So the Pentagon is “considering” a demotion for retired General David Petraeus (alias General Be-Tray-US) for when he served as both top war commander and top US spy-CIA kingpin leaking highly classified material to his adulterous mistress Paula Broadwell and then lying about it later to the FBI. This latest twist is merely more slap on the hand just like the (in)Justice Department’s decision last year to downgrade his charges from felony to a misdemeanor plea bargained conviction. That way his “good” standing as a Bilderberger member was still retained, allowing him to continue shaping a brutally aggressive imperialistic Empire foreign policy urging more war along with shaping this nation’s calamitous future for everyone except him and his ruling elite.
Petraeus, now a three year partner in KKR, the high roller New York buyout investment firm, is immune from all accountability. As veteran CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern incisively called it, just as the bailed out Wall Street banks were “too big to fail” after their criminal housing bubble burst in 2008-9, Petraeus then fit into the “too big to jail” banker crowd where not one banker from the housing scandal was ever indicted or spent time in jail for causing untold suffering for millions of Americans who lost their homes to foreclosure.
Or consider the billions both drug and tax laundered by such notorious central banks as Credit Suisse and HSBC where the richest don’t pay taxes while the struggling, dwindling middle class gets literally taxed to death. And then even when the banks get caught, they pay a miniscule, drop in the bucket fine not unlike Petraeus’ mere fine of $100,000 for last year's misdemeanor and then they simply resume their criminal fraud business as usual raping and pillaging the earth. And then Attorney General Eric Holder’s slip of the tongue, adding insult to injury in his audacious lie claiming that big banks engaging in criminal activity “are no longer too big to fail.”
Last March’s sleazy Petraeus plea bargain deal was a brazen slap in the face to the rest of us Americans who are stuck living in the corrosively corrupted, two-tiered injustice system where the 1% haves literally get away with murder (and then some) while the rest of us can either be killed or locked up for life without any constitutional rights. A fascist totalitarian police state America customarily allows every war criminal president-commander-in-chief and his minions to willfully commit crimes against humanity in atrocity after atrocity in both secret and not-so-secret wars around the world.
Yet contrast that impunity for mass murder with courageous government insider-whistleblowers and muckraking, truth telling journalists systematically demonized and prosecuted under maximum penalty under the Obama regime with such bogus charges as violating the archaic Espionage Act of 1917 and imprisoned for up to several decades. Private Bradley Manning saw war crimes being regularly committed by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and valiantly tried to stop it. For his courageous good deed Chelsea’s still got 33 years left rotting away in a federal prison cell.
For boldly exposing the feds’ unlawful practice of gathering wholesale bulk data tracking US citizens’ every move, Edward Snowden as a fugitive-on-the-run also potentially faces 35 or more years in prison. The then NSA director-Big Brother Architect of the “more is better” spying, the PT Barnum Trekkie of the cyber-world himself, another Petraeus West Point Class of ’74 classmate General Keith Alexander (as illustrious WP grads from the class behind me) proceeded to violate his West Point honor code by lying repeatedly to America in vain attempt to cover-up his crimes obliterating the people’s constitutional rights.
Alexander’s now busily bilking the federal government for millions as another gluttonously overpaid cyber-security private contractor working also for Wall Street, just like treasonous former Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff teamed up with partner-in-crime former NSA director during the 9/11 General Michael Hayden who together own a highly lucrative security consultant firm. That’s the nature of the corrupt cronyism that pervades in Washington more than ever today where parasitic crime cabal traitors brazenly, shadily circulate in and out of government-private sector jobs continuing to pull strings doing the bidding of their globalist puppet masters. As the late great genius George Carlin would say, “It’s a big [private] club and you ain’t in it.”
Because Petraeus makes multimillions each year, the possible demotion to the three star rank and its diminished pension amount will mean very little financially to the infamous ex-general despite it totaling perhaps hundreds of thousands of lost dollars over the remainder of his life. His yearly pension income would be cut 50 grand from $220,000 to $170,000, thus his bank account and plush lifestyle would not be impacted whatsoever. If anything the once idolized general with the rock star status will have his ego and reputation a bit more tarnished and bruised than it already has been by his soap opera scandal in November 2012 that conveniently broke two days after his commander-in-chief was re-elected to his second term in office amidst Hillary's and their even larger Benghazi scandal.
