David Petraeus

General David Howell Petraeus, USA (born November 7, 1952 in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York) is the Commanding General, Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I). He was confirmed to that position by the Senate in a vote of 81–0 on January 26, 2007, and he assumed command on February 10, 2007, replacing General George Casey, who was subsequently confirmed as Chief of Staff of the United States Army. As Commander of MNF-I, Petraeus oversees all coalition forces in Iraq and carries out the Iraq strategy plan outlined by the Bush administration.[1][2]

Petraeus was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College—class of 1983.[3] He subsequently earned a Masters Degree in Public and International Affairs (1985) and a PhD (1987) in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He later served as Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy and also completed a fellowship at Georgetown University. He has a BS from the U.S. Military Academy—class of 1974—from which he graduated as a distinguished cadet (top 5% of his class).

Time named Petraeus 33rd out of the 100 most influential leaders and revolutionaries of 2007 as well as one of its four runners up for Time Person of the Year.[4][5] He was also named the second most influential American conservative by The Daily Telegraph[6] as well as The Daily Telegraph's 2007 Man of the Year[7] and "America's most respected soldier" by Der Spiegel in 2008.[8] Some press accounts have reported Petraeus's alleged "long-term interest in running for the US presidency", which has been cited by critics as motivation for supporting the Republican party's position on the war in Iraq.[9][10][11] Petraeus has categorically denied political ambitions, though, on numerous occasions.[12][13][14]

Early years
David Petraeus was born in 1952 to Dutch American parents. His father, Sixtus, was a sea captain who had emigrated to the United States from the Netherlands during the initial phase of World War II.[15] Sixtus married an American woman and settled in Cornwall on Hudson where David Petraeus was born, grew up and graduated from Cornwall Central High School in 1970. Residents called him 'peaches' in reference to his often-mispronounced last name[16] and his lack of facial hair,[17] the nickname stuck with him as a cadet.[18]

Petraeus then went on to the U.S. Military Academy in nearby West Point. Petraeus was on the intercollegiate soccer and ski teams, was a cadet captain on the brigade staff, and was a "distinguished cadet" academically, graduating in the top 5% of the Class of 1974 (ranked 43rd overall). In the class yearbook, Petraeus was remembered as "always going for it in sports, academics, leadership, and even his social life."[19]

Two months after graduation Petraeus married Holly Knowlton, a graduate from Dickinson College and daughter of retired Army General William A. Knowlton who was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) at the time. They have two grown children.


Army career

Education and academia
Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974. He returned to the military academy in 1981. He earned the General George C. Marshall Award as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Class of 1983 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He subsequently earned a MPA in 1985 and a Ph.D. in international relations in 1987 from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and later served as an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy. His doctoral dissertation, "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era," dealt with the influence of the Vietnam War on military thinking regarding the use of force.[20] He also completed a military fellowship at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 1994–1995, although he was called away early to serve in Haiti.

From late 2005 through February 2007,[21] Petraeus served as commanding general of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) located there. As commander of CAC, Petraeus was responsible for oversight of the Command and General Staff College and seventeen other schools, centers, and training programs as well as for development of the Army’s doctrinal manuals, training the Army’s officers, and supervising the Army’s center for the collection and dissemination of lessons learned. During his time at CAC, Petraeus and Marine Lt. Gen.James N. Mattis jointly oversaw the writing of Field Manual 3-24 (on counter-insurgency), the body of which was written by a variety of field-grade Army officers and other experts.[22]


Military Operations

1970s
Upon his graduation from West Point in 1974, he was commissioned an infantry officer. He began his career with an assignment to a light infantry unit, the 509th Airborne Infantry Battalion at Vicenza, Italy; ever since, light infantry has been at the core of his career, punctuated by assignments to mechanized units, command staffs, and educational institutions. After leaving the 509th as a first lieutenant, Petraeus began a brief association with mechanized units when he became assistant operations officer on the staff of the 2nd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and in 1979, when he was promoted to captain, he was charged with a company in the same division: Company A, 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized). In 1978–1979, he also served as operations officer to the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized)'s 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized) and its 1st Brigade.


