The rise, fall and rise of Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is a very smart, very hardworking public servant. Many believe she's more capable, focused and formidable than her husband. And she's on a mission to become the first female president. It's a quest she's been on since her election to the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000.

She won that election easily and was overwhelmingly re-elected in 2006. In the Senate, Clinton more than demonstrated that she knew the importance of being a workhorse and not a show pony. She understood that the smart move, given her ambition to return to the White House, was to put her mark on significant legislation and to be zealously attentive to serving her constituents.

But two months after her re-election to the Senate, Hillary Clinton announced the formation of an exploratory committee for her presidential bid. No one was surprised. She was the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination. Her principal challengers were first-term Ill. Sen. Barack Obama and N.C. Sen. John Edwards. By October 2007, she was outpolling both of her rivals by wide margins. Her campaign took on an aura of invincibility, of inevitability.

But saddled with weakness at the top of her campaign staff and blinded by her hubris, Clinton succumbed to one of Satchel Paige's best lines — "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you." And that is just what Obama was doing — gaining on her. The centerpiece of his campaign, Hope And Change, was catching on.

He relentlessly pounded Clinton on her vote in favor of the Iraq War. And, unlike the Clinton campaign, he made a major effort in the caucus states where he built up about a 150-vote delegate cushion that Clinton never overcame. By June 2008, Clinton was forced to accept the fact that Obama was the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. The Clintons had been crushed.

Many supposed that she was finished. But such an assumption about Clinton was then and is now foolhardy. On Dec. 1, 2008, President-elect Obama announced that he would nominate her to be secretary of state. A month later, she was confirmed by the Senate 94-2.

The book on Secretary Clinton's performance over the past four years is that she has been a superlatively successful secretary of state and one whose work ethic puts the Energizer Bunny to shame. That assessment is only half right. She has put the Energizer Bunny to shame. But on the matter that counts, America's foreign policy, it's a different story, a sorrier story.

Secretary Clinton cannot escape responsibility for the Obama administration's escalation of the war in Afghanistan. It is America's longest war and one of its most futile. But beyond the tragedy in Afghanistan, there is the question of the competence of American foreign policy throughout the Middle East.

Our relations with Israel have never been worse. Egypt is no longer a predictable partner, thanks to the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria is being torn apart by civil war that threatens neighboring states. Iran's quest for nuclear weapons continues, as does its malevolent export of terrorism through client organizations such as Hezbollah.

Perhaps most worrisome of all is Pakistan with its weak and unstable government, its nuclear arsenal and its renegade intelligence service, the ISI. And then there's Libya and al-Qaida's assault on our consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11 of this year that resulted in the murder of our ambassador and three other Americans.

How one looks at this picture and concludes that Clinton will soon depart Foggy Bottom as one of the nation's greatest secretaries of state is mind-boggling.

But looking more closely at the Benghazi situation helps us understand Clinton's cleverness and luck. Appearing on "Meet The Press" and all the other Sunday talk shows on Sept. 16, Susan Rice, our United Nations ambassador, told the nation the Benghazi attack was in response to an anti-Muslim film. Her characterization of the attack was false, and we now know it was a terrorist attack.

But why was Rice the guest on "Meet The Press"? In fact, "Meet The Press" had invited Clinton, but she declined the invitation. The explanation we're left with comes from Rice, who has said Clinton had had a "brutal week." How convenient! The Energizer Bunny was plum tuckered out.

How about a different explanation? Hillary needed a patsy, and the patsy's name was Susan Rice. Rice, who knew she was likely to be named Clinton's successor, couldn't resist the opportunity to showcase herself on all five Sunday talk shows. In taking the bait, she destroyed herself.

And now we have the official report of the Accountability Review Board on Benghazi. The board, led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Michael Mullen, places the blame for what went wrong squarely on the State Department. But then the report gives Clinton a pass. It states, "However, the board did not find reasonable cause to determine that any individual U.S. government employee breached his or her duty."

Once Clinton recovers from her current illness and concussion, she'll testify before Congress on Benghazi. She will express sorrow, accept the recommendations of the board, leave the mess to John Kerry and return to Chappaqua.

