Breaking News: General Petraeus resigns as CIA Director, after admitting to extramarital affair. Update!

Courtesy of Politico:

David Petraeus resigned his post as director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday, citing an extramarital affair. 

Petraeus visited the White House on Thursday to ask President Barack Obama to accept his resignation “for personal reasons,” he said in a statement to CIA staff. “After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor 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 is a real shame.

In my opinion General Petraeus was a very professional man who did his job to the best of his ability. However like all of us he is only human, and subject to lapses in judgment.

I feel no need to pile on as the General was never one of those who stood in judgement over others, he was not a hypocrite, and in fact was one of the FIRST highly placed military leaders to call for an end to "Don't Ask Don't Tell,"

He was one of the good ones and I feel quite badly for he and his family.

Update: Apparently the woman that the FBI is investigating is Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell. There are many conflicting reports, ranging from her attempting to access classified e-mails, to the discovery of e-mails between the two of them that talked openly of their affair. Hard to tell where the truth lies right now.

There is a lot of Right Wing misinformation going around, some of it accusing the Obama administration of orchestrating this in order to keep Petraeus from having to testify about Benghazi before Congress.  so let's try to be careful about what we accept at face value until the REAL reporters have a chance to examine the evidence.

Update 2: More information coming out from credible sources. This from the Wall Street Journal:

Multiple officials familiar with the investigation identified the woman with whom Mr. Petraeus had the affair as Paula Broadwell, who wrote a biography of him called "All In: The Education of Gen. David Petraeus.'' Efforts to reach Ms. Broadwell on Friday weren't successful. A spokeswoman for her publisher didn't immediately comment.

The computer probe began this spring, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Mr. Petraeus, however, was not interviewed by the FBI until recently. 

While Mr. Petraeus was still a general, he had email exchanges with the woman, but there were no physical transgressions, the person said. The affair began only after Mr. Petraeus retired from the military in August 2011, and ended months ago, the person said. 

An extramarital affair has significant implications for an official in a highly sensitive post, because it can open the official to blackmail and compromise of his security clearance.

So there is still some question as to whether there is really ANY evidence that  Ms. Broadwell actually saw any classified e-mails, or whether there is only a suspicion she MIGHT have had access to confidential e-mails.