"It is impossible to overstate the importance... It is more significant than the killing of Osama bin Laden or even the death of al-Baghdadi."

"Suleimani was the architect and operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia crescent, stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria into southern Lebanon. He is responsible for providing explosives, projectiles, and arms and other munitions that killed well over 600 American soldiers and many more of our coalition and Iraqi partners just in Iraq, as well as in many other countries such as Syria.... [Trump's] reasoning seems to be to show in the most significant way possible that the U.S. is just not going to allow the continued violence—the rocketing of our bases, the killing of an American contractor, the attacks on shipping, on unarmed drones—without a very significant response.... Iran is in a very precarious economic situation, it is very fragile domestically.... It will be interesting now to see if there is a U.S. diplomatic initiative to reach out to Iran and to say, 'Okay, the next move could be strikes against your oil infrastructure and your forces in your country—where does that end?'... Obviously all sides will suffer if this becomes a wider war, but Iran has to be very worried that—in the state of its economy, the significant popular unrest and demonstrations against the regime—that this is a real threat to the regime in a way that we have not seen prior to this.... Yes, they can respond and they can retaliate, and that can lead to further retaliation—and that it is clear now that the administration is willing to take very substantial action. This is a pretty clarifying moment in that regard.... Given the state of their economy, I think they have to be very leery, very concerned that that could actually result in the first real challenge to the regime certainly since the Iran-Iraq War...."

Said David Petraeus in an interview with Foreign Policy.

An excellent discussion of the latest Hillary Clinton email problem on "Fox News Sunday."

This is a bit long and starts slow, but the different commentators bring different perspectives that I'll try to highlight, so stick with me:

CHRIS WALLACE:   In 2011, when an aide was having trouble sending her material by a secure fax, she sent these instructions: "If they can't, turn into nonpaper with no identifying heading, and send nonsecure." Bob Woodward, why is this important? 

2 very different interviews about Hillary Clinton's email troubles, this morning on Fox News Sunday.

Shannon Bream was the interviewer (instead of the usual Chris Wallace) and the guests were former Attorney General Mike Mukasey —who was calm and seemingly neutral — and Ellen Tauscher — who was there to defend Hillary and looked so terrified that I took screen shots of her:

Full transcript here. Excerpts:

Hitting the wall.

It's very hot here in Madison today, hot and windy. Hiding indoors, I watched 4 — 4! — of the morning talking-heads shows, but there's nothing I want to write about them. Or... okay: Donald Trump was on at least 3 of them, literally phoning it in, saying the same thing in response to the same questions. How will he act in the debate? He doesn't know. He's never been in a debate before. He's not a debater... like those other guys. He won't be on the attack, because he's a "nice guy," but if others attack him, he'll punch back twice as hard (not that he used the Obama-associated phrase "punch back twice as hard"). He wants to make America great again, and he's the one who can do it, because he's a guy who gets things done. And:

CHUCK TODD: Who would you rather face: Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don't have a choice. I would say this. I think with what she's doing and how she's coming out, you know, she's got a terrible record. She's probably the worst secretary of state in the history of this country. And, she's now, the email thing, I mean, what they did with Petraeus is they destroyed his life. What she did is far greater and far worse than Petraeus did. So I would think that she at some point you're going to get a prosecutor who's going to be an honorable prosecutor. And there's going to be major problems for her. So I would think other people would be looking.

That's from "Meet the Press," but he made the Hillary-Petraeus comparison in each of his phoned-in interviews.

"Snowden would be amenable to coming back to the United States for the kind of plea bargain that Gen. Petraeus received."

Said one of his legal advisers.

"People have no idea how much I detest this job," wrote former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Quoted by Bob Woodward in "Robert Gates, former defense secretary, offers harsh critique of Obama’s leadership in 'Duty.'"

It is rare for a former Cabinet member, let alone a defense secretary occupying a central position in the chain of command, to publish such an antagonistic portrait of a sitting president....

Gates writes about Obama with an ambivalence that he does not resolve, praising him as “a man of personal integrity” even as he faults his leadership. Though the book simmers with disappointment in Obama, it reflects outright contempt for Vice President Joe Biden and many of Obama’s top aides.

ADDED: Here's the NYT summary of the forthcoming memoir:

When Phillippe Reines — the man behind Hillary's "reset" button — said "fuck off" and "have a good life" to Michael Hastings — the reporter who died recently in a mysterious car crash.

In the comments to the "Snowden is like a hot meat pie in your hands" post — about what leaker Edward Snowden means to the Russians — David said "So much for reset. Apparently Obama and Clinton have not improved relations [with Russia] much." Which got me looking up articles about Hillary Clinton's foolish "reset" button. I found "Hillary’s Aide Really Half-Assed That ‘Reset’ Button Thing" from March 2009:

[F]ingers had to be pointed at someone, and, for the most part they were conveniently targeted at a guy everyone hated already anyway, Hillary's senior adviser Phillippe Reines, who was nearly fired during the presidential campaign for making a tactless comment about John McCain's torture experience. He's also been agitating some in the State Department press corps by restricting their access.

