Petraeus Mess: Clean House at FBI

After reading Glenn Greenwald and Scott Shane yesterday, I’m convinced that the FBI office in Tampa and the U.S. attorney who approved the investigation into Jill Kelley’s emails, and the fishing expedition into Paula Broadwell’s e-mail accounts, should be summarily fired.  There is simply no crime that was committed.  Several news outlets have even characterized Broadwell’s e mails to Kelley as non-threatening.  They were merely rants by a jealous woman toward someone she perceived as a rival.

What were they investigating?  Why didn’t someone intervene and ask a few hard questions about what they were doing and why?  That should be the job of the U.S. attorney, who appears to have been asleep at the switch.  Why didn’t he see a red flag when he heard the original complaint was brought by a bare-chested womanizer, as interested as bedding the complainant as getting to the bottom of her complaint?  Why didn’t the Tampa FBI office manage this bozo-agent better, instead of allowing him to turn the case into a political football by dragging GOP Christian neocon Rep. Dave Reichert into the mix-mess?

While many of us realize that e-mail is not a secure form of communication and privacy is a very liquid term when it relates to e-mail, does that give the national security state the right to invade e-mail accounts without even a hint of a crime being committed?  Now, we have the specter of G-men invading the home of Paula Broadwell, carting out truckloads of documents, boxes, computers.  Why?  Because she sent some petulant e mails to another woman.

This makes me sick.  Not to mention that the careers of two generals are either finished or hanging in the balance.  All because a bunch of FBI shnooks couldn’t tell the difference between a crime and an annoyance.

If FBI director Mueller can’t get his house in order and fire the people who got the country into this mess, then he should be sent packing as well.  While I’m not a fan of Pres. Obama, I think he’s smart enough to realize that a bunch of people he trusted got him into this mess and that eventually they should be held accountable.  And I’m not talking about Gens. Petraeus or Allen.  They’re road kill.  Very important road kill, but peripheral to the main issue.

Greenwald correctly notes that the Big Picture here doesn’t involve adultery or indiscretion or potential blackmail–rather it involves the national security state eating its own.  Isn’t it bad enough when it consumes the poor shlub who’s done little or nothing wrong, let alone when it chews up and spits our four-star generals?  What is this country coming to?

Someone must finally stand up and say: here and no farther.  We’ve long passed the red line.  Beyond it lies madness, a form of national pathology that derives from the excesses of the police state we appear to be rapidly becoming.

I’m not letting Obama off the hook.  He has only himself to blame.  He’s become the inheritor of the programs bequeathed to him by the Bush regime.  He didn’t reject them as he should have.  He embraced them.  Snooping without warrants?  Fine by me says BHO.  Killing without trial? A-OK.  When you lay down with dogs like this you’ll get up with fleas.  Obama is riddled with ’em.  If he were smart he’d take a flea bath and cure himself of this misery he’s helped bring on the American people.