1980s
In 1981, Petraeus became aide-de-camp to the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized)'s commanding general.[23] He spent much of the 1980s in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and West Point to pursue further military education. After earning his Ph.D. and teaching at West Point, Petraeus continued up the rungs of the command ladder, serving as military assistant to Gen. John Galvin, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. From there, he moved to the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) and then to a post as aide and assistant executive officer to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Carl Vuono, in Washington, D.C.


1990s
Upon promotion to lieutenant colonel, Petraeus moved from the office of the Chief of Staff to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he commanded the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)'s 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment from 1991–1993. As battalion commander of the Iron Rakkasans, he suffered one of the more dramatic incidents in his career when, in 1991, he was accidentally shot in the chest during a live-fire exercise when a soldier tripped and his rifle discharged. He was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, where he was operated on by future U.S. Senator Bill Frist. The hospital released him early after he did fifty push ups without resting, just a few days after the accident.[24][25]

During 1993–94, Petraeus continued his long association with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) as the division's Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 (plans, operations and training) and installation Director of Plans, Training, and Mobilization (DPTM). In 1995, he was assigned to the United Nations Mission in Haiti Military Staff as its Chief Military Operations Officer during Operation Uphold Democracy. His next command, from 1995–97, was the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, centered on the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. At that post, his brigade's training cycle at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center for low-intensity warfare was chronicled by novelist and military enthusiast Tom Clancy in his book "Airborne". From 1997-99 Petraeus served in the Pentagon as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Joint Staff and then to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Henry Shelton. In 1999, as a brigadier general, Petraeus returned to the 82nd, serving as the assistant division commander for operations and then, briefly, as acting commanding general. During his time with the 82nd, he deployed to Kuwait as part of Operation Desert Spring, the continuous rotation of combat forces through Kuwait during the decade after the Gulf War.


2000s

Camp New Jersey, Kuwait (March 21, 2003)—Major General David H. Petraeus (right), commanding general, 101st Airborne Division, (Air Assault) looks on as Lieutenant General William S. Wallace, V Corps commanding general speaks to soldiers.From the 82nd, he moved on to serve as Chief of Staff of XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg during 2000–2001. In 2000, Petraeus suffered his second major injury, when, during a civilian skydiving jump, his parachute collapsed at low altitude due to a hook turn, resulting in a hard landing that broke his pelvis. He was promoted to Major General in 2001.[26] During 2001–2002, as a brigadier general, Petraeus served a ten-month tour in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of Operation Joint Forge. In Bosnia, he was the NATO Stabilization Force Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations as well as the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorism Task Force, a command created after the September 11 attacks to add a counterterrorism capability to the U.S. forces attached to the NATO command in Bosnia. In 2004, he was promoted to Lieutenant General.[27] In 2007, he was promoted to General.[28]

Involvement in the Iraq War

101st Airborne Division
In 2003, Petraeus, then a major general, saw his first combat when he commanded the 101st Airborne Division during V Corps's drive to Baghdad. In a campaign chronicled in detail by Rick Atkinson of The Washington Post in the book In the Company of Soldiers, Petraeus led his division through fierce fighting in Karbala, Hilla, and Najaf. Following the fall of Baghdad, the division conducted the longest heliborne assault on record in order to reach Ninawa Province, where it would spend much of 2003. The 1st Brigade was responsible for the area south of Mosul, the 2nd Brigade for the city itself, and the 3rd Brigade for the region stretching toward the Syrian border. An often-repeated story of Petraeus's time with the 101st is his asking of embedded Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson to "Tell me how this ends,"[29] an anecdote he and other journalists have used to portray Petraeus as an early recognizer of the difficulties that would follow the fall of Baghdad.[30][31][32][33][34][35]

Petraeus oversaw a program of public works and political reinvigoration in Mosul,[36][37] launching 4,500 reconstruction projects.[38] The New York Times has stated that "from the first day they arrived in Mosul, Bravo Company and the rest of the 101st Airborne Division were saddled with dozens of other missions, all of them distinctly nonmilitary, and most of them made necessary by the failure of civilian leaders in Washington and Baghdad to prepare for the occupation of Iraq."[39] Some Iraqis gave Petraeus the nickname 'King David',[40][41] which was later adopted by some of his colleagues.[42][43][44] Newsweek has stated that "It's widely accepted that no force worked harder to win Iraqi hearts and minds than the 101st Air Assault Division led by Petraeus."[45]

