[R-G] President Petraeus? General Confided White House Ambitions to Iraqi Official

[Anthony Fenton]

September 13, 2007
President Petraeus?
General Confided White House Ambitions to Iraqi Official
http://counterpunch.org/patrick09132007.html
By PATRICK COCKBURN

The US commander in Iraq Gen David Petraeus expressed long-term  
interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in  
Baghdad three years ago according to a senior Iraqi official who knew  
him at that time.

Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser and spokesman at the Iraqi  
Interior Ministry, says that Gen Petraeus discussed with him his long  
term ambition to be president when the general was head of training  
and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-5.

“I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said ‘no, that  
would be too soon,” said Mr Khadim who now lives in London.

Gen Petraeus has a reputation in the US army for being a man of great  
ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America’s apparent failure in  
Iraq he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the  
presidential election in 2012 or beyond.

His able defence of the ‘surge’ in US troop numbers in Iraq as a  
success before Congress this week has made Gen Petraeus the best  
known active soldier in America, An articulate, intelligent and  
energetic man he has always shown skill in managing the media and  
impressing politicians.

But Gen Petraeus’ open interest in the presidency expressed during  
his previous job in Iraq may lead critics to suggest that his own  
political ambitions have influenced him in putting an optimistic  
gloss on the US military position in Iraq.

Mr Khadim, a long term opponent of Saddam Hussein, was a senior  
adviser in the Iraqi Interior Ministry in 2004-5 when Iyad Allawi was  
prime minister of Iraq.

“My office was in the Adnan Palace in the Green Zone which was close  
to Gen Petraeus’ office,” recalls Mr Khadim which meant that they met  
frequently. In addition he had meetings with Gen Petraeus because the  
Interior Ministry was involved in vetting the loyalty of Iraqis  
recruited as officers into the new Iraqi army. Mr Khadim was critical  
of the general’s choice of Iraqis to work with him.

For a soldier whose military abilities and experience are so lauded  
by the White House Gen Petraeus has had a surprisingly controversial  
career during the war in Iraq. His critics hold him at least partly  
responsible for three important debacles: The capture of Mosul by the  
insurgents in 2004, the failure to train an effective Iraqi army and  
the theft of the entire Iraqi arms procurement budget in 2004-5.

Gen Petraeus came to Iraq during the invasion of 2003 as commander of  
the 20,000-strong 101st Airborne Division and had not previously seen  
combat. He first became prominent when the 101st was based in Mosul,  
a largely Sunni Arab city in northern Iraq, where he pursued a more  
conciliatory policy toward former Baathists and Iraqi army officers  
than was US policy in Baghdad.

His efforts were deemed successful and were highly publicized in US  
newspapers and on television at the time. When the 101st departed in  
February 2004 it had lost only 60 dead in combat and accidents. Gen  
Petraeus had build up the local police force by recruiting, to the  
anger of the Kurds in Mosul, officers who had previously worked for  
Saddam Hussein’s security apparatus.

Although Mosul remained quiet for some months after Gen Petraeus left  
the US suffered one of its worse setbacks of the war in November 2004  
when insurgents captured most of the city. The 7,000 police trained  
and recruited by Gen Petraeus changed sides or went home, 30 police  
stations were captured by the anti-US resistance, 11,000 assault  
rifles were lost and $41 million worth of military equipment  
disappeared. Iraqi army units also abandoned their bases.

The debacle in Mosul was little noticed because the American media  
was absorbed by the storming of Fallujah west of Baghdad by the US  
Marines which happened at the same time.

Gen Petraeus’ next job was to oversee the training and equipment of a  
new Iraqi army to replace the one dissolved by the occupation  
authorities a year earlier. As head of the Multinational Security  
Transition Command, commonly called ‘Minsticky’, Gen Petraeus claimed  
that his efforts were proving highly successful. In an op-ed in the  
Washington Post in September, 2004 he wrote: “Training is on track  
and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command  
and control structures and institutions are being re-established.”  
This optimism turned out be highly misleading; three years later the  
Iraqi army is notoriously ineffective and corrupt.

It was while Gen Petraeus was in charge of the Security Transition  
Command that it failed to notice that the entire Iraqi procurement  
budget of $1.2 billion had been stolen. “It is possibly one of the  
largest thefts in history,” said the Iraqi Finance Minister Ali  
Allawi. “Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got  
nothing but scraps of metal.”

In Gen Petraeus’ defense it could be said that he had tried to keep  
his distance from the Iraqi authorities and allow them to make their  
own decisions. It is surprising, however, that he and his officers  
did not notice that the Iraqi soldiers he was training often had  
inferior weapons to the insurgents because of the disappearance of  
the procurement budget.

Mr Khadim is sceptical that the ‘surge’ is working, arguing that what  
Gen Petraeus is trying to do now is very similar to what he sought to  
do in 2004.  Commenting on the US military alliance with the Sunni  
tribes in Anbar he says: “they will take your money, but when the  
money runs out they will change sides again.” Overall he says that  
Gen Petraeus and other US commanders do not take on board that most  
Iraqis feel they have been occupied and will never be loyal to the  
occupying power.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance  
and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for the National Book Critics'  
Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006.