It was inevitable. General David Petraeus, the hero of the Afghanistan surge and survivor of 38 years of marriage to the same woman, turned out to be not so squeaky clean as we were led to believe. Word leaked this week that the decorated general of the Army and chief of the Central Intelligence Agency had been having a clandestine affair with an imbedded journalist of the female variety. Paula Broadwell had been given access only dreamed of by other journalists as she accompanied Petraeus 24/7 during his tour of duty in Afghanistan. They had initially met when Ms Broadwell attended a lecture given by Patraeus at the US Army War College entitled “Winning the War: Dying Bad, Killing Good”. She convinced him that in order to further polish his already shining star what he needed was a biography that focused on his leadership skills and ignored his bald spot. He agreed and after convincing his wife that he was actually bunking with “some journalist named Paul” Ms Broadwell packed her lingerie and running shoes and joined the general in Kabul.
It wasn’t long before eyebrows were raised at the seemingly close personal relationship budding in the Afghan theater. Patraeus waved off questions about impropriety insisting that “Paula is a world class athlete who enjoys making me sweat. She won a bronze medal for her athletic achievements at the Olympics in Seoul, and I have personally witnessed her expertise in pole vaulting. She’s also a good writer. She can write the pants off of me without even trying.”
Ms Broadwell’s book, “All In: Greasing the Way to Victory,” published soon after her return to the US, was seen as some as nothing more than a thinly camouflaged ode to the general’s constant state of readiness to accomplish his mission. Dwight Calwell’s review of the book cited passages referring to the general’s “erect stature, driving force and nightly pounding of the enemy’s rear,” as clues to what was really going on in those steamy cargo containers in Afghanistan.
The other shoe dropped when Ms Broadwell complained to the CIA that some woman was making “unreasonable demands on my David”. Intensive investigation revealed that the woman referred to was in fact, Mrs Patraeous, who had reportedly become suspicious after finding her husband pole vaulting with Broadwell one afternoon when she returned unexpectedly from a fishing trip.
In his resignation speech General Petraeous took full responsibility for inadvertently writing nuclear missile launch codes on Ms Broadwell’s firm buttocks with a magic marker in a video that made its way to Youtube on election night.