To indicate the utter and sheer hypocrisy of Petraeus as CIA director after handing over eight of his top secret black notebooks to secret lover Paula Broadwell breaching national security in the worst way, on October 23, 2012 Petraeus responded to CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou’s conviction for exposing CIA illegal torture practice with this CIA employee memorandum:
It marks an important victory for our agency… there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy. [emphasis added]
Kiriakou spent the next two and a half years in prison for attempting to stop the inhumane, internationally unlawful torture perpetrated by the Bush-Cheney administration and then covertly continued and condoned by Obama while Petraeus breaching national security was simply fined and placed on two years’ probation. Of course their protected CIA torturers are walking free today as well.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter may move forward with retroactively demoting Petraeus as part of his “get tough” policy on misbehaving generals and admirals who in recent years have been caught in a plethora of embarrassing high profile scandals that have severely compromised both troop morale and reputation of US military’s top leadership. Never mind the fact that adultery is still a Uniform Code of Military Justice crime that only junior officers and enlisted ranks still go punished. While lower ranks are subject to a dishonorable discharge, up to a year in confinement and forfeiture of all retirement pay to a lesser punishment of demotion to a lower military grade reducing any eligible lifetime pension, neither Petraeus nor his West Point grad mistress Broadwell who was an Army reservist were ever consequenced, reinforcing the colloquial veracity of “different spanks for different ranks.”
Petraeus betrayed the trust and security of his entire nation, freely handing over national security secrets to his girlfriend on the side and then deceitfully denying it. Ashton Carter may veto an earlier Army recommendation not to demote Petraeus supported by the likes of former Secretary of the Army John McHugh as well as another Petraeus’ West Point Class of 1974 classmate - the last to retire from active duty, recently resigned Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey. Just over two years ago it was General Dempsey who also supported former AFRICOM commander four star General William Ward when then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demoted a star and washed Ward out of the Army for his lavish misspending of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
On a related front concerning Petraeus’ alma mater, earlier this month the annual military academies’ sex assault report revealed that the three prestigious, elite service schools - West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy – witnessed a significant spike of 55% higher reported rape cases over the 2014-15 academic year than the preceding year. For years more rapists per student capita have been enrolled at the Air Force Academy than at any college campus in America. Despite an Air Force brass decision to appoint a woman superintendent a couple years ago in order to ostensibly bring the epidemic under control, in her second year as Supe the number of rape cases doubled at 49. West Point and Annapolis together totaled only 32 in comparison, but all saw an increase. This significant rise in reported rapes from such honorable historic institutions that traditionally attract America’s “best and brightest” might suggest that perhaps cadets may not be “the best” after all.
It comes after several years of the armed forces undergoing concerted efforts to desperately police themselves through intensive sexual assault and gender sensitivity training up and down its rank and file at the same time the military services this year for the first time in history will have men and women in uniform actively fighting alongside each other in combat, which may only open up yet another Pandora’s Box as the insanity of war will only further blur, loosen and subsequently violate boundaries promoting yet more criminal behavior.
As a West Point graduate and former Army officer, I’ve said before that the rape epidemic is a systemically embedded problem where the blind are leading the blind. While in recent years too many of the highest ranking military leaders have demonstrated moral and characterological lapses in judgment through gross criminal misconduct, so have the service academies as the spawning grounds that educate and train those future leaders of tomorrow. When the military chronically produces inferior leadership and poor role models at the top, so runs a parallel process that comes full circle below. Can we realistically expect any different outcome?
I can attest that times have not changed through the ages, and that a barbaric, chauvinistic attitude towards “the fairer sex” to this day remains deeply rooted in historical military tradition that harbors a pervasive culture of disrespect and sexual aggression toward women still widely accepted, practiced and condoned as an institutionalized norm. Yet in its deceptive measures to convince America that the epidemic is now well under control, the US military has an answer for every statistic. Whenever fewer cases amongst all the services are reported like last year, the military boasts how effective and successful its efforts to curb rape have been. Yet whenever an increase in reported cases of assault occurs as the recent academy finding shows, the brass quickly resorts to bragging how the services have made remarkable progress providing a much safer structural environment for survivors to come forth and be given their proper justice. This fork tongued deception is nothing less than Orwellian double speak in military double-time.
