Not only does the national security elite believe members of their club should face different standards of justice, but they also believe our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been successes.

That's the lesson one gets from reading the letters written to Judge David Kessler in support of a lenient sentence for David Petraeus after his conviction for leaking classified information — two years of probation as opposed to the three years of prison time faced by others who committed the same acts as Petraeus. The letters were recently unsealed in response to a lawsuit by a group of media outlets.

The letters, in general, make claims that may well be true: that General Petraeus is the best general of his generation, he's an inspiring leader, he's tireless. But then a good number of the letters leap from claims about Petraeus' personal attributes to inflated claims about Petraeus' success in Iraq and Afghanistan.