One of the General's major public works was the restoration and re-opening of the University of Mosul.[46][47][48] Petraeus strongly supported the use of commanders' discretionary funds for public works, telling Coalition Provisional Authority director L. Paul Bremer "Money is ammunition" during the director's first visit to Mosul.[49][50] Petraeus' often repeated[51][52][53][54] catchphrase[55] was later incorporated into official military briefings[56][57] and was also eventually incorporated into the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual coauthored by Petraeus.[58]

Former diplomat Peter Galbraith criticised Petraeus' command of the 101st, saying his achievements have been exaggerated and his reputation is inflated.[59] He wrote for The New York Review of Books that "Petraeus ignored warnings from America's Kurdish allies that he was appointing the wrong people to key positions in Mosul's local government and police. A few months after he left the city, the Petraeus-appointed local police commander defected to the insurgency while the Sunni Arab police handed their weapons and uniforms over en masse to the insurgents."[60] Ahmed S. Hashim wrote in Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq that, initially, "The city was also quiet because it acted as a staging ground for attacks elsewhere" and "By late 2003, however, the city had descended into a sprial of violence."[61]

The Guardian quoted an anonymous US diplomat saying "Mosul basically collapsed after he left".[62] The San Francisco Chronicle has stated that "By the end of 2004, insurgents took over most of Mosul, burning down police stations and prompting Americans to evacuate one of their bases".[63] Time magazine blogger Joe Klein argued that the deterioration on the ground was due to changes to the city's administration by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.[64]


Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq
In June 2004, less than six months after the 101st returned to the U.S., Petraeus was promoted to lieutenant general and charged with the task of training the new Iraqi Army and security forces as commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq.

In September 2004, Petraeus wrote an article for The Washington Post in which he lauded the progress he said was being made by Iraqi security forces, stating that "Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations ... Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January, in time to help with security missions during the Iraqi elections at the end of that month... By early spring, nine academies in Iraq and one in Jordan will be graduating a total of 5,000 police each month from the eight-week course".[65]

However, according to former Interim Iraq Governing Council member Ali A. Allawi in The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, "under the very noses of the security transition command, officials both inside and outside the ministry of defense were planning to embezzle most, if not all, of the procurement budget of the army."[66] The Washington Post stated in August 2007 that the Pentagon had lost track of approximately 30% of weapons supplied to the Iraqi security forces. The General Accounting Office said that the weapons distribution was haphazard, rushed, and did not follow established procedures-- particularly from 2004 to 2005 when security training was led by Petraeus.[67][68] Over a hundred thousand AK-47 assault rifles and pistols were misplaced. Some of the missing weapons may have been abducted by Iraqi insurgents.[69][70] Thousands of body armour pieces have also been lost.[71] The Independent has stated that the military believed "the situation on the ground was so urgent, and the agency responsible for recording the transfers of arms so short staffed, that field commanders had little choice in the matter."[72] The Pentagon has started its own investigation.[73]


Multi-National Force - Iraq (Spring 2007)

The commanding general of the 9th Iraqi Army Division, right, speaks with a journalist from the Al-Arabiyah news channel, left, as they walk with General David Petraeus, center, through the Al Shurja market in the Rusafa area of East Baghdad, March 11, 2007.In January 2007, as part of his overhauled Iraq strategy, President George W. Bush announced that Petraeus would succeed Gen. George Casey as commanding general of MNF-I to lead all U.S. troops in Iraq. On January 24, Petraeus testified before the Senate on his ideas for Iraq, particularly the "surge" strategy of increased U.S. presence in Baghdad that he supports as in line with classic counterinsurgency doctrine. The "surge" strategy, as well as the ideas Petraeus included in FM 3-24, have been referred to by some journalists and politicians as the "Petraeus Doctrine," although the surge itself was proposed well before Petraeus took command. Despite the misgivings of most Democratic and a few Republican senators over the proposed implementation of the "Petraeus Doctrine" in Iraq, specifically regarding the troop surge, Petraeus was unanimously confirmed as a four-star general and MNF-I commander on January 27.[74][75]

