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Petraeus Pal Jill Kelley Also Targeted Steinbrenner Sons


Remember when the Kelleys were all over the news?

And you thought that when David Petraeus quit his job, all the players in that drama would just fade away. Not so fast, the Jill Kelley saga continues to go down a very freaky path.

Just when it appeared the Jill Kelley-David Petraeus mess was behind us, along comes society magazine Town & Country with a profile of Kelley and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam.

And surprise: It's not flattering, focusing on the twins' alleged desire for riches and doing whatever is necessary to be among people of power.

Writer Vicky Ward doesn't talk to Kelley or Khawam, instead getting information from a "distant cousin" – weeks after Kelley was cleared of wrongdoing in a scandal involving Petraeus, the former CIA director whose paramour sent Kelley threatening emails.

"They made up their minds they were going to use men to get money, and they discussed this quite openly in front of the family," cousin Tony Khawam said in the article, "A Four-Star Scandal," in the March issue.

Among the men in their sights, according to Tony Khawam: Hal and Hank Steinbrenner, sons of the late George Steinbrenner, Yankees owner and Tampa philanthropist.

"They'd take trips on the Steinbrenners' plane and brag about how they would split Hal up from his then-wife, Christina — and then the plane would be theirs," he told Ward.

Hal Steinbrenner and his wife at the time did break up, but not because of the Tampa twins.

As a Yankee fan I have to say that George Steinbrenner (if he were alive today) would detest how his sons are running the Yankees since they took over the reins, but apparently they weren't dumb enough to be duped by these con-girl twins. Part of me almost wishes that it happened, but not while the sons were still with their original families.



WaPo's David Ignatius Outdoes All the Petraeus Apologists

I've been watching as much General Petraeus coverage as I can and I don't think I've seen any Villager go as far as the Washington Post's David Ignatius did with Wolf Blitzer yesterday. The Village Collective is transforming into The TownieBorg and has been very depressed at this latest sex scandal involving their true hero.

BLITZER: All right. Let's bring in David Ignatius, the columnist from "The Washington Post." He's joining us from "the Washington Post." And the U.S. Army general, Mark Kimmitt, retired, who's worked at the State Department as well as the military.

General Kimmitt, a lot of people are asking, these indiscretions now from the highest levels, these totally respected generals. It may be part of a bigger, systemic problem within the military. Do you believe that?

GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), UNITED STATES ARMY: Well, I really don't. I mean, what makes these unique is sort of the level that these are happening. The fact remains that, at any period of time, a certain number of generals are being investigated for indiscretions. In this case, two four stars, three if you include General Ward.

But the military needs to take an internal look, really evaluate to see if this is, in fact, something institutional or this is just episodic.

BLITZER: Look at these poll numbers, David. We asked -- not we, but NBC and "The Wall Street Journal" in a recent poll, do you have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the U.S. Military? Seventy-six percent said they do. The presidency, 42 percent. The Supreme Court, 33 percent. Will these events, though, over the past few days, change that confidence in the military?

DAVID IGNATIUS, COLUMNIST, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, it's just too early to be sure. We don't have the facts on General Allen. It's simply an investigation. I do think that the public's confidence in the military is tied up with public admiration for the job the military has done and these ten long years of war, in very difficult battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as General Kimmitt knows, as well as anyone.

And one obvious takeaway for me, as I read these really quite sad personal stories of General Petraeus and now the investigation of General Allen, is these commanders and all of the officers and soldiers serving under them had been away from home for so long, on repeated, prolonged deployments.

General Petraeus spent most of the last ten years apart from his wife, Holly. I can't say about General Allen, but that's just a tremendous burden for people to bear, personally. It's easy to forget about it and kind of chase after the details of the scandal, but it's the thing I'm thinking about when you ask that question, Wolf, about confidence in the military, that these people have performed well, but under such difficult circumstances.

Holy moly. The long and winding road of St. Petraeus. it sounds like a song.

He's been gone, oh for so very long
He's been gone, oh so very far away.
Longings stirred deep inside.
When her lips moved he had to say.

Come Near Me. I Can See Clearly. Troubled Eyes Tell Me to Embrace The Moment.
So, Come Near Me. I Can See Clearly. You And I In The Sands of Afghanistan,
Walking Through The Heated Sand, It's Hard To Breathe, Please Don't Leave



Maybe that tweet from June is nothing. Only, there's this tweet from yesterday, too.

Yeah, I'm sure that's nothing, too. Vague enough to be suggestive, but too vague to actually confirm anything like what Paula Broadwell and Karl Rove might have been talking about before that cute little picture of him was posted.

And then there's this little nugget from The Daily Beast:

“Now I don’t know if a lot of you heard this,” she replied, “but the CIA annex had actually—had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that’s still being vetted.”

(It’s possible Broadwell was confusing details broadcast ealier that day by Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffen, who’d reported that three of the Libyan attackers were briefly held at the annex—not the consulate—before being turned over to a local militia.)

What the heck was that about? Here's the video of that:

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