(I think the referenced comment about McCain is here.) Now, we talked about Reines last fall in connection with this story: "Hillary Clinton Aide Tells Reporter To 'Fuck Off' And 'Have A Good Life.'" And I'm surprised to see that the reporter is Michael Hastings, who died in a fiery single-car wreck on June 18th:

He had emailed a warning to colleagues on June 17 saying the "Feds" were interviewing his close friends and associates. He added: "I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the radat (sic) for a bit." BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith confirmed that he had received the email....

The circumstances and rumors surrounding the death led the FBI to issue a statement stating that Hastings was never under investigation.

In this light, you might want to read that Phillipe Reines/Michael Hastings email exchange again. Hastings was asking questions like "Why didn’t the State Department search the [Benghazi] consulate...?" and "What other potential valuable intelligence [besides Ambassador Stevens's diary] was left behind that could have been picked up by apparently anyone searching the grounds?" Reines became extremely defensive and abusive:

I now understand why the official investigation by the Department of the Defense as reported by The Army Times The Washington Post concluded beyond a doubt that you’re an unmitigated asshole.

How’s that for a non-bullshit response?

Now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems, have a good day.

And by good day, I mean Fuck Off.

ADDED: From 4 days ago: "Was Michael Hastings Murdered? Internet Conspiracy Theories Are Rife."

"Petraeus’s role in drafting Benghazi talking points raises questions."

"Security at this annex was the responsibility of the CIA, not the State Department. But because the annex operated under diplomatic cover, its existence as an intelligence facility was classified...."

"Petraeus Says U.S. Tried to Avoid Tipping Off Terrorists After Libya Attack."

Here's the NYT article to pick through.

At some point in the process — [David] Petraeus told lawmakers he was not sure where — objections were raised to naming the groups, and the less specific word “extremists” was substituted.

“The fact is, the reference to Al Qaeda was taken out somewhere along the line by someone outside the intelligence community,” Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican, said after the House hearing. “We need to find out who did it and why.”...

Democrats said Mr. Petraeus made it clear the change had not been done for political reasons to aid Mr. Obama. “The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.

Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, said that Mr. Petraeus explained to lawmakers that the final document was put in front of all the senior agency leaders, including Mr. Petraeus, and everyone signed off on it.

Including Mr. Petraeus, who had the motivation of trying to keep his job, which he was deprived of immediately after the election. Now, he has the motivation of trying to regain his honor.

Ms. Feinstein, read the final unclassified talking points to reporters:

Who changed the CIA's Benghazi talking points?

The question emerges from Petraeus's testimony today:

"The original talking points were much more specific about Al Qaeda involvement. And yet the final ones just said indications of extremists," King said, adding that the final version was the product of a vague "inter-agency process."...

Lawmakers are focusing on the talking points in the first place because of concern over the account Rice gave on five Sunday shows on Sept. 16, when she repeatedly claimed the attack was spontaneous -- Rice's defenders have since insisted she was merely basing her statements on the intelligence at the time.

"The Real Reason You Should Care About the Petraeus Affair: Privacy."

"If the CIA director couldn't keep his emails secret, neither can you."

"Now everything is kept in the cloud on Google and Yahoo's servers," says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU. "That quirk of [The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986] has become hugely important for Americans' privacy." Once you've opened an email or your Facebook account, you've provided your personal information to a third party. The government can then ask that third party—Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, or whatever—for your information, and they don't necessarily need a warrant. The Constitution protects you from unreasonable search and seizure by the government. It doesn't stop third parties from sharing personal information you willingly give them. Likewise, there's no warrant needed to acquire the IP addresses—unique identifiers that can usually be traced to specific geographical locations—of people accessing those email accounts. According to the Wall Street Journal, that's exactly how the FBI figured out Broadwell was behind the allegedly harassing emails that sparked the investigation that uncovered the Petraeus affair.

That's not all. All your emails that are more than six months old are legally treated as online "storage" and accessible with a court order or a subpoena to the online service provider. The providers can say no, but usually they don't...

"Fred is a passionate kind of guy."

"He’s kind of an obsessive type. If he locked his teeth onto something, he’d be a bulldog."

Fred = Frederick W. Humphries II, the FBI agent who opened the Petraeus investigation.

How do you get the position of "social liaison" in the U.S. military?

Well, it's just not actually a position.

It seems that Jill Kelley, the other other woman in the unfolding Petraeus scandal, acquired the honorific via media reports struggling to describe her ambiguous volunteer role as a popular hostess to Central Command’s military elite....