Before leaving for Iraq Petraeus recruited a number of highly educated military officers, nicknamed "Petraeus guys" or "designated thinkers," to advise him as commander, including Col. Mike Meese, head of the Social Science Department at West Point and Col. H.R. McMaster, famous for his leadership at the Battle of 73 Easting in the Gulf War and in the pacification of Tal Afar more recently, as well as for his doctoral dissertation on Vietnam-era civil-military relations entitled Dereliction of Duty. While most of Petraeus's closest advisers are American military officers, he also hired Lt. Col. David Kilcullen of the Australian Army, who was working for the US State Department.[76]

Since taking command of MNF-I on February 10, 2007, Petraeus has inspected U.S. and Iraqi units all over Iraq, visiting outposts in greater Baghdad, Tikrit, Baquba, Ramadi, and as far west as al-Hit. In April 2007, Petraeus made his first visit to Washington as MNF-I commander, reporting to President Bush and Congress on the progress of the "surge" and the overall situation in Iraq. During this visit he met privately with members of Congress and reportedly argued against setting a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.[77]

By late May 2007, Congress did not impose any timetables in war funding legislation for troop withdrawal.[78] The enacted legislation did mandate that Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, deliver a report to Congress by September 15, 2007 detailing their assessment of the military, economic and political situation of Iraq. Despite Petraeus’ statement in June 2007 that there were “astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad,[79] which drew criticism from Senate majority leader Harry Reid,[80] Petraeus has warned that he expects that the situation in Iraq will require the continued deployment of the elevated troop level of more than 150,000 beyond September 2007; he also has stated that U.S. involvement in Iraq could last years afterward.[81]


Multi-National Force - Iraq (Summer and Fall 2007)

General Petraeus briefs reporters at the Pentagon April 26, 2007, on his view of the current military situation in Iraq.
A controversial full-page political advertisement by Moveon.org in the September 10, 2007 edition of The New York TimesIn July 2007, Petraeus released his interim report on Iraq, which stated that coalition forces had made satisfactory progress on 6 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress. On September 7, 2007, in a letter addressed to the troops he was commanding, Petraeus wrote that much military progress had been made, but that the political progress that was hoped for had not been achieved.[82] Petraeus' final report on Iraq was delivered to Congress on September 10, 2007.

On August 15, 2007, The Los Angeles Times stated that, according to unnamed administration officials, the report "would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government."[83] Petraeus declared in his testimony to Congress that "I wrote this testimony myself." He further elaborated that his testimony to Congress, which was not given under oath,[84] "has not been cleared by, nor shared with, anyone in the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress."[85]

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada argued Petraeus' "plan is just more of the same" and "is neither a drawdown or a change in mission that we need." Democratic Representative Robert Wexler of Florida accused Petraeus of “cherry-picking statistics” and “massaging information”.[86] Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Lantos of California called the General and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker "Two of our nation's most capable public servants" and said Democrats feel "esteem for their professionalism." He also said that "We can no longer take their assertions on Iraq at face value"; concluding, "We need to get out of Iraq, for that country's sake as well as our own."[87]

Republican Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter called the report "a candid, independent assessment given with integrity".[88] Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona stated that "I commend General Petraeus for his honest and forthright assessment of the situation in Iraq."[89] Anti-war Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska criticized the report while praising Petraeus, saying "It's not your fault, general... It's not Ambassador Crocker's fault. It's this administration's fault."[90] A USA Today/Gallup poll taken after Petraeus' report to Congress showed virtually no change in public opinion toward the war.[91] A Pew Research Center survey found that most Americans who have heard about the report approve of Petraeus' recommendations.[92]

On September 20, the Senate passed an amendment by Republican John Cornyn III of Texas designed to "strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus". Cornyn drafted the amendment in response to a controversial full-page ad by Moveon.org in the September 10, 2007 edition of The New York Times. All forty-nine Republican Senators and twenty-two Democratic Senators voted in support.[93] The House passed a similar resolution by a 341-79 vote on September 26.[94]

In December 2007, The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" stated that "While some of Petraeus's statistics are open to challenge, his claims about a general reduction in violence have been borne out over subsequent months. It now looks as if Petraeus was broadly right on this issue at least".[95]

In October 2007, Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker created an updated plan for organizing U.S. forces in Iraq. One of the major points will be "shifting the U.S. military effort to focus more on countering Shiite militias".[96]


