mcchrystal, from the beginning of the time he was appointed to the head of the forces in afghanistan, is from the very moment of his confirmation hearing, he and the white house are in this back and forth. long before the "rolling stone" story with michael hastings, getting his aides to bash the administration, it has disastrous consequence for the men at the bottom of this hill. >> must be a huge distraction all this, my brothers fought out there you don't want of the generals involved in scandal and mayhem and media stuff. it is just a total distraction, isn't it? >> it is. i have to say, i mean, with the petraeus story breaking, we had a book launch saturday night, a lot of the soldiers came, moms, gold star moms, gold star wives, when petraeus was mentioned, it was just this incredulousness, these men is informed an area of the country where they would not see a woman for months because every time they went into an afghan village, the woman would hide or be hidden from them h >> boss having an affair. >> got so bad, a scene in the book, like they are on a planet where women do not ex

afghanistan, he ran a campaign in iraq that was brutally savage, included arming, the worst of the worst. shiite death squads, sunni militiamen and go back to the training training that also had problems. to me, the questions of honor and integrity, i was raising those earlier. a number of other journalists covering petraeus were raising those concerns. you might not get that from someone at barbara starr at cnn who is essentially a spokesperson for the pentagon in many ways. so i think i just want to step back and have my piece because even the way the scandal is being covered is so different than how usual sex scandals are being covered where they hammer the guy. now everyone is saying oh, my god, he just went to the cia, how could he be, you know, he was susceptible to being seduced by this woman. give me a break. he has all his allies coming out to defend him where paula broadwell is there yet again, where are her protectors? >> barbara is not a spokesperson, obviously. let's move to -- >> not too obviously. i followed her coverage pretty closely as she covered my work before, too. >

. every day hundreds of people in afghanistan, pakistan and iraq are killed. would it not have been better to have a more precise analysis and find out the true in-depth reason of the events of september 11th, make that -- make those findings transparent to the populations in the nations across the world, and then have a response in unison. of course, the expense would have been much less. do you know how much has been spent during the afghan and iraq war? >> a considerable amount of money. but let me ask you this, mr. president. if nearly 3,000 iranians had been murdered in the way that americans were on 9/11, in tehran, how would you have reacted to the country that you believed had done that? >> translator: so you're saying that the country of afghanistan was at fault? was responsible? so you're seeing the responsible party as a whole nation? >> i think it is inarguable that al qaeda and osama bin laden's men who worked for him were training in afghanistan. so afghanistan was certainly knowingly harboring terrorists who were training to commit atrocities. >> translator: i believe

' biographer. she spent months in afghanistan interviewing petraeus for the book. >>> to the recovery in superstorm sandy, nearly two weeks after the storm, frustration is boiling over. >> can't get lights on for my kids. i can't get power, heat, garbage pickup? >> more than 280,000 people across the region are still without power. nj will ew jersey's governor ch christie expects power to be back statewide by tonight. he says life will be back for most of new jersey come sunday. >>> top-ranked alabama lost the tonight 29-24 to 15th ranked texas a&m. an interception at the goal line in the final two minutes preserved the win for the aggies. texas a&m had led 20-0 at the end of the first quarter. >>> and the marine corps is celebrating its 237th birthday today. it was founded in 1775 by a resolution passed during the second continental congress. celebration includes a birthday ball and cake cutting ceremony. those are your headlines. i'm don lemon. see you back here at 10:00. >>> tonight, my world exclusive with one of the most controversial leaders in one of the most dangerous parts of

broadwell. she has spent a year in afghanistan with petraeus. here is a picture from their website. right now the cia is investigating a tip that she is the other woman. she is the woman named in that fbi tape. petraeus has not admitted an affair directly with her. but he said, yesterday afternoon, i went to the white house and asked the president to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as d/cia. after being married for over 37 years, i showed extreme poorly judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. this afternoon, the president graciously accepted my resignation. author of "the secrets skreof t fbi," and suzanne kelly. let's start with suzanne kelly. this is a massive blow, really, to everybody in the white house, to general petraeus, to his wife and to the country. the country has lost one of its great military men in scandalous circumstances. >> you know, piers, that's absolutely right. the first shock was he admitted to having an affair. this is someone wit