“There’s no such thing,” one officer told us. The made-up title appears to be a polite way of saying “rich Tampa socialite who likes to hang with four-star generals.”

I thought of some other things it would be a polite way of saying, but I won't mention them. I'll just suggest that the officer is only portraying the women in a negative light. What about the generals? The women couldn't have made any progress in the role of "social liaison" if the generals didn't want to be liaised. What the hell are these men doing appropriating the power and prestige of the United States military for the purpose of liaising with women-of-a-certain-type? These are the men who send enlistees into battle, who demand sacrifice from idealistic young Americans. They should not be flaunting whatever pleasures they pursue.

And by the way, how does one get the position called "socialite"? It's not as though that's anything more than a characterization of what someone appears to be doing. Wikipedia says:

A socialite is a slightly pejorative term for a member of a social elite, or someone aspiring to be a member.... A socialite participates in social activities and spends a significant amount of time entertaining and being entertained at fashionable events....

American Members of The Establishment, or an American "Society" based on birth, breeding, education, and economic standing, were originally listed in the Social Register.... Members of true "society" were distinguishable from members of post World-War I "cafe society," from whom are further distanced "socialites," who are considered aspirational members of true "society," but with no substantive social credentials or personal achievements.

You never hear about true "society" anymore. Only the pretenders get any attention now. But what are they pretenders to? To nothing!

I've got another question: Do identical twins tilt their head sideways the same way at the same time? Because that photograph is driving me nuts.

What Petraeus needs to do to get his reputation back.

This is a topic for brainstorming. Meade and I are talking about it after reading a provocative comment in the "Did Petraeus lie" thread. Bagoh20 said:

I'm not interested in all this mental masturbation, but it continues to amaze me how many people will sacrifice every principle for Obama, man who has lied to them repeatedly and come up short on every bit of promise. He's gonna need to perform a few miracles, be crucified, and rise from the dead to deserve it. How many journalist, pundits, and regular folks have fallen far and hard. People, who confronted with their hypocrisy and lack of discernment, now just shrug, [are] willing accept what would have been repugnant just a few years ago. I have lost respect for so many. I hope Petraeus does not turn out to be a disciple as well. We could use a clear-headed Judas about now.

Judas has a bad reputation, but having put the familiar Jesus template on Obama, we see why bagoh20 used Judas as the model. He's saying Obama needs a betrayer, and the name Judas also evokes the word "betrayal," a word so strongly associated with General Petraeus, notoriously called General Betray Us.

But Petraeus is already dishonored and exiled. You have to betray from the inside. You have to sacrifice something valuable to yourself to build a reputation through disloyalty. As an outsider, you've got a motive to bad-mouth those who ousted you. It's hard to get credit for taking revenge.

Still, Petraeus knows what he knows, and he can be a truthteller. I think there is a path to prestige through loyalty to the truth. He has begun to take that path by openly confessing to adultery — which is a disloyalty to his wife but a truthtelling. Compare Bill Clinton's early engagement with his Lewinsky problems: He lied. But Petraeus is caught up in lies. He lied about the adultery before he confessed. And he seems to have lied to the House Intelligence Committee about Benghazi.

It's a hard path to prestige through truthtelling, but what other path is there? 

Obama is about to do his first full-scale news conference since last March.

Which was back when Rick Santorum seemed like he might get the GOP nomination and 2 months before Obama did his first campaign rally. He has been really press-shy... even though the press loves him and boosts him as much as they can. Or so it seems. But there's always a chance some reporter will break out a tough question.

Politico offers some "hard questions" that might conceivably be asked. But the questions, as phrased chez Politico, all sound softened to me. If they're soft on paper under a link-begging headline about hardness, how can we hope for any toughness face-to-face with the President who's been withholding press conferences for 8 months?

Here are the Petraeus-related questions:

Do you believe the FBI should have told you and Congress sooner about the investigation that led Gen. Petraeus to resign?

Do you worry about a culture in which trusted officials behave badly?

Does this administration consider anyone who’s having an extramarital affair, or has had one in the past, to be unfit for public office?

Easy: yes, yes, no. Add a few mushy words and you're done. Instapundit notes that Question 1 "lets Obama off the hook by pretending to believe that he didn’t know anything about Petraeus until after the election, which is quite implausible." It's like the old "When did you stop beating your wife?" question, assuming a fact not yet proved, but the assumed fact is helpful to the witness. The witness is in no danger of getting tripped up, letting the negative assumption go. He'll notice the positive assumption, silently celebrate, and proceed to answer the question asked.

Did Petraeus lie to the House Intelligence Committee in the hope of keeping his job?

And did the Obama administration take advantage of that hope then oust him when the election was over? That's what Charles Krauthammer thinks.