Multi-National Force - Iraq (Spring 2008)
Petraeus will make another assessment and offer new recommendations on April 2008.[97] USA Today has stated that Petraeus "will be able to tick off a list of undisputed military achievements."[97] On February 18, 2008, USA Today stated that "the U.S. effort has shown more success" and that, after the number of troops reached its peak in fall 2007, "U.S. deaths were at their lowest levels since the 2003 invasion, civilian casualties were down, and street life was resuming in Baghdad."[97]Petraeus told on March 19, 2008 Iran continues to support Iraqi insurgents and Syria is allowing foreign fighters passage into Iraq.[98]

Early years
David Petraeus was born in 1952 to Dutch American parents. His father, Sixtus, was a sea captain who had emigrated to the United States from the Netherlands during the initial phase of World War II.[15] Sixtus married an American woman and settled in Cornwall on Hudson where David Petraeus was born, grew up and graduated from Cornwall Central High School in 1970. Residents called him 'peaches' in reference to his often-mispronounced last name[16] and his lack of facial hair,[17] the nickname stuck with him as a cadet.[18]

Petraeus then went on to the U.S. Military Academy in nearby West Point. Petraeus was on the intercollegiate soccer and ski teams, was a cadet captain on the brigade staff, and was a "distinguished cadet" academically, graduating in the top 5% of the Class of 1974 (ranked 43rd overall). In the class yearbook, Petraeus was remembered as "always going for it in sports, academics, leadership, and even his social life."[19]

Two months after graduation Petraeus married Holly Knowlton, a graduate from Dickinson College and daughter of retired Army General William A. Knowlton who was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) at the time. They have two grown children.


Army career

Education and academia
Petraeus graduated from West Point in 1974. He returned to the military academy in 1981. He earned the General George C. Marshall Award as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Class of 1983 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He subsequently earned a MPA in 1985 and a Ph.D. in international relations in 1987 from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and later served as an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy. His doctoral dissertation, "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era," dealt with the influence of the Vietnam War on military thinking regarding the use of force.[20] He also completed a military fellowship at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 1994–1995, although he was called away early to serve in Haiti.

From late 2005 through February 2007,[21] Petraeus served as commanding general of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) located there. As commander of CAC, Petraeus was responsible for oversight of the Command and General Staff College and seventeen other schools, centers, and training programs as well as for development of the Army’s doctrinal manuals, training the Army’s officers, and supervising the Army’s center for the collection and dissemination of lessons learned. During his time at CAC, Petraeus and Marine Lt. Gen.James N. Mattis jointly oversaw the writing of Field Manual 3-24 (on counter-insurgency), the body of which was written by a variety of field-grade Army officers and other experts.[22]


Military Operations

1970s
Upon his graduation from West Point in 1974, he was commissioned an infantry officer. He began his career with an assignment to a light infantry unit, the 509th Airborne Infantry Battalion at Vicenza, Italy; ever since, light infantry has been at the core of his career, punctuated by assignments to mechanized units, command staffs, and educational institutions. After leaving the 509th as a first lieutenant, Petraeus began a brief association with mechanized units when he became assistant operations officer on the staff of the 2nd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and in 1979, when he was promoted to captain, he was charged with a company in the same division: Company A, 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized). In 1978–1979, he also served as operations officer to the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized)'s 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized) and its 1st Brigade.


1980s
In 1981, Petraeus became aide-de-camp to the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized)'s commanding general.[23] He spent much of the 1980s in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and West Point to pursue further military education. After earning his Ph.D. and teaching at West Point, Petraeus continued up the rungs of the command ladder, serving as military assistant to Gen. John Galvin, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. From there, he moved to the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) and then to a post as aide and assistant executive officer to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Carl Vuono, in Washington, D.C.


