September, 2007 full page MoveOn.org ad run in the New York Times
On September 10, 2007 MoveOn.org ran a full page ad in the New York Times charging General David Petraeus with “cooking the books for the White House.” The ad was in response to a report Petraeus issued to Congress about the situation in Iraq in which he concluded that the government’s surge strategy had worked and violence in Iraq was decreasing. MoveOn.org disputed Petraeus’ account of the situation in Iraq. Some members of Congress immediately jumped to Genral Petraeus’ defense. Republican John Cornyn of Texas introduced an amendment to “strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus.” All 49 Republican senators and 22 Democratic senators voted for the amendment. Barack Obama, then a senator, refused to vote, calling the amendment “a stunt” and saying he abstained in order to register his “protest against these empty politics.” Multiple reports currently reveal that to reduce detection while communicating with each other, Petraeus and his mistress used a trick long used by terrorists to avoid detection when communicating through email: they established a shared GMail account, then composed messages to each other and stored them in the “Drafts” folder, where each could read them without having to transmit them. In having his affair, General Petraeus violated the trust of his wife of 38 years, Holly, who gained respect for battling against the financial sector’s abuses against military families, like illegal foreclosures and abusive lending practices.