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David H. Petraeus Biography

Military Leader

David Howell Petraeus is the four-star general who led the American military "surge" in Iraq from February of 2007 to September of 2008. He grew up in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1974. After graduating from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (1983), he earned advanced degrees in public administration (1985) and international relations (1987) from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Petraeus led the 101st Airborne in the 2003 attack on Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. He was then charged with training the new Iraqi Army, a position he held from June of 2004 until September of 2005. Petraeus returned to a command position at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he worked on new strategies for counterinsurgency training. Known as an upbeat reporter amid naysaying prognosticators, Petraeus has publicly supported President George W. Bush's Iraq policy, drawing criticisms from the president's political opponents. Petraeus became the commander of the Multi-National Force - Iraq (MFN-I) in February of 2007 and was charged with leading a "surge" of troops in a new strategy against anti-U.S. forces. He was succeeded in that post by General Ray Odierno in September of 2008 and made commander of the U.S. Central Command, overseeing operations in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Extra credit: The political advocacy group MoveOn.org accused Petraeus of sugarcoating progress reports from Iraq in a September 2007 advertising campaign that called him "General Betray Us" (Petraeus's last name is pronounced "Pe-TRAY-us")... He was called "Peaches" when he was a kid.