1st Scandal of the 2nd Term – Petraeus Out

General David Petraeus, currently the head of the CIA, has resigned.  He had an

extra-marital affair.  That’s about all we know so far, despite the huge banner headline  over on the HR Hufflepuffington.

I suspect that the affair is the Maguffin.

So many questions.  First of all, what does the woman look like and what does his wife look like?  Yeah, I’m shallow, but this is a part of the story to me.  Was it a weird thing like with John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, or David Vitter and his whores, where the outside interest was a dead ringer for the wife,  was it a Hugh Grant type what the hell was he thinking fling, or was Petraeus scoring hot young nookie like Silvio Berlusconi does?  I have a hard time thinking of David Petraeus, a man whose main claim to fame is having way too many vowels in his last name, as a super-stud, but look at Silvio.  The man’s over 70, and he gets more action than I’ve ever got in my life.

Secondly, why does a simple little extra-marital affair force a resignation?  Bill Clinton didn’t resign.  JFK didn’t resign.  Newt Gingrich didn’t resign and apparently wasn’t even bothered by his conscience for a second.  But Eliot Spitzer resigned and so did Anthony Weiner, and all he did was show his weiner.

It could be just that they are all different people, all in different marriages, so there’s no predicting.  Or, it could be something about the CIA, but unless the lady he was shtooping (I’m assuming it was a lady) was a foreign agent,  I can’t see what the big deal is.

I don’t really care that much.  I’m certainly not a fan of the CIA.  Do you remember the scene in the Ben Stiller thing where Robert De Niro is his prospective father-in-law?  The second one, with Dustin Hoffman as Ben Stiller’s dad?  There was a really great scene where Hoffman challenges DeNiro to name one good thing the CIA has ever done.  DeNiro didn’t have a response and, when you think about it, there was no other way to write that scene.  In the 60 or so years of their existence, the CIA has started wars, overthrown legitimately elected governments, caused mayhem and destruction and made enemies  for the US wherever they have reared their ugly, serpentine little heads.

I think it would be a very good thing for the US and, in fact, the whole world, if they were just decommissioned, completely and immediately.  Still, I hate to see a guy lose his job just because he wanted to get laid.