But by 2015, she'll be back to finish her mission, the journey from Goldwater Girl to president.

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Sandy Hook: Why the senseless slaughter?

Like all of you, I am at a loss to comprehend what happened last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The lives of 20 innocent young children and six of their teachers and administrators were extinguished by a madman as they were gathered to learn in a place they believed was safe from harm.

Why did it happen? How do we go forward in the face of such senseless depravity?

These are questions that I cannot answer adequately. But I do know that none of us should take solace in dodging them by attributing what happened to those children as a modern-day version of God exacting punishment on a broken and dark America, just as some believe he did thousands of years ago against his chosen people, the Jews of Ancient Israel. Such a view, wherever proclaimed, attempts to pass the buck of responsibility for murder to God, while simultaneously letting us off the hook as sinners.

What follows has helped me begin to cope with the fury, despair and hopelessness that overwhelmed me as I learned about the massacre of these children. Here are excerpts from comments on the Connecticut tragedy made by Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Pastor Keller's thoughts get to the heart of a catastrophe like this, especially as Christmas approaches.

“As a minister, of course, I've spent countless hours with people who are struggling and wrestling with the biggest question — the why question in the face of relentless tragedies and injustices.

“First, we have to recognize that the problem of tragedy, injustice and suffering is a problem for everyone no matter what their beliefs are. Now, if you believe in God and for the first time experience or see horrendous evil, you rightly believe that that is a problem for your belief in God, and you're right — and you say, ‘How could a good and powerful God allow something like this to happen?'

“But it's a mistake to think that if you abandon your belief in God it somehow is going to make the problem easier to handle. If there is no God or higher divine law and the material universe is all there is, then violence is perfectly natural — the strong eating the weak! And yet, somehow, we still feel this isn't the way things ought to be. Why not? I'm just trying to make the point that the problem of injustice and suffering is a problem for belief in God but it is also a problem for disbelief in God. So abandoning belief in God does not really help in the face of it.

“Second, I believe we need to grasp an empowering hint from the past. When people ask the big question, ‘Why would God allow this or that to happen?', there are almost always two answers. The one answer is: Don't question God! He has reasons beyond your finite little mind. And therefore, just accept everything. Don't question. The other answer is: I don't know what God's up to — I have no idea at all about why these things are happening. There's no way to make any sense of it at all. Now I would like to respectfully suggest the first of these answers is too hard and the second is too weak because, though of course we don't have the full answer, we do have an idea, an incredibly powerful idea.

“One of the great themes of Hebrew Scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them as a move against him. Christians believe that in Jesus, God's son, divinity became vulnerable to and involved in — suffering and death.

“But it is on the cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock, that God now knows, too, what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. We don't know the reason that God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn't, what it can't be. It can't be that he doesn't love us. It can't be that he doesn't care. God so loved us and hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in it. And therefore the cross is an incredibly empowering hint. OK, it's only a hint, but if you grasp it, it can transform you.

“And lastly, we have to grasp an empowering hope for the future. In John 11 we hear Jesus say: I am the resurrection and the life! Resurrection means the restoration to us of the life we lost.

“Oh, I know what many of you are saying, ‘I wish I could believe that.' And guess what? This idea is so potent that you can go forward with that. To even want the resurrection, to love the idea of the resurrection, to long for the promise of the resurrection even though you are unsure of it, is strengthening.”

Pastor Keller's thoughts have strengthened me. My prayer is that they will strengthen you, too.

Senate's mantra: ‘No prisoners'

Senate's mantra: ‘No prisoners'

I'll bet you've never given any thought to the connection between the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" and the U.S. Senate. Neither have I, until recently.

Directed by David Lean and with Peter O'Toole in the title role, "Lawrence of Arabia" was far and away the blockbuster movie of 1962. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won seven, including best picture.

Lawrence was a lieutenant in the British Army stationed in Cairo as World War I began. At its outset, Europe had divided itself into two vast and opposing alliances. The Triple Entente included Great Britain, France, Russia and the Arab rebels. The Triple Alliance included Germany, Austria-Hungary and what remained of the once proud Ottoman Empire, which included Turkey and most of the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs chafed under Ottoman rule, and the British, anxious to protect the Suez Canal, sought to exploit the restive Arab rebels.

