Here is what retired General and former CIA Director David Petraeus had to say about President Trump’s rhetoric towards North Korea:
David Petraeus
The United States is unlikely to go to nuclear war with North Korea despite the recent escalation in tensions, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency said Sunday.
David Petraeus, who served in the Barack Obama administration from 2011-2012, said he thinks U.S. President Donald Trump has been using tough rhetoric with North Korea to get the attention of the leadership in China, not in Pyongyang.
“This is about getting President Xi’s attention … so that China will really clamp down on the umbilical cord through which 90 percent of the trade that goes to and from North Korea transits,” Petraeus said in an interview on ABC News.
China is able to “bring North Korea to its senses,” he added, alluding to Beijing’s leverage as Pyongyang’s main ally and economic benefactor.
North Korea carried out two long-range missile tests in July and a sixth nuclear test in September. Trump declared shortly thereafter that he would “totally destroy” the North if it posed a direct threat to the U.S.
Petraeus said a nuclear war is still unlikely.
“I don’t think likely. No,” he said. “I think, in fact, that again all of this is a communications strategy that is trying to make sure that China understands that this administration is in a very different situation from any of its predecessors, that North Korea on this president’s watch could have the capability to hit a city in the United States with a nuclear weapon.” [Yonhap]
Since trying to slur General Petraeus with misrepresented “facts” has proven to be a disaster for the left, what have they decided to do now to take him down? Well make stuff up of course:
And you though the Moveon.Org ad was something. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. There is no hole so deep that the modern left considers it unnecessary to keep digging. In other words, the demonization of David Petraeus has just begun.
The lefties at the Daily Kos and Think Progress are both giving a lot of play to the following quote that Admiral William Fallon allegedly (much more on that in a bit) made about his underling David Petraeus during their first meeting in Baghdad last March. The Daily Kos and Think Progress report Fallon called Petraeus “an ass-kissing little chicken-sh*t.”
I know what you’re thinking. For reputable outfits like the Daily Kos and Think Progress to report such an incendiary comment, the remark must be impeccably sourced. Well…
The original report of the comment, the scoop if you will, came in something called the “Inter Press Service News Agency,” or “IPS” as the organization bills itself. What? You’ve never heard of this IPS and find yourself curious about who and what it is? IPS describes itself this way on its website: “IPS, civil society’s leading news agency, is an independent voice from the South and for development, delving into globalisation for the stories underneath. Another communication is possible.” I don’t know what any of that means either, but I figure I’d share it with you and put it our there for deconstruction. [Hugh Hewitt]
The General Fallon quote is making its way across the leftistsphere with no challenge to it authenticity led by the Daily Kos and Think Progress. However, when General Fallon was asked to comment on this it was determined it was totally untrue. Not surprising considering the IPS article claims they got the quote from “Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting”. IPS could not even get an anonymous quote from someone who was at the meeting and instead rely on someone who claimed to have read a report of the meeting. Also keep in mind I have never seen minutes of a meeting ever taken where the recorder would write such a quote as General Fallon reportedly said.
So who is the person that wrote the IPS article you may wonder? Well none other than an anti-war, leftist ideologue Gareth Porter. Never heard of him before? Well you wouldn’t because his views are so left wing no respectable media outlet will touch him, thus that is why he writes for IPS and blogs for the Huffington Post, and other left wing sites. This is a guy who is a communist apologizer and even and apologist for the Khmer Rouge before the evidence of their killings became insurmountable.
So basically what the Daily Kos and his like minded leftists want the public to believe is the word of a guy who is a communist apologist who denied the existence of the Killing Fields of Cambodia. How come Kos and company never mentioned that before quoting him?
