'Candor' from the top commander in Iraq
Posted: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 3:16 PM
Filed Under:
Baghdad, Iraq
By Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent
On a trip with Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, over the weekend, I asked him about reports that he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were on such bad terms that Maliki had asked for him to be replaced.
"It’s nonsense to think he’s ever asked," Petraeus said as we sat down and talked in an abandoned wool factory turned into a combat outpost west of Baghdad. "We actually have a very good relationship."
But that doesn’t mean they haven’t had their moments. Petraeus said he and Maliki had had serious disagreements over the issue of reining in Shiite militias, but that had been several months ago. "These are tough issues and sometimes they require a degree of candor."
As for the report that Maliki had complained to Bush about Petraeus during a video conference, Petraeus said he had sat in on every one of those video conferences since he’s been here.
Officials on both sides say the reports of stormy relations are greatly exaggerated.
There is, though, a clash of