1990s
Upon promotion to lieutenant colonel, Petraeus moved from the office of the Chief of Staff to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he commanded the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)'s 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment from 1991–1993. As battalion commander of the Iron Rakkasans, he suffered one of the more dramatic incidents in his career when, in 1991, he was accidentally shot in the chest during a live-fire exercise when a soldier tripped and his rifle discharged. He was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, where he was operated on by future U.S. Senator Bill Frist. The hospital released him early after he did fifty push ups without resting, just a few days after the accident.[24][25]

During 1993–94, Petraeus continued his long association with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) as the division's Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 (plans, operations and training) and installation Director of Plans, Training, and Mobilization (DPTM). In 1995, he was assigned to the United Nations Mission in Haiti Military Staff as its Chief Military Operations Officer during Operation Uphold Democracy. His next command, from 1995–97, was the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, centered on the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. At that post, his brigade's training cycle at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center for low-intensity warfare was chronicled by novelist and military enthusiast Tom Clancy in his book "Airborne". From 1997-99 Petraeus served in the Pentagon as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Joint Staff and then to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Henry Shelton. In 1999, as a brigadier general, Petraeus returned to the 82nd, serving as the assistant division commander for operations and then, briefly, as acting commanding general. During his time with the 82nd, he deployed to Kuwait as part of Operation Desert Spring, the continuous rotation of combat forces through Kuwait during the decade after the Gulf War.


2000s

Camp New Jersey, Kuwait (March 21, 2003)—Major General David H. Petraeus (right), commanding general, 101st Airborne Division, (Air Assault) looks on as Lieutenant General William S. Wallace, V Corps commanding general speaks to soldiers.From the 82nd, he moved on to serve as Chief of Staff of XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg during 2000–2001. In 2000, Petraeus suffered his second major injury, when, during a civilian skydiving jump, his parachute collapsed at low altitude due to a hook turn, resulting in a hard landing that broke his pelvis. He was promoted to Major General in 2001.[26] During 2001–2002, as a brigadier general, Petraeus served a ten-month tour in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of Operation Joint Forge. In Bosnia, he was the NATO Stabilization Force Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations as well as the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorism Task Force, a command created after the September 11 attacks to add a counterterrorism capability to the U.S. forces attached to the NATO command in Bosnia. In 2004, he was promoted to Lieutenant General.[27] In 2007, he was promoted to General.[28]

Involvement in the Iraq War

101st Airborne Division
In 2003, Petraeus, then a major general, saw his first combat when he commanded the 101st Airborne Division during V Corps's drive to Baghdad. In a campaign chronicled in detail by Rick Atkinson of The Washington Post in the book In the Company of Soldiers, Petraeus led his division through fierce fighting in Karbala, Hilla, and Najaf. Following the fall of Baghdad, the division conducted the longest heliborne assault on record in order to reach Ninawa Province, where it would spend much of 2003. The 1st Brigade was responsible for the area south of Mosul, the 2nd Brigade for the city itself, and the 3rd Brigade for the region stretching toward the Syrian border. An often-repeated story of Petraeus's time with the 101st is his asking of embedded Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson to "Tell me how this ends,"[29] an anecdote he and other journalists have used to portray Petraeus as an early recognizer of the difficulties that would follow the fall of Baghdad.[30][31][32][33][34][35]

Petraeus oversaw a program of public works and political reinvigoration in Mosul,[36][37] launching 4,500 reconstruction projects.[38] The New York Times has stated that "from the first day they arrived in Mosul, Bravo Company and the rest of the 101st Airborne Division were saddled with dozens of other missions, all of them distinctly nonmilitary, and most of them made necessary by the failure of civilian leaders in Washington and Baghdad to prepare for the occupation of Iraq."[39] Some Iraqis gave Petraeus the nickname 'King David',[40][41] which was later adopted by some of his colleagues.[42][43][44] Newsweek has stated that "It's widely accepted that no force worked harder to win Iraqi hearts and minds than the 101st Air Assault Division led by Petraeus."[45]

One of the General's major public works was the restoration and re-opening of the University of Mosul.[46][47][48] Petraeus strongly supported the use of commanders' discretionary funds for public works, telling Coalition Provisional Authority director L. Paul Bremer "Money is ammunition" during the director's first visit to Mosul.[49][50] Petraeus' often repeated[51][52][53][54] catchphrase[55] was later incorporated into official military briefings[56][57] and was also eventually incorporated into the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual coauthored by Petraeus.[58]

