Former commander reassigned to Kansas (Gen. Petraeus)

[Barrett808]

Former commander reassigned to Kansas
By CHANTAL ESCOTO
The Leaf-Chronicle

Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus is taking on a new assignment as commanding general of the United States Army Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, Kan., according to the Department of Defense.
The announcement, made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, did not give a report date.

Petraeus is currently serving as the commander, Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. Prior to his heading of Iraqi security, he was the commanding general of Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division between June 2002 and May 2004. He led the division into Iraq at the onset of the war in March 2003 and was widely recognized for his nation-building success in Mosul.

http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050726/NEWS01/507260313/1002

You may recall Petraeus as the Army's "expert" in counterinsurgency war. Last I heard, he was training the new Iraqi military.

[maddezmom]

1. Army Replaces Commander in Charge of Training Iraqi Security Forces-NYT

By THOM SHANKER
Published: July 23, 2005
WASHINGTON, July 22 - The Pentagon announced Friday that Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has been in charge of efforts to train Iraqi security forces, has completed his yearlong tour of duty and will become commander of the Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.


Named to replace him was Maj. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who also was nominated for promotion to lieutenant general, the Pentagon statement said.

Senior Bush administration and Pentagon officials say the training of Iraqi security forces is critical to stabilizing the country and to supporting a political process that will allow the reduction of American forces in Iraq, perhaps as early as next year.

It has been a daunting and complicated task. A newly declassified Pentagon assessment released to Congress said only "a small number" of Iraqi security forces can fight insurgents without American assistance, although about a third of the Iraqi Army is capable of "planning, executing and sustaining counterinsurgency operations" with support.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/23/politics/23army.html

[Wickerman]

2. either someone got REALLY demoted, or traffic at Fort Leavenworth

is about to increase at horrific levels.

Maybe they are prepping for the Bush party, party of 100! :D It would do my heart good to see GWB, Dick and all their buddies breaking big rocks into little rocks.

[UpInArms]

3. perhaps Petraeus was "getting along" with Negroponte?

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/occupation/2004/0513usgrip.htm

U.S. Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, who participated in the original Iraq invasion, will soon assume responsibility for training the new forces. With American commanders retaining the power to order the forces into combat, Mr. Allawi or his successor will be left with only "administrative control" of the forces.

<snip>

The U.S. plans to convert a nearby building into the formal embassy that incoming U.S. ambassador John Negroponte can use for ceremonial functions. In an unusual move, two of Mr. Negroponte's top deputies will also have ambassadorial rank. James Jeffrey will become the deputy chief of mission at the embassy. Blunt and often profane, Mr. Jeffrey, a former Army special forces officer, is currently the ambassador to Albania and has held senior posts in Turkey and Kuwait. Ron Newman, currently the ambassador to Bahrain, also has a military background and is likely to join the embassy in Iraq in a senior position such as defense attaché.

The U.S. push to continue guiding events in Iraq has been led by the State Department, where officials have grown convinced that placing the country under full Iraqi control now would plunge it deeper into violence and political turmoil, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. officials had once talked of occupying Iraq for several years, a period more in keeping with the precedent set by the seven-year occupation of Japan after World War II. Last November, however, the White House accelerated the timetable. Despite a wave of bombings the previous month, the administration believed the insurgency was limited to a small number of what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "dead-enders."

The Bush administration also felt Iraq's Sunni minority, which had controlled Iraq under Mr. Hussein, had been neutralized by the disbanding of the army and the firing of tens of thousands of government officials. Iraq's Shiite majority was seemingly unified behind Mr. Sistani, who counseled his followers to cooperate with the coalition. And Iraq's ethnic Kurds, who controlled the country's north, had moderated their long-held demands for full independence.

Many of those assumptions haven't yet panned out. Sunnis angry over their forced disenfranchisement have put up a stiff resistance to the U.S. occupation in cities like Fallujah, and Iraq's fledgling security forces have been unable or unwilling to help fight them. Thousands of Shiites have taken up arms against the U.S. under the flag of Muqtada al Sadr, an anti-American cleric once dismissed by Washington as a bit player in Iraq.