the time he was appointed to the head of the forces in afghanistan is from the very moment of his confirmation hearing, he and the white house are in this back and forth and it is actually long before "rolling stone" story for him and his aides to backlash, but it is having deadly consequences for the men at the bottom of the hill. >> and it must be a huge distraction for them, because my brother is fighting over there, and it is a total distraction, isn't it? >> yes, it is. with the petraeus story breaking, we had a book launch on saturday night, and a lot of the troops in the book came, and a lot of the gold star moms and gold star wives, and when petraeus was mentioned, it was an incredulousness, and these men served in an area of the village where they would not see women for months. >> and there was the boss having an affair. >> yes, and it was so bad that they felt that women do not exist anymore and there was a female helicopter who would buzz over them, and they would all run over, because they wanted to hear her voice, because they were convinced that she was gorgeous, an

and afghanistan. he was sworn in to run the cia a little over a year ago with vice president biden with his wife holly at his side. that was the swearing in. they've been married 35 years, have two grown kids. so how will this revelation exact the u.s. intelligence community? joining me now is fran townsend and bob baer and suzanne kelly. suzanne, what more can you tell us about the probe into the relationship with paula broadwell? do we know how long this has been going on? >> we don't know how long it was going on, but just the -- so they're the ones that would look into accusations of inappropriate access to classified information. individuals that hold clearances, are they doing what they need to be doing to make sure that information stays safe? is there any opportunity whatsoever that that information could be exploited by either a spy or anyone else who shouldn't have access to that information. so the fact that they were the ones looking into this, tells you that, you know, they were concerned about some of the e-mail things. let's back up for a moment. this was a tip that

. >> meanwhile, the top general in afghanistan allegedly caught red-handed exchanging flirtatious e-mails of his own with jill kelley. plus the debut of my new cnn colleague, the culinary superstar who will dine on anything, anthony bowurdane is here. joining me is barbara starr and intelligence correspondent, suzanne kelly. welcome back to you both. every night i say right off the top, can any of us get our heads round this and how much more ridiculous can it get, and lo and behold, it gets more ridiculous. barbara starr, let's try and get to what we believe to be the facts behind all the kind of lurid, titillating headlines. a second general today, petraeus' successor in afghanistan, general john allen, a marine corps four star general, current nominee to be the new nato supreme allied commander, so a very big fish indeed in the military. he is apparently at the center of a scandal involving 30,000 documents, all pages or e-mails or whatever that he exchanged with this second woman, the other other woman, jill kelley. what do we know about the content of this? because it's not as simple as

the grownup in the room will see it. >> when you look at the wars in iraq and afghanistan, what do you think about america's position in the world, foreign policy in particular in the last 12 years or so? >> well, as you probably know i'm completely against war. i believe in self-defense. i believe if you get hit, you hit back. preemptive wars i don't believe in. i don't think they're necessary. i think wars are started to make money. they make money for the people who start a war over here and a war over there and sell bombs to both sides. >> when you look at what happens in the middle east in my lifetime i can remember, pretty much most of yours. do you see any hope there or any chance of actually peace mountain middle easin the middle east? >> if you believe in the bible, it says two things. it says there will always be wars and rumors of wars. it also says for a thousand years somewhere in the future we have peace. so hopefully those thousand years are coming up on us. >> were you pleased barack obama got re-elected? >> i'm glad he got re-elected. i think he has a lot of things