Former diplomat Peter Galbraith criticised Petraeus' command of the 101st, saying his achievements have been exaggerated and his reputation is inflated.[59] He wrote for The New York Review of Books that "Petraeus ignored warnings from America's Kurdish allies that he was appointing the wrong people to key positions in Mosul's local government and police. A few months after he left the city, the Petraeus-appointed local police commander defected to the insurgency while the Sunni Arab police handed their weapons and uniforms over en masse to the insurgents."[60] Ahmed S. Hashim wrote in Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq that, initially, "The city was also quiet because it acted as a staging ground for attacks elsewhere" and "By late 2003, however, the city had descended into a sprial of violence."[61]

The Guardian quoted an anonymous US diplomat saying "Mosul basically collapsed after he left".[62] The San Francisco Chronicle has stated that "By the end of 2004, insurgents took over most of Mosul, burning down police stations and prompting Americans to evacuate one of their bases".[63] Time magazine blogger Joe Klein argued that the deterioration on the ground was due to changes to the city's administration by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.[64]


Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq
In June 2004, less than six months after the 101st returned to the U.S., Petraeus was promoted to lieutenant general and charged with the task of training the new Iraqi Army and security forces as commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq.

In September 2004, Petraeus wrote an article for The Washington Post in which he lauded the progress he said was being made by Iraqi security forces, stating that "Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations ... Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January, in time to help with security missions during the Iraqi elections at the end of that month... By early spring, nine academies in Iraq and one in Jordan will be graduating a total of 5,000 police each month from the eight-week course".[65]

However, according to former Interim Iraq Governing Council member Ali A. Allawi in The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, "under the very noses of the security transition command, officials both inside and outside the ministry of defense were planning to embezzle most, if not all, of the procurement budget of the army."[66] The Washington Post stated in August 2007 that the Pentagon had lost track of approximately 30% of weapons supplied to the Iraqi security forces. The General Accounting Office said that the weapons distribution was haphazard, rushed, and did not follow established procedures-- particularly from 2004 to 2005 when security training was led by Petraeus.[67][68] Over a hundred thousand AK-47 assault rifles and pistols were misplaced. Some of the missing weapons may have been abducted by Iraqi insurgents.[69][70] Thousands of body armour pieces have also been lost.[71] The Independent has stated that the military believed "the situation on the ground was so urgent, and the agency responsible for recording the transfers of arms so short staffed, that field commanders had little choice in the matter."[72] The Pentagon has started its own investigation.[73]


Multi-National Force - Iraq (Spring 2007)

The commanding general of the 9th Iraqi Army Division, right, speaks with a journalist from the Al-Arabiyah news channel, left, as they walk with General David Petraeus, center, through the Al Shurja market in the Rusafa area of East Baghdad, March 11, 2007.In January 2007, as part of his overhauled Iraq strategy, President George W. Bush announced that Petraeus would succeed Gen. George Casey as commanding general of MNF-I to lead all U.S. troops in Iraq. On January 24, Petraeus testified before the Senate on his ideas for Iraq, particularly the "surge" strategy of increased U.S. presence in Baghdad that he supports as in line with classic counterinsurgency doctrine. The "surge" strategy, as well as the ideas Petraeus included in FM 3-24, have been referred to by some journalists and politicians as the "Petraeus Doctrine," although the surge itself was proposed well before Petraeus took command. Despite the misgivings of most Democratic and a few Republican senators over the proposed implementation of the "Petraeus Doctrine" in Iraq, specifically regarding the troop surge, Petraeus was unanimously confirmed as a four-star general and MNF-I commander on January 27.[74][75]

Before leaving for Iraq Petraeus recruited a number of highly educated military officers, nicknamed "Petraeus guys" or "designated thinkers," to advise him as commander, including Col. Mike Meese, head of the Social Science Department at West Point and Col. H.R. McMaster, famous for his leadership at the Battle of 73 Easting in the Gulf War and in the pacification of Tal Afar more recently, as well as for his doctoral dissertation on Vietnam-era civil-military relations entitled Dereliction of Duty. While most of Petraeus's closest advisers are American military officers, he also hired Lt. Col. David Kilcullen of the Australian Army, who was working for the US State Department.[76]