Petraeus told the committee (on September 14th) that the Benghazi attack arose out of spontaneous protests over the “Innocence of Muslims” video. His prestige gave great weight to the administration's story in those key days after the attack. That testimony, Krauthammer says, is "the thing that connects the two scandals, and that’s the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant."

Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else. The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?...

Of course it was being held over Petraeus’s head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don’t have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism. As long as they needed him to give the administration line... everybody was silent. And as soon as the election’s over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he’s destroyed....

Krauthammer's theory contains the assumption that the administration didn't need Petraeus anymore after Election Day. Yet the very statement of the theory hurts the administration, and that injury only occurs because they did drop the sword on Petraeus. The administration still needs to get through its Benghazi problem. This presents a puzzle. What's the advantage in exposing Petraeus now? Perhaps the idea is for him to embody the misbegotten "Innocence of Muslims" story, which is now rejected. Others who passed that story along — notably Susan Rice, who may be the Secretary of State — can be restored to health after the surgical removal of the Petraeus cancer. Rice's conspicuous Sunday show appearances took place on the 16th. She said:

Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. 

Based on the best information... Make that Petraeus... and now he's gone. Except he's not gone. He's the most conspicuous man in the world right now. The cancer on the Presidency is lying exposed —  grisly and repulsive — on the surgical tray that is the media.

"Both Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. John Allen intervened in the same nasty child custody battle involving Natalie Khawam..."

"... the 'psychologically unstable' twin sister of Jill Kelley, whose bombshell claims of being threatened by Petraeus' lover led to the top spy’s resignation last week, the Post has learned."

And in court documents filed by Kelley's sister Natalie Khawam, she name-drops both Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island -- who both have ties to a Providence, RI, lawyer/lobbyist who loaned a whopping $300,000 to Khawam.

Khawam claimed in a July 12 letter to her estranged husband that she took their son "on vacation last year to Martha Vineyard," where their son and "I had a great time at the DSCC [Democratic Senate Campaign Committee] event."

"Sen. John Kerry asked if [her son] would be coming again this year," Khawam wrote. "[Their son] was a superstar at the DSCC last year."

A spokeswoman for Kerry – who the Washington Post reports is being considered as President Obama's next secretary of defense -- had no immediate comment.

Oh, my. Petraeusgate is a gaping maw! Men teetering on the edge. And always another woman. Look out, there are 2 of them! Kelley comes in duplicate: Kelley and Khawam... ka-bam!

ADDED: This story is an immense distraction, with all these spangly details. I'm not sure what parts are going to matter. Is Kerry seriously involved? Is the child custody dispute significant? Will it tie back to Benghazi importantly or is it taking us down a rathole?

"ABC Denver misnames Petraeus book, 'All up in my snatch.'"

Oh, well... it would actually be an appropriate name for the book.

"Petraeus And Lover Used An Email Trick Used By Terrorists To Keep Affair Secret."

"The CIA director and his biographer had a shared Gmail account and wrote some of their personal missives as draft emails, which were left in a draft folder or an electronic, 'dropbox.'"

The email was never sent, which had some secrecy advantages, but it meant that Petraeus had a shared gmail account with that woman, Ms. Broadwell.

FBI investigators were able to use the data trail left when Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old Florida socialite who was family friends with Gen Petraeus, received emails allegedly warning her to stay away from the former CIA director. The data trail revealed that the emails were being sent by Mrs Broadwell from an anonymous email account, information which eventually brought the affair to light.

Did Broadwell send the "harassing" emails from the account she shared with Petraeus?

If Petraeus had ended the affair, shouldn't he have deleted the shared account? Or could Broadwell have gotten in there first and excluded him? Maybe it was her gmail account, and she'd added him as an authorized user, giving her the power to cut off his access, with all his old letters in the draft folder, and with her ability to send email for whatever crazy purpose crossed her mind. But what did Broadwell think she was doing? Was she just an out-of-control, I-will-not-be-ignored ex-lover, or is there something more nefarious and political going on?

Feel free to brainstorm.

Petraeusgate drags in Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

"According to a senior U.S. defense official..."

... the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 documents — most of them e-mails — of 'potentially inappropriate'communication between Allen and Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old Tampa woman whose report of harrassment by a person who turned out to be Petraeus’s mistress ultimately led to Petraeus’s downfall....

The scrutiny of Allen’s personal behavior extends a remarkable string of failures and misconduct allegations that have dogged the last four commanders of the Afghan war. Petraeus took the job in 2010, after President Obama fired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal for cooperating with a Rolling Stone profile that quoted McChrystal’s aides as mocking the president, Vice President Biden and other civilian leaders. 

A chain of events set in motion by the unignorable insult "Bite Me"...

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite me?”