Lawrence was the perfect man for the job. He was expert in his knowledge of the Bedouins. His loyalties were deeply divided between Britain and the Arab rebels. He was charismatic, daring and self-absorbed to a fault.

Near the end of the movie, with the Ottoman Turks in retreat, Lawrence and his Arab mercenaries encounter a column of Turkish soldiers. The slaughter that ensues is ghastly and is undertaken in reprisal of the Turks having recently annihilated all the inhabitants of the nearby town of Tafas.

As Lawrence and his men charge the Turks, Lawrence cries, "NO PRISONERS, NO PRISONERS." The Turkish column is butchered.

Lawrence, his dishdasha spattered with blood, is in a surreal, mad trance brought on by the sheer joy of what he has done. In his book "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," T.E. Lawrence refers to the incident and says, "In a madness born of the horror of Tafas we killed and killed."

Lawrence and his Arab followers outpace the British Army to Damascus. But even with his inspirational leadership, the Arab rebels can't even agree on how to keep the lights on in the city. They leave Damascus to the British Army and melt back into the desert. The Arab Spring will have to wait for at least another century.

So what's all this got to do with the Senate? Plenty. Now don't get me wrong. If we were to send NCIS' forensic specialist, Abby Sciuto, into the Senate Chamber to analyze the carpeting, she would not find samples of blood. But that doesn't mean that something lethal isn't going on there. It is!

And it is a lethality that is almost completely disguised by the Senate's rules, procedures and obsession with the appearance of decorum. But for the Senate to work, it must be able to forge bipartisan alliances on major legislation. That means there must be a large cadre of senators from both parties who are willing to compromise. That cadre is shrinking, and shrinking rapidly. It's a casualty of the Senate's current mantra: NO PRISONERS, NO PRISONERS.

In the 2010 election cycle, 12 senators chose not to run, the highest number in 75 years. This year, another 10 will be gone. And many of the them are the ones whose careers are replete with bipartisan compromise. What's being lost is the connective tissue that holds the Senate together and enables it to function.

No single loss even approaches the magnitude of the loss in 2009 of Sen. Edward Kennedy to brain cancer. Although many don't know it, especially here in the South, Kennedy had no peer when it came to forging workable legislative accommodation on bills that were intensely controversial.

Without doubt, his highest priority was achieving health care reform. His work on it began in the early 1970s as chairman of the Health Subcommittee, and it never ended. Had he been in the Senate in 2009-2010, the course of the legislation would have been profoundly altered — for the better. Would he have openly opposed President Barack Obama? Of course not. But behind the scenes a different, better, bipartisan bill would have taken shape.

Here's a sampler of why senators are retiring:

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said: "There is too much partisanship and not enough progress, too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving."

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said figuratively of Congress: "I think we have to blow the place up."

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said: "I have spoken on the floor of the Senate for years about the dysfunction and political polarization in the institution. ... There is no practical incentive for 75 percent of the senators to work across party lines."

Sen. Paul Kirk, D-Mass., the man who was appointed to fill Ted Kennedy's seat, denounced the raw politics in the Senate.

Make no mistake about it, the long knives are drawn, and the Senate is hemorrhaging. And don't believe for a moment that all the blame is attributable to the Republicans and the tea party. The responsibility for this institutional crisis rests squarely on the shoulders of both parties, and the Democrats have the majority.

You have to look no further than the two leaders, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell, to find the heart of the problem. Think of them as pathetic versions of Lawrence of Arabia and the Turkish commander at Tafas.

How do those two bozos hold power? They get it from bozos like Kay Hagan and Richard   Burr, who get their power from bozos like us!

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Peaches, pineapple and Dangerous Dave 

David Petraeus was born in 1952. He graduated in the top 5 percent of his class at the U.S. Military Academy in 1974. While a cadet at the academy, he dated and subsequently married Holly Knowlton, the daughter of the then-West Point superintendent and four-star Gen. William Knowlton. They have two children.

