Slado: "I'd be interested to see how the General polls publicly now. My sense is that while he took a hit overall for showing such lack of judgement he probably is still very popular overall for his performance as a general."

Granted, he was probably handed unwinnable situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But that said, subsequent events in both conflicts have served to underscore the growing public impression that his only substantive accomplishment as U.S. military commander was to merely postpone the inevitable.

One might argue that perhaps Petraeus did the best he could under the circumstances, but even that assessment hardly renders him as the second coming of Dwight Eisenhower. Rather, and speaking for myself only, I'd offer instead that the general likely and intentionally misled both Washington policymakers and the American public regarding the reality of the situation as it existed on the ground in both theatres of conflict.

In Jan. 2012, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a senior Army officer who had just completed his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, wrote a detailed and scathing whistleblower account to Pentagon brass on the actual conditions there, which he said were deteriorating. He challenged them publicly in an article in Armed Forces Journal that's since been removed, asking them, "How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?"

Davis charged that Petraeus had willfully offered self-flattering yet glaringly inaccurate accounts of U.S. military progress in Afghanistan, which he said were consistently full of willful inconsistencies, omissions and outright distortions. He further accused the general of building a so-called "cult of personality" in the American media that was centered entirely upon himself, to the virtual exclusion of other senior commanders and officers then serving under him.

As CIA Director, Gen. Petraeus became the hapless embodiment of the Peter Principle. "Lack of judgment" is an understatement. What he did during the course of his extramarital affair with his own personally commissioned biographer Paula Broadwell was foolishly stupid, because giving her access to his personal e-mail account could have compromised national security. If he's indeed indicted for felony conduct, he has only himself to blame.