to his grown children, one who is an afghanistan veteran. this, i think, is classic petraeus trying to control what is going on around him. >> on november 25th, a writer for the daily beast website listing general petraeus' rules for life. number 5, we will all make mistakes. the key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them and take off the rearview mirrors, drive on and avoid making them again. quite extraordinary given that was just written a few days ago. thank you very much, indeed. a man who worked closely with general petraeus in iraq, mr. brenner talks about the shocking o >>> with each hour, we learn new details about the shocking affair that forced david petraeus to resign as cia director. he was on the ground the same time as the former ambassador was ambassador of iraq, and the ambassador joins me now. nice to see you, ambassador. >> nice to be with you. >> are you shocked by these revelations today? >> of course, i am. it's a sad day particularly for mrs. petraeus and for their children and for the men and women in the military and now the cia, whom he's l

of people out of work. we are still in afghanistan. go down the whole list of things. i think honestly, considering the hand he was dealt at the beginning, he has done a good job dealing with the mess that the bush administration handed him. and i think it's this close -- i hate to say this, because i just -- it just -- but i've been out in the midwest and i'm listening to people and stuff, i'm still amazed at how the issue of race comes up in this election, still. somebody was saying earlier, i think it was on cnn, of the -- you know, romney is gonna win the white vote or whatever. and it is just interesting, it is like it almost sounds like a -- an odd thing to talk about i guess, you know? >> an interesting question, isn't it? i have asked a lot of people this, whether america's become more racist since barack obama became president than less and i think most people believe that it has actually become slightly more racist it has brought out more racism? >> not amongst young people, our kids, next generation, they are not -- don't have the racism, bigotry and intolerance tha

have taken the economy, the auto, you could have taken the financial, you could have taken afghanistan, you could have taken iraq. usually, there's an "a," a "b." what happens when all five are as? >> it was basically awful. >> economic adviser austan goolsbee watched in horror as the stock market dropped more than 500 points in a day. >> there was a bottle of bourbon sitting there in the campaign. it had been there for a year and a half and i said, man, if there ever was a day to have a drink of this emergency bourbon, it's today. >> and then it got worse. >> the next day, dropped another 500 points. and then late in the campaign, it happens again and somebody says, where's the bourbon? i said, the bottle's empty. >> the emergency bourbon was gone and the economy was in dire shape. one month before his inauguration, barack obama called an urgent meeting during a chicago blizzard. >> the president meets for the first time with all his economic advisers as a group for four hours. everybody is in the room is struck with the gravity of the situation. >> i said, mr. president, this is your

helicopter pilot that would fly over them. and meanwhile, what is he doi i in afghanistan years later? it amadness. >> there is a theory, general mcarthur and patton and they all had affairs. it is modern digital media unvaf elling all of this stuff. >> i don't think the problem is that the general had an affair. he was director of the cia and he walked into one of the black mailable situations that he could have. it is not that he is a general messing around. according to the code of military justice that is not allowed. the press is focused on the director of the cia having this problem. >> perhaps the biggest story today is benghazi blowing up again. pushing very, very hard now getting vicious in the rhetoric towards ambassador rice and so on. what do you think she was merely passing on intelligence and therefore if she wants to make secretary of state, she can do it. >> i was the host and we were trying to get the secretary of state to talk about benghazi. and she didn't go out. didn't she make herself a key player? >> and she could have said look, we believe there are a number of

it's not easy to do that in civilian population. you see that in other parts of afghanistan and iraq. so people like al jabari who is not exactly mother theresa. this guy is a mass murderer with blood on his hands, killing numerous children and women and basically the world is a better place with people like him out of the system. >> ambassador, thank you for coming in. good to see you. >>> coming up next, fighting in the middle east is sparking fresh protests in new york tonight. what is the battle between israel and hamas mean for america? fareed zakaria joins me live coming up next. >>> that is exactly -- all >>> that is exactly -- all right, i'm going to move out of the way, i'm going to let you get a look here. i'm going to let you get a look at what is going on. now, i can see the black smoke. it's difficult to capture on camera but you saw that flash. this is what we have been dealing with all day. we've also been dealing with, i'm sorry, the power has just gone out. we've been dealing with power outages, wolf, but this feels like war. >> terrifying moment there. that's cnn's

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