From Professor John Schindler at the Naval War College, this is one of the better reads on this entire Petraeus affair. -Jack

All of three days ago I offered my analysis of the emerging Petraeus debacle. Over the last seventy-two hours so many unpleasant details have popped up which are shocking to even a moderate cynic like myself that I don’t want to proffer a guess where the next few days will take us with this drama. First it was a legit news story, then it became a Lifetime episode, suddenly a reality show on Bravo, now it’s looking like a Coen brothers’ script. The only guess I will venture is: nowhere good.

It has emerged not only that Paula Broadwell, Dave Petraeus’s main gal not his wife, is pretty nuts, between online threats to perceived rivals and generally stalkerish and inappropriate behavior, but that she’s actually the kinda boring one.

Fortunately we now have Jill Kelley, the other doctor’s wife in this tawdry story, who is vastly more entertaining. Paula – she’s wound a bit tight, too West Pointish with the running obsession. Jill, however, is something else with her multiple aliases (Jill Kelley AKA Gilberte J. Kelley AKA Gigi Kelley AKA Jill Khawam AKA Gigi Khawam … and those are just the ones we know so far), the shady financial shenanigans (ok, it’s not officially fraud since no convictions yet despite obvious “financial issues”), the overt status whoring (since when do Combatant Commands have “social directors”? do they work for the J3?), the absurd posturing (normal women do not call their husband “Dr. Kelley”), and I won’t even mention her, ahem, fashion sense. The gal’s a Levantine macher from central casting.

Basically Jill Kelley is a more effective Tareq Salahi, minus the winery. Despite obvious huge issues here which ought to have scared off any normal person, especially anyone in a position of responsibility with a public image to protect, she and General John Allen, our commander in Afghanistan, traded tens of thousands of emails now considered “inappropriate.” I could care less if those two were doing naked pushups together, but I do wonder where Gen. Allen found all that time, since losing a war as badly as NATO is in Afghanistan is nothing if not a full-time position.

Since I have no trouble believing – as Paula obviously did – that Jill is a seductress who had her eyes set on guys with stars, including very possibly her very own general/boyfriend, questions will be asked what was up between Jill and Dave too. Can’t wait to find out. She had enough pull with both Allen and Petraeus to get them to go to bat for her “psychologically unstable” twin sister – because this story couldn’t be perfect without a crazy doppelganger for at least one of the mistresses – in her incredibly nasty custody battle.

Read the rest at Professor Schindler’s blog.