Keep Your Eye on Petraeus - Part Two

On January 26, I posted “Keeping Our Eye on Petraeus.” General David Petraeus had just been appointed as U.S. Commander of our military forces in Iraq and was on his way there.

Now that he’s been there for almost two months, what’s being said about him?

Juan Cole, posted this comment on March 19 at Informed Comment: “General Petraeus, in the meantime, is signalling that his own patience is not infinite, and that if he can't see a genuine improvement in the security situation by June, he would have an obligation to his own troops to say so. It is so refreshing to hear that kind of language from the Pentagon after all those years of Donald Rumsfeld's despicable disregard for the welfare of the troops he was supposed to be leading….”

In my January 26 post, I referenced the Harper’s Magazine article about the new counterinsurgency field manual, FM3-24 DRAFT, mainly authored by Gen. Petraeus.

On March 17, AlterNet published According to U.S. Military Theory, We Can't Win in Iraq, going into some detail about the counterinsurgency manual. It’s worth reading and concludes with this statement: "Petraeus the general still insists that the war can be won; Petraeus the theorist would seem to disagree."

I’ll continue my “Petraeus Watch” and keep you posted.