Petraeus was promoted to general in 2007 and in February of that year became commander of our forces in Iraq. In October 2008, he became commander of CENTCOM in Tampa, Fla., which is responsible for U.S. military operations in 20 countries from Egypt to Pakistan. In July 2010, Petraeus became the commanding general of our forces in Afghanistan. In July 2011, he retired from the military and was appointed director of the CIA.

One month ago, Petraeus' world imploded as the details of his affair with his biographer, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Paula Broadwell, became public.

On first blush, it would appear that all we have here is the tale of a super-achieving military officer and director of Central Intelligence brought down by his inability to keep his trousers zipped. And, given the fact that adultery is no longer problematic for millions of Americans, there is little doubt that many see the Petraeus-Broadwell affair as little more than an irrelevancy.

But, in fact, there is much more here to be troubled about than the sexual exploits of Broadwell and the man she called "Peaches" and "Dangerous Dave."

In a lengthy story in Newsweek in 2010, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, stated, "Afghanistan is very much Barack Obama's war of choice, a point that the president underscored recently by picking Gen. David Petraeus to lead an intensified counterinsurgency effort there."

American forces initially went to Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban and deny al-Qaida the use of that country as a training ground for international terrorism. They succeeded. The Taliban was defeated and most of the terrorists were killed or fled.

One can hardly underestimate the difference between the Afghan war in its early years and what it became in 2010 with Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy as the sharp end of Obama's escalation of the war.

Obama's escalation equated the resurgence of the Taliban with the return of al-Qaida, an assumption that has never been proven. And it led to Obama turning what was a war of necessity for the United States in 2001 into a war of choice — Obama's choice. And Obama's choice was to attempt to strengthen the will and capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and the Karsai government in Kabul so that together they could successfully secure Afghanistan's future.

Although Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy worked in Iraq, it has failed in Afghanistan. In Iraq, we had a willing partner, the Sunni Muslims. In Afghanistan, we lack such a partner. Haass concluded that "the war the United States is now fighting in Afghanistan is not succeeding and is not worth waging in this way."

He was right at the time he made that assessment in the summer of 2010, and more than two years later, it's still correct. Murderous "insider attacks" by Afghan security forces against the American troops who trained them is not a metric that could justify yet another medal or ribbon on Petraeus' service jacket. There are enough of them there already to cause curvature of the spine.

However, Petraeus managed to leave Afghanistan before being tarnished with the fallout from his failed strategy. Barton Gellman, who writes Spyfall in Time Magazine, tells us, "Patraeus' move from rock-star four-star to head of the CIA in 2011 came as a surprise in Washington. He had served only a year in Afghanistan and seemed destined to rise to the top of the military at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But former CIA director Bob Gates told him otherwise: Obama's White House did not want him in that role. It was Petraeus' idea in response, to move to Langley, a close friend says. That solved a lot of problems for Obama, allowing him good use of the general's talents and diverting him from a possible presidential bid."

Imagine that John McCain had been elected president in 2008, and Petraeus had sold his Afghan counterinsurgency strategy to him. The entire Democratic Party would have been in the streets in protest, and leading the parade would have been the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama!

Petraeus is an extreme example of a military culture gone nuts. How about escorts of 28 police motorcycles for him to visit socialite Jill Kelley in Tampa? How about executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards, gourmet chefs and string quartets for their dinner parties? Is it any wonder that when he got to Langley, Peaches/Dangerous Dave insisted that fresh pineapple be available at his beside each night? Wonder if he was thoughtful enough to have pineapple for two on the nights he was with his paramour, Paula?

There are more than a thousand generals and admirals. Not one of them had the courage to resign over an Afghan war policy that was ill-conceived and has failed. Retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, a Medal of Honor recipient in Vietnam, recently stated that we'd be better off getting rid of two-thirds of them. If he's wrong, he's wrong on the low side.

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The Petraeus ‘damsels in distress'

Paula Broadwell was born in 1972. She was valedictorian and homecoming queen of her high school graduating class. She graduated from West Point in 1995. She was a fitness devotee who excelled in triathlons and who described herself No. 1 in fitness in her class at West Point. However, the academy has stated that she didn't win the fitness award and that it went to another female cadet in her class. Broadwell is married and has two young sons.

