And I'm pretty sure there's going to be an effort to make Paula Broadwell "the crazy woman who preyed on poor David Petraeus."

And can I just say that I'm so completely over these people who profess deep sorrow and remorse for the pain they've caused - after they get caught.  Somewhere I read that there are e-mails from Petraeus to Broadwell begging her to get back together with him, so I'd have to say that, absent being caught, remorse and sorrow weren't even in the picture.

Second, it is truly remarkable what ends people's careers in Washington - and what does not end them. As Hastings detailed in that interview, Petraeus has left a string of failures and even scandals behind him: a disastrous Iraqi training program, a worsening of the war in Afghanistan since he ran it, the attempt to convert the CIA into principally a para-military force, the series of misleading statements about the Benghazi attack and the revealed large CIA presence in Libya. To that one could add the constant killing of innocent people in the Muslim world without a whiff of due process, transparency or oversight.

Yet none of those issues provokes the slightest concern from our intrepid press corps. His career and reputation could never be damaged, let alone ended, by any of that. Instead, it takes a sex scandal - a revelation that he had carried on a perfectly legal extramarital affair - to force him from power. That is the warped world of Washington. Of all the heinous things the CIA does, the only one that seems to attract the notice or concern of our media is a banal sex scandal. Listening to media coverage, one would think an extramarital affair is the worst thing the CIA ever did, maybe even the only bad thing it ever did (Andrea Mitchell: "an agency that has many things to be proud about: many things to be proud about").

Her husband?  Doesn't make sense for him to threaten rivals for Petraeus' affection.

And not someone else close to Petraeus, such as his wife, who is hardly "close" to Broadwell.

So . . . who is this "somebody close to her"?  Who else does the FBI worry about as having access to Petraeus' gmail account -- which, of course, a good hacker could use to try to access his CIA account.  And/or if he gave or Broadwell somehow got access to his gmail account, does she also have means to try to access his CIA account?

A senior U.S. military official identified the second woman Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, Fla., and serves as the State Department's liaison to the military's Joint Special Operations Command, where among other duties, secret drone missions are worked on.
....
A friend of Kelley and Petraeus, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, also said the two saw each other often, but the nature of their friendship was unclear.

A senior U.S. military official identified the second woman as Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, Fla., and serves as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located.

Staffers for Petraeus said Kelley and her husband were regular guests at events he held at Central Command headquarters. A U.S. official said the coalition countries represented at Central Command gave Kelley an appreciation certificate on which she was referred to as an "honorary ambassador" to the coalition, but she has no official status and is not employed by the U.S. government.

I guess it wasn't enough that he had a smart, highly intelligent wife, though.