Rob: You know I had James Risen the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Reporter who the Obama administration has been threatening with jail (on my show this week) and I talked to a good number of Whistle Blowers who have been threatened and harassed and intimidated by agents of the Obama administration, do you see this is a pattern.
Ray: Well Yes, I certainly do, with journalists and with whistle blowers. I wouldn't honor myself by comparing me or putting me in that category. Although I guess, now that you did mention it, it could be that you know I would like think most progressive people in this country will consider what happened to me, if they ever learn about it, as really absurd, but you know what, the government doesn't seem to care much about that, if there is some shock value in it, if there is some, quote, deterrent value in it, if people think twice before asking intelligent questions to a saint like Petraeus, well in their view, what's to lose? It's all for the good. We intimidate people these days. That's what we do. So maybe you're right, maybe there's a touch of that, but I think they, reflecting on it, they just wanted to make sure nobody asks Sainted Petraeus any intrusive questions like "have you no shame David Petraeus? Have you no shame in bragging about your successes in Iraq and Afghanistan when both places are falling apart. And this chaos in Iraq when the Army you trained ran away when pushed-- that was a gentle push, for God's sake. A bunch of radicals called ISIL using their makeshift weaponry against the best the US military gave to the Iraqi forces.
People like Petraeus need to be exposed and I am reminded, he had a boss a head of CENTCOM at one point it was Admiral William Fallon. The first time he visited Petraeus who was in a subordinate highly significant command position, he complained that you know this guy is a chicken*hit. He fawned up to me. He curried favor with me "I hate that kind of things says Fallon" okay. Now Fallon, you may remember, was the Admiral who told my friend Pat Lang "we are not going to do Iran" okay. Whatever you see in this papers we are not going to do Iran and this is when Fallon was head of CENTCOM okay. So Fallon has uncommon guts and that's why he was canned by Bush and Cheney not long thereafter.
So you have the Petraeuses of this world who are the chicken*hit people you know and when they went up there by being really careful to say the right the things and not to say the wrong things. And as I was thinking about Petraeus as I took the bus up from Washington to do my teaching yesterday, I was thinking about a whole bunch of things, but one that stuck in my craw which is particularly irksome. It has to do with inadvertent release by Petraeus himself of emails that he wrote to a fellow who was the arch neocon. His name was Max Boot. Now what happened? Well what happened was this-- in March of 2010-- Petraeus came back from Afghanistan and he had in his written briefing a couple of sentences which I will read to you.
Ray: Quote: The Israel Palestine conflict, foments anti American sentiment due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of the US partnerships with governments and people in our area of operations, and not only that, meanwhile Al-Qaeda and its clients and other military groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world, with its clients Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas. What Petraeus is saying there is that the rigidity of the Netanyahu government is responsible for the killing of lots of US soldiers because the Arabs really don't like the fact that there is no daylight between the US and Israel on these important questions. Now what's the story here? The story here is that as soon as somebody mentioned that that paragraph was in his prepared briefing, he pretended he never heard of it and as the media picked it up, he was just really upset because he didn't want to seem like he was criticizing Israel.
So what does he do well he sends an email to this Arch conservative Max Boot, and he says "Max I didn't say that, it was not in my oral briefing, what should I do? Should I say that I had lunch with Elie Wiesel recently or they are not going to go to a holocaust celebration. I am afraid people will call me Anti Semitic". Max Boot just said "don't worry pal don't worry about it Dave everything's going to be alright". I just wrote an Op-Ed which clears the whole thing and so nobody is going to think that you are Anti Semitic.
Now the date of this correspondence was the 16th of March 2010 and as I say, let's face it. Petraeus is not real good with email, right. He said he responded to a congratulatory email from the friend of mine, he said "way to go finally you mentioned the real core of the problem in the Middle East, the Arab- Israeli conflict and Petraeus sent a little note saying, well for your information, here is what Max Boot has to say about it and he didn't delete the rest of the thing.
So finally he sees Petraeus saying oh but Max would it help if folks knew that Elie Wiesel and his wife were at a quarter Sunday night and they are not going to be speaking at the 65th anniversary of Liberation of Concentration camps at the Capitol dome and Boot says "nah I don't think you really need to worry about that, because you are really not being accused of being an Anti Semitic", so Petraeus says "Roger, "exclamation point, smile face. Now there you go you know there is a snively there is an obsequious kind of guy with presidential aspirations-- we are talking now several months before his other emails came to light and you know his experience with..that...what's her name-- Broadwell came to light. So here is a guy that really...we used to call him AK'ers in the Bronx, brown noses is another word
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