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| Iraq |
| The Overrated General Petraeus? |
| 2007-01-07 |
| The prospective new commander of U.S. military forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, is being hailed in these pages and elsewhere in the news media as just what the doctor ordered. Petraeus "gained fame for his early success in training Iraqi troops," The Washington Post says on the front page. He "helped oversee the drafting of the military's comprehensive new manual on counterinsurgency," the New York Times adds, admittedly in a less fawning review. I've never met Gen. Petraeus and in fact have heard nice things about him from friends and national security professionals. But still I ask, why the optimism? Though Petraeus may be an intellectual and promotional wizard, I have a hard time seeing any true success and product from his early work in or on Iraq. And why besmirch the career of Gen. George W. Casey Jr., whom Petraeus is scheduled to replace, just because the Bush administration wants to create the aura that it is doing something in its rearranging of the deck chairs? Balance at the link, additional below from Powerline: Perhaps the most remarkable test of his luck and physical rigor came on Sept. 21, 1991. Shortly after taking command of a battalion in the 101st, Petraeus was watching an infantry squad practice assaulting a bunker with live grenades and ammunition. Forty yards away, a rifleman tripped and fell, hard. Petraeus never saw the muzzle flash. The M-16 round struck just above the "A" in his uniform name tag on the right side of his chest, and blew through his back. Had it hit above the "A" in "U.S. Army," on the left side over his heart, he would have been dead before he hit the ground. He staggered back and collapsed. Standing next to him was Brig. Gen. Jack Keane, the assistant division commander, who by 2003 had become the Army's four-star vice chief of staff. "Dave, you've been shot," Keane told him. "I want you to keep talking. You know what's going on here, David. I don't want you to go into shock." Keane later described the day for me. "He was getting weaker, you could see that. He said, 'I'm gonna be okay. I'll stay with it.' We got him to the hospital at Campbell and they jammed a chest tube in. It's excruciating. Normally a guy screams and his body comes right off the table. All Petraeus did was grunt a little bit. His body didn't even move. The surgeon told me, 'That's the toughest guy I ever had my hands on.'" A medevac helicopter flew Petraeus, with Keane at his side, to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, 60 miles away. "It was a Saturday and I was afraid the top guys wouldn't be on duty. I had them call ahead to make sure their best thoracic surgeon was available," Keane recalled. "We got off the helicopter and there's this guy they'd called off the links, still in his golf outfit, pastel colors and everything." It was Dr. Bill Frist, who a decade later would become majority leader of the U.S. Senate. More than five hours of surgery followed. "Petraeus recuperated at the Fort Campbell hospital," Keane continued, "and he was driving the hospital commander crazy, trying to convince the doctors to discharge him. He said, 'I am not the norm. I'm ready to get out of here and I'm ready to prove it to you.' He had them pull the tubes out of his arm. Then he hopped out of bed and did 50 push-ups. They let him go home." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #2 Petraeus isn't going to be "in a big chair". He'll be on the street making things happen. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2007-01-07 16:00 |
| #1 Without a change of policy it won't matter who is in the big chair. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2007-01-07 14:54 |