...more...

[Xipe Totec]

4. Petraeus was one of the few smart guys we had left in Iraq

As an occupier, General Petraeus did everything right. Then a lot went wrong

Newsweek: Dec. 8 issue - No U.S. commander in Iraq has done a smarter job than Maj. Gen. David Petraeus. Practically every military observer agrees: in the seven months since his troops took charge in the northern city of Mosul, the 101st Airborne Division commander has put in a flawless performance. That’s what’s most troublesome.

Petraeus and his troops have produced a textbook example of waging peace, empowering the civilian populace, repairing the economy, even sending local kids to summer camp. Mosul had the first functioning city council in post-Saddam Iraq. Petraeus has ordered big signs posted in every barracks: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO WIN IRAQI HEARTS AND MINDS TODAY? But for the last month or so the public’s mood has turned hostile. Guerrilla attacks, once rare, have become routine. In the past six weeks, 31 of Petraeus’s soldiers have died in action, including one who was killed last Friday in a direct mortar hit on division headquarters. As the general remarked to NEWSWEEK last week, “It’s difficult to be kind when you’re getting shot at.”

Visions of Somalia have begun haunting the place. On Nov. 15, 17 of Petraeus’s men died in a midair collision between two Black Hawk helicopters, apparently caused by enemy ground fire. Eight days later, in a seedy commercial neighborhood, Iraqi assailants killed two GIs in their vehicle, then a mob robbed their corpses. “Two months ago, no one would have thought of staging attacks like this,” says Jassim Mohammed Ali, the owner of a butcher shop just around the corner. “But now the Americans are treating the people of Mosul very badly. They humiliate us.” At a tobacco shop down the street, proprietor Rifat Sayeed shares that anger against the soldiers. “They stop you anywhere they want, search you anywhere they want, men and women,” he says. “They’re not treating us like humans.”

The 101st has tried to do things right. The city had endured weeks of chaos before the Americans arrived. Four rival leaders were claiming to be mayor. Looters, revenge killers and roving armed militias owned the streets. To impose order with a minimum of bloodshed, Petraeus used a massive —airlift, bringing in some 1,600 troops within a few hours. They reached out to the locals by patrolling the streets on foot rather than in tanks and armored vehicles. The general, a veteran of nation-building programs in Haiti and Bosnia, personally worked to broker a power-sharing agreement among local leaders representing Kurds, Christians and Turkomans as well as Arabs. The 101st also opened 400 schools by using $35 million in “commander’s emergency-response funds” confiscated from the previous government, and disbursed a total of $155 million in U.S. aid for local farmers and big infrastructure projects.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3606133/

[Strelnikov_]

6. I Agree. If Someone Of Petraeus Ability Had Been Running The Whole Show

from the beginning, we would probably not be in the hole we now find ourselves. The impression I get is that he is a general along the lines of Wes Clark or James Gavin.

When you are responsible for just a section of the dike, there is only so much you can do to hold back the flood.

[Barrett808]

5. "Nation-building success in Mosul"?

Isn't Mosul an insurgent playground?

[olddad56]

7. Not Kansas, Dear God, Gitmo, Irag, Afghanistan, but not Kansas...

Just kidding.

[jmowreader]

8. This doesn't sound like the feather in Petraeus' cap that it is

Leavenworth? Isn't that where the Army's prison is?

Yup. It's also where the Command and General Staff College is. CGSC is the second-highest leadership course an Army officer can attend--the highest, of course, is the War College.

The Center for Army Lessons Learned is also at Leavenworth. This is one of the Army's biggest think tanks.

Also consider: some enlisted soldiers dream about being sent to this place. They're our Army's Corrections Specialists, and for them Leavenworth is the penultimate assignment.

I figured that after the big article we all read, they'd send General David Petraeus to Fort Hood, which is quite possibly the biggest armpit in the entire Department of Defense. But no......they sent him to one of the more prestigious places they could. Good on the General.

[mitchtv]

9. Time to make those Fed prisoners

Talk!