She initially met Gen. David Petraeus when she was a doctoral student at Harvard in 2006. But in 2007 Broadwell was asked to leave the doctoral program at Harvard. Her course work did not meet its standards. She then chose to rework her unfinished dissertation into what became her best-selling biography of Petraeus, a book ghostwritten by Vernon Loeb of The Washington Post.

Shortly after leaving Harvard in 2008, Broadwell attempted to become an inside player in Washington's foreign policy establishment by suggesting that the new commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, had asked her to assemble a "red team" to conduct an outsider evaluation of Afghan war strategy. But McChrystal had not made such a request, and her proposal was rejected.

In June 2010, President Barack Obama fired McChrystal and replaced him with Petraeus. Shortly thereafter, Broadwell started making trips to Afghanistan. She traveled there about a half-dozen times and would typically stay in theater for two or three weeks each time. There she spent a great deal of time with Petraeus.

In January 2012, the book that she and Loeb wrote was published. Broadwell quickly followed its publication with a nationwide publicity tour.

In September 2011, Petraeus retired, and Obama appointed him to head the CIA. He lasted 14 months. He submitted his resignation last month because of an FBI investigation that documented an extramarital affair with Broadwell.

Petraeus has repeatedly stated that the affair began after he retired from the military. Determining when Broadwell and Petraeus "imbedded" each other is important. If it began while Petraeus was still in uniform, he's subject to prosecution for adultery.

In July, as the FBI investigation into all of this was reaching its climax, Broadwell was consumed by the desire to find just the right 60th birthday gift for her lover. It was to be a surprise birthday bike ride for the two of them with none other than Lance Armstrong. In one way, Broadwell's plan was perfect — Armstrong, like Broadwell and Petraeus, was living a lie. But, of course, there was no birthday ride, no "three dopes a-doping." Instead, Broadwell's new job was to "lawyer up."

In February, Broadwell told Inspired Woman magazine, "Yes, I wear a number of hats, but my most important title is mom and wife." Really?

For reasons that may be irrational or real, Broadwell believed that a socialite in Tampa, Jill Kelley, posed a threat to her affair with Petraeus. Kelley frequently entertained senior officers from CENTCOM, including Petraeus and Marine Gen. John Allen, in her palatial home.

In May 2012, Kelley contacted a local FBI agent she knew and claimed she was being cyberstalked.

The FBI investigation that followed identified that the threatening emails were written by Broadwell and signed, "kelleypatrol." As the FBI combed through all the information it had gathered from Broadwell, it discovered her extramarital affair with Petraeus.

Kelley, like Broadwell, has been living a lie. She wanted everyone, especially the elites and the powerful, to believe her life was devoted to helping the military as a volunteer. But the reality is stunningly different. The Doctor Kelley Cancer Foundation that she and her physician husband established to conduct cancer research and help cancer victims has been spending its money on travel, meals and entertainment.

Kelley and her husband have been sued at least nine times, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Regions Bank is attempting to foreclose on their $1.5 million mansion. Last year, a judge ordered foreclosure on an office building the Kelleys own in Tampa and upon which the Kelleys owe $2.2 million. The couple has defaulted on a $250,000 line of credit.

However, Kelley was successful in getting both Petraeus and Allen to intervene in a civilian child custody case involving her twin sister, Natalie Khawam. The judge in the case, Neal Kravitz, was not persuaded by the letters written by the generals. He ruled that Kelley's sister had misrepresented "virtually everything" and awarded custody of the child to her estranged husband. Khawam is now being sued for not paying her divorce lawyer.

ABC News has obtained emails that suggest that Kelley attempted to cover her mounting debt by securing a multibillion-dollar Korean business deal. It fell through. The security threat in something like this is real. Here you have a family in desperate financial straits that is intimately connected to the highest echelon of the nation's military. What better target is there for a hostile foreign intelligence service?

Turns out that Kelley and Broadwell do have something in common — Kelley has lawyered up, too. The Kelleys have hired big-name attorney Abbe Lowell as well as crisis manager Judy Smith, who represented Monica Lewinsky. Hopefully, Lowell and Smith have signed on for the publicity and not because they expect to be paid.

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