Maybe it affects your perspective

Remember when President Obama cleared General Petraeus of endangering national security by having an affair with Paula Broadwell? Then how do you explain the fact that Obama's F.B.I. has not closed the case? Could it be that Obama doesn't want Petraeus speaking out against him and/or Hillary Clinton?

Eli Lake and Josh Rogin write:

As reported by Fox News last summer, Representative Jason Chaffetz (now the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) had previously asked the Justice Department for answers on why the Petraeus file might still be open. “If he has done something wrong, charge him, if he has not, let him go,” Chaffetz told us last month. “At this point I don’t know what their motivation is. But I worry they will let this linger until the president leaves office.”

Bob Gates and Leon Panetta, two former defense secretaries, have not been shy about criticizing Obama's national security team.

But, not a peep from Petraeus.

But what does seem surprising, to many who know and have worked with him, is that the views he has been expressing are so at odds with what he has said and implied in the past.

For example, when Petraeus was inside Obama’s administration in his first term, he advocated for more troops inside Afghanistan and made the case for arming Syrian moderate forces. But when asked this summer about that effort, Petraeus demurred and focused on Obama’s new $500 million initiative in 2014 to train Syrian rebels. “I strongly support what’s being done now,” he said. “Half a billion dollars is a substantial amount of resourcing to train and equip.”

Chaffetz says that the fact that Petraeus hasn’t publicly criticized the White House on Iraq may not be an accident. “When the president has the ability to charge him with crimes, maybe it affects your perspective,” Chaffetz said. “I don’t know.”

Read more here.