Despite the tenacious and tireless quest by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to finally hold the military accountable by removing jurisdiction from the good ol’ boys club of ranking male officers to civil court, the top Pentagon brass keep successfully lobbying the good ol’ boys Congress to stay with status quo, with the latest vote last June falling short by just one single vote of 50-49. Gillibrand has uncovered loopholes in last year’s Department of Defense annual report where assaults occurring off-post involving spouses of military personnel and civilian women were not even included. The senator investigated 107 cases from four military posts herself (53% of which were not even included in the 18,900 reported Department of Defense [DoD] cases in 2014 due to aforementioned reasons) and found that less than a quarter of her reviewed cases went to trial and that of them only a handful led to conviction. She also lamented that nearly half the assault survivors in her review who chose to initially report their cases to authorities ultimately decided to not “move forward with military justice process.” Meanwhile, the all too obvious reason so few survivors pursue their cases is corroborated by last year’s DoD report that admitted that once a sexual assault victim reports the crime, rampant retaliation by other military personnel in effect re-victimizes rape survivors, and that this widespread practice has neither decreased nor have any offenders who further abused victims for reporting ever been punished or held accountable. And we wonder why nothing is changing?
Gillibrand’s sample review confirms that next to no improvement’s been made despite the military’s distorted, fudged findings touting a dramatic “plunge” of 27% of reported cases from the 2012 high of over 26,000 cases. Additionally, 10 months after the senator’s initial request for DoD documents used to arrive at its results, the Pentagon defiantly refuses to hand over anything but a mere handful of what she had requested. This fact only demonstrates the military is withholding substantially incriminating information, undoubtedly having much to hide and cover-up. In response Gillibrand tactfully understated, “I don't think the military is being honest about the problem.” So when is the military or government ever honest about anything publicly disclosed?
Yet another Pandora’s Box surfaced earlier this month from an AP report based on the latest released DoD statistics showing a growing problem that hundreds of servicemen and women’s children are being sexually assaulted at alarming rates each year. From 2010-2014 at least 1584 cases were recorded of military dependents sexually molested - over half (840) committed by enlisted men, 49 cases involved officers and in 322 cases the perpetrators were family members of the victims. It’s important to bear in mind that similar to rates of sexual assault, for every one case that ends up reported, a dozen more go unreported. This sad disturbing reality only further shatters the image of our men and women in uniform. Not only is there a surplus of rapists in uniform, there apparently is also an army of pedophiles.
As a California licensed therapist who worked directly with sexually abused youth and adolescents for decades, I can also personally attest to the widespread epidemic of child abuse in America both in and out of the military. Unfortunately I also observed the very agency designed to protect children (Child Protective Services) become the perpetrator in an irreversibly broken, flawed foster care system. I also witnessed firsthand how CPS operating as a militant arm of a totalitarian government is waging war against the American family that in recent years is coming under increasing attack as yet another criminalized target in the feds’ tyrannical agenda seeking absolute power and control over its citizenry.
The .01% of the global population that is responsible for the untold suffering and misery in this world is also currently losing its grip, the elite is on the run buying up huge chunks of land fleeing to places like New Zealand and South America. That the rulers malevolently want to destroy all life on earth as their still potent power base ultimately is forcibly removed should come as no surprise to those aware of their psychopathic agenda. The ruling Western oligarchs are psychopathic families that have covertly controlled the world’s economic and political system for a long time. This handful of prominent names includes the Rothschilds, British and European royalty, the Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Warburgs, the Bushes, joined recently by nouveau-riche moguls like the Murdocks, Turners and Gates, comprising the ruling elite that without conscience or guilt has been massacring and destroying billions of innocent lives around the globe over past decades and centuries. The ongoing saga of one psychopath war criminal David Petraeus is but one prototypical example of how this obscene insult is transgressed upon humanity, personifying how elitism insidiously afflicts inordinate stress and pain on the 21st century masses desperately struggling to stay alive while flagrantly protecting its own from any tangible negative consequence. This hideous two tiered system of injustice must come to an end before we the people do.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/. Joachim is also a regular contributor toGlobal Research, Sott.net and LewRockwell.com.