There´s nobody that could expose and blow up Obama´s middle eat blunders like Petraeus. He´s been forgiven by a lot of people on the right compared to Clinton because Clinton was a serial skit chaser who disgraced the oval office as well as crooked fundraising schemes..They still have to have some leverage on Petraeus and Broadwell for their silence.

Obama´s spy network could have something on Boehner for all we know. the NSA has been spying on anybody of importance.

Petraeus is still the general who was able to straighten out Iraq when it was verging on melt down. I´ve never cared for Frank Rich. IMO, he´s a snarky food processor that the generals protect from the sharia storm.

"A mere marital lapse."

I´m not going to lie. People like Frank Rich make me want to break a few commandments. Half this country needs a cold slap across their fresh faces and this feckless jack-wagon should be first in line.

Something doesn´t sit "right" about Petraeus....

Can´t put my finger on it -- but -- I´m thinking someone is holding "something" on him and his wifey....

LZK

OK, now Mr. Rich how about some insight into The Occupior of The Oval Office! The truth about Obama and his Associations from the time of his youth were known and ignored from the beginning.

Let´s have a little insight on that super-hero!

Frank Rich and most of the media are suckers for their "main man" superhero, Barack Obama. He still is wearing his blinders and kneepads.

Right on Patraeus; next Obama. Get to work on that one Frank Rich.

I dunno, I started the article because it´s ´Must Read´, but I didn´t get far. It´s such a nasty, snarky, whiny piece that I had to stop and see who wrote it and where it was published. I suppose I shoulda done that first...

Well yeah, people do want to believe that somewhere out there there is someone worthy of admiration. Coming from a Democrat, this should be obvious. DIdn´t they offer up someone for adoration? Aren´t they still kissing his boots flaws and all? Darned if they´ll give up the dream.

Frank Rich, one of the indoctrinated brain washed writers who get published. Imagine Frank writing the same kind of look into a guy who has no records, educational or otherwise, no consistent documentation, forensics question those finally produced,
a person with serioua unresolved childhood problems, not unlike, Slick Willie and his battered childhood, an endless array of communist comrades and advisors, a book written about him THE DESTRUCTIVE PRESIDENT
revealing rage and vindictiveness, Oath breaking with several dozen czars to bipass the sleeping unaware forfeiting Congress. Oh yes, Barry makes a better cracked glass than the General.

I don´t get character references from smarmy Frank Rich.

BTW, the wearing of one´s medals is not considered to be cheesy if it is in a military setting. Petraeus sometimes wore his to official meetings.

It is permissible for veterans and retirees to wear military awards on civilian clothes for gatherings of a military theme. On significant holidays like Veterans Day and Memorial Day, veterans and retirees are encouraged to wear their awards and medals. The choice of either full-size medal or miniature is an individual one.

http://www.military.com/benefits/resources/wearing-medals-awards-and-decorations

An official meeting to which a four star general was a participant, or a hearing where he appeared as a four star general but was a retired veteran no longer in uniform, would be considered appropriate.

Frank Rich is a dunce.

You gotta admit that David Petraeus had way too many medals on his uniform. It looks so Soviet Union like.

Did he get a medal for being on time and showing up at parties?

Oh come on Frank! (I have known him for decades) I won´t read past the lede. The problem with Clinton wasn´t the affair; it was the perjury and the obstruction. Petraeus didn´t do that. Stop acting the fool! You never did understand comedy.

Petraeus lost me when he agreed to work for The Regime.

#2 - Petraeus paid our enemies not to fight us. That´s the ´Iraq Success´

That´s the worst kind of "strategy" possible.

I think Mr. Rich´s point is well-taken, that Americans and their celebrity-obsessed press are much too quick to latch adoringly on to "super heroes" and endue them with magical powers we mere mortals seem to lack. Missing, conspicuously so, from Mr. Rich´s insight, is the admission of how hornswoggled voters were by the unashamed boosterism of Mr. Rich and his fellow presstitutes, of Barack Obama. Remember the old "fool me once, shame on you" saying? Mr. Rich, et al, have been twice-fooled. Talk about willing suspension of disbelief....

