying on Biden, Rahm Emanuel, and himself to go against the advice of these experts? Hard to believe.It is. (And don’t forget David Axelrod.) More than one conservative colleague has remarked upon the inordinate role that advisers who lack the necessary credentials and expertise have in shaping foreign policy in...

Attacks by insurgents and rival sectarian militias have fallen up to 80 percent in Baghdad and concrete blast walls that divide the capital could soon be removed, a senior Iraqi military official said on Saturday. Lieutenant-General Abboud Qanbar said the success of a year-long clampdown named "Operation Imposing Law" had reined in the savage violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs dominant under Saddam Hussein. "In a time when you could hear nothing but explosions, gunfire and the screams of mothers and fathers and sons, and see bodies that were burned and dismembered, the people of Baghdad were awaiting...

Keith Olbermann on MSNBC on video accusses Bush of "pimping General Petraus" "...for pimping gen petraus sir.." 3/4 of the way thru the video. Why isn't Keith Suspended? Olbermann speaking of Bush: "And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it."

Petraus on Hannity now.

<p>You could almost hear the editorial teeth gnashing when the Washington Post acknowledged today (Sunday) that, yes, while we were right to say things were bad, the latest figures are modestly encouraging, maybe...</p> <p>"NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we've said. ..."</p>

The MoveOn ad that accused General David Petraeus of possibly traitorous testimony before he even began speaking has alienated the majority of American voters -- and even a plurality among MoveOn's allies believed it harnful to their cause. A new Rasmussen poll shows that 58% of those polled disapprove of the accusatory ad in the New York Times, while only a paltry 23% approve (via Memeorandum): Twenty-three percent (23%) of Americans approve of an ad run in the New York Times “that referred to General Petraeus as General Betray Us.” A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 58% disapproved....

As a political party, the Democrats sure make lousy psychics. You may recall Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's famous utterance that the surge was a "failure" even before half the additional troops earmarked for Iraq had arrived. Now the Democrats have turned their powers of prognositication on the report to be delivered by General Petraus next week before Congress and are already dismissing it as unreliable despite the fact they haven't heard or seen it: