Article touches on a number of women currently in the news and provides unusual historical context.

[proverbialwisdom]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/27/paula-broadwell-whistleblower/

November 27, 2012

It's More Than a Sex Scandal

Paula Broadwell, Whistleblower

by FRED GARDNER

In Men in Black Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith make use of a device that erases memory as they save the USA and the whole collateral world. In real life the memory-erasing function is performed by the corporate media and the incessantly twittering culture. “The United States of Amnesia” is what Gore Vidal called us.

Who recalls that Martha Mitchell, the wife of Attorney General John Mitchell, broke the news of Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate break-in when she told a sympathetic female reporter (Helen Thomas) that her husband should not take the rap for The White House? John Mitchell, loyal to Nixon, called his wife a drunken loud-mouthed dame and had her hauled off to a locked facility. Months later Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reported that Nixon knew about the break-in in advance, and to this day they’re credited with breaking the story.

Martha Mitchell’s blunt revelation and the way it got ignored comes to mind as we await the follow-up to Paula Broadwell’s assertion that two prisoners were being held at the CIA “annex” near the consulate in Benghazi at the time of the assault that left Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans dead.

Broadwell was speaking on October 26 at the University of Denver alumni symposium, promoting All In, her biography of Gen. David Petraeus. Proceeds were going to a program that helps wounded veterans hone their physical fitness. In addition to almost 7,000 deaths, some 45,000 Americans have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan —”amputees, multiple amputees,” Broadwell reminded the Denver alums— and 450,000 troopers have returned with post-traumatic stress, brain damage, and other disorders not readily apparent.

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[seabeyond]

1. very interesting. and the point. women rarely get their place in history.

i did not know that about martha mitchell, but, my 17 yr old son was here so when i read, i shared with him. we had a good laugh that this woman, who spoke up for hubby, was then locked up in a rehab only for a couple men to get the credit.

broadwell letting go of the info, without the facts, while info was still coming in, was totally nonprofessional.

i dont need to know all the girlie stuff of who the woman is. BUT... that would be the point of the article, how much they approached the story to make it girlie, as opposed to presenting fact, news. incredible and shows the innate sexism we have everywhere, that people seem to be obtuse about, or not see as relevant. while i see it as the foundation of the issue women have.

thanks for the article.