#2 snarky food processor -- Thanks, I´m going to use that! Heh.

What is most telling of this article is not who it talks about but who it leaves out.

You cannot trash Warren Harding without mentioning John and Teddy Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Obama and consider yourself journalistic-ally honest.

I cannot help but wonder how many GIs careers he destroyed with his vigorous enforcement of "General Order 1" while he was scooping up low hanging fruit like Broadwell. Wonder if he went on the regular booze cruise flights to Germany to get blasted like MacChrystal did, too.

#4 has the same feeling that I have: "something doesn´t sit ´right´ about Patraeus".

#5 an #7 beat me to it: Now Frank Rich needs to train his eye on Obama and give us some insight on his past as well as tell us why exactly he is eligible to sit in our WH.

Frank Rich is the trailing end of an alimentary canal.

Maybe The Obammunist still has something political on Petraeus and may be he doesn´t.

There is an old military concept that a smart General picks his battles, as well as the time and circumstances of an attack that delivers the deadly blow.

If I were The Obammunist (and I thank God that I am not), with all the weaknesses and sordid secrets that he knows he has, I would lay awake at night and constantly look over my shoulder wondering when and where the political attack will come from that will deliver the deadly political blow.

Frank Rich and his ilk l-o-v-e it when they can highlight some failure in "the American values system". Just warms their little (non-existent) hearts.

He´s right about these "heroes" but wrong about Americans´ constant search for them. We should always celebrate human excellence instead of cursing its "absence". This is what keeps Americans from becoming self-aware, supercilious Europeans.

Back during the Vietnam era when I was in the Army you would meet soldiers who were combat veterans of the Korean War and who had served three or more combat tours of duty in Vietnam, who had a combat infantry badge and about four rows of ribbons on their uniforms usually including at least the Bronze Star medal with a V for valor, and maybe a couple of oak leaf clusters meaning the medal was awarded more then once, along with a Purple Heart medal and maybe a couple of oak leaf clusters on that decoration.

When you look at Petraus in uniform, you see a man who has never been in combat when he held the rank of less then a general officer, but has at least ten rows of ribbons on his uniform surrounded by all sorts of non-combat related badges that make him look equivalent to an old time Marshal of the Soviet Union or a North Korean General?????

Obviously something has happened in the Army over the years regarding the proliferation of all sorts of medals, as back during the Vietnam era many enlisted men were discharged without even being awarded the Army Good Conduct medals to which they were entitled, not alone the combat related awards that many earned but never received.

Others on this thread have turned the spotlight on the most glaring omission of this column. What do we know about Barack Hussein Obama?
Until the MSM lights that candle, we´re always going to be stumbling around in the dark wondering about the president of the most powerful nation on earth.
Of more importance, will we ever know?

Pretty damning indictment of the press for not doing their job on all of the folks in this story.

#26, I´m only a student of military history, but during WWII generals and admirals, even in the most formal of settings and in photographs, didn´t wear more than two or three rows of ribbons. General MacArthur was famous for wearing none and of course his wrinkled khakis with the addition of an A-2 (but he clung to that Philippine field marshal cap from 1937 on!)

The proliferation of awards is strictly modern.

Rich is contemptuous of anyone who believes that there might be some decent people out there.

Regardless, Petraeus is hardly the first guy to lose his head over a pretty skirt and then slink away, embarrassed. His accomplishments on the battlefield are not diminished by that.

Lefties in America - all of them - have been insufferably snide since the election. They have no idea what they´ve done to harm America in the long term, and yet they seem to know absolutely everything.

Memo to Frank Rich: We need heroes, even if they´re not perfect, and even if they let us down from time to time. David Petraeus did a huge service to America, and a subsequent marital infidelity won´t un-do that. Now why don´t you run along and get back to writing about theater?

The quote above, from the 2008 (I believe)amendment to the U.S.Flag Code also permitted former service members to render the military-style hand salute, even though not in a uniform and not wearing a hat or cap, at appropriate times, such as passing of the colors in a parade, during the National Anthem, and the like.