Since taking command of MNF-I on February 10, 2007, Petraeus has inspected U.S. and Iraqi units all over Iraq, visiting outposts in greater Baghdad, Tikrit, Baquba, Ramadi, and as far west as al-Hit. In April 2007, Petraeus made his first visit to Washington as MNF-I commander, reporting to President Bush and Congress on the progress of the "surge" and the overall situation in Iraq. During this visit he met privately with members of Congress and reportedly argued against setting a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.[77]

By late May 2007, Congress did not impose any timetables in war funding legislation for troop withdrawal.[78] The enacted legislation did mandate that Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, deliver a report to Congress by September 15, 2007 detailing their assessment of the military, economic and political situation of Iraq. Despite Petraeus’ statement in June 2007 that there were “astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad,[79] which drew criticism from Senate majority leader Harry Reid,[80] Petraeus has warned that he expects that the situation in Iraq will require the continued deployment of the elevated troop level of more than 150,000 beyond September 2007; he also has stated that U.S. involvement in Iraq could last years afterward.[81]


Multi-National Force - Iraq (Summer and Fall 2007)

General Petraeus briefs reporters at the Pentagon April 26, 2007, on his view of the current military situation in Iraq.
A controversial full-page political advertisement by Moveon.org in the September 10, 2007 edition of The New York TimesIn July 2007, Petraeus released his interim report on Iraq, which stated that coalition forces had made satisfactory progress on 6 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress. On September 7, 2007, in a letter addressed to the troops he was commanding, Petraeus wrote that much military progress had been made, but that the political progress that was hoped for had not been achieved.[82] Petraeus' final report on Iraq was delivered to Congress on September 10, 2007.

On August 15, 2007, The Los Angeles Times stated that, according to unnamed administration officials, the report "would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government."[83] Petraeus declared in his testimony to Congress that "I wrote this testimony myself." He further elaborated that his testimony to Congress, which was not given under oath,[84] "has not been cleared by, nor shared with, anyone in the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress."[85]

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada argued Petraeus' "plan is just more of the same" and "is neither a drawdown or a change in mission that we need." Democratic Representative Robert Wexler of Florida accused Petraeus of “cherry-picking statistics” and “massaging information”.[86] Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Lantos of California called the General and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker "Two of our nation's most capable public servants" and said Democrats feel "esteem for their professionalism." He also said that "We can no longer take their assertions on Iraq at face value"; concluding, "We need to get out of Iraq, for that country's sake as well as our own."[87]

Republican Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter called the report "a candid, independent assessment given with integrity".[88] Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona stated that "I commend General Petraeus for his honest and forthright assessment of the situation in Iraq."[89] Anti-war Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska criticized the report while praising Petraeus, saying "It's not your fault, general... It's not Ambassador Crocker's fault. It's this administration's fault."[90] A USA Today/Gallup poll taken after Petraeus' report to Congress showed virtually no change in public opinion toward the war.[91] A Pew Research Center survey found that most Americans who have heard about the report approve of Petraeus' recommendations.[92]

On September 20, the Senate passed an amendment by Republican John Cornyn III of Texas designed to "strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus". Cornyn drafted the amendment in response to a controversial full-page ad by Moveon.org in the September 10, 2007 edition of The New York Times. All forty-nine Republican Senators and twenty-two Democratic Senators voted in support.[93] The House passed a similar resolution by a 341-79 vote on September 26.[94]

In December 2007, The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" stated that "While some of Petraeus's statistics are open to challenge, his claims about a general reduction in violence have been borne out over subsequent months. It now looks as if Petraeus was broadly right on this issue at least".[95]

In October 2007, Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker created an updated plan for organizing U.S. forces in Iraq. One of the major points will be "shifting the U.S. military effort to focus more on countering Shiite militias".[96]


Multi-National Force - Iraq (Spring 2008)
Petraeus will make another assessment and offer new recommendations on April 2008.[97] USA Today has stated that Petraeus "will be able to tick off a list of undisputed military achievements."[97] On February 18, 2008, USA Today stated that "the U.S. effort has shown more success" and that, after the number of troops reached its peak in fall 2007, "U.S. deaths were at their lowest levels since the 2003 invasion, civilian casualties were down, and street life was resuming in Baghdad."[97]Petraeus told on March 19, 2008 Iran continues to support Iraqi insurgents and Syria is allowing foreign fighters passage into Iraq.[98]