David Petraeus served the United States of America with honor and distinction for nearly four decades.
Then he stumbled. That much is clear.
But everything else about L’affaire Petraeus is a jumbled mess, and the best advice for anyone trying to make sense of it is really quite simple.
Believe nothing.
Not at this stage, anyway.
One needn’t be a tinfoil-hat type to harbor profound doubts about the Obama administration’s account of the former CIA director’s surprise resignation.
To hear Team Obama tell it, the president had no inkling that the FBI had for months been investigating the head of the CIA regarding a matter that may have had serious national-security implications.
Then came Petraeus’ unexpected resignation, an act that the administration promptly announced relieved the former four-star general of any responsibility to testify before congressional hearings into the Benghazi outrages.
Even though the CIA was an intimate part of the debacle.
Amazing.
Never mind that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is refusing to testify — citing her, ahem, schedule.
Schedules can’t be changed?
Anyone else see a stone wall a-building?
Congress needs to knock it down.
Nor can it accept the official explanations of Petraeus’ embarrassing affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell — to say nothing of the woman’s infelicitous use of his personal e-mail.
Because too many questions linger.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden calls the public timeline “mysterious” — and that’s putting it mildly.
Again, there is the matter of (yes) what President Obama knew — and when he knew it.
Regarding foreknowledge, there are two possibilities:
* That the president really wasn’t told that the FBI had been investigating his CIA director for months in a matter involving a possible breach of classified information.
In which case someone should be fired.
* That he was told — and the American people are being lied to.
Not for the first time, of course.
Congress has to get to the bottom of the Benghazi scandal — which means questioning Petraeus and Clinton under oath.
But it also has to conduct a full investigation of L’affaire Petraeus.
“This is a political scandal, and it needs to be made public as quickly as possible,” says Robert Baer, former CIA director of Middle East operations. “For all the doubters like me, only the facts will put this to rest.”
It’s up to Congress to swiftly get those facts — no matter how personally or politically embarrassing they may be.
Odds are, they’ll be a long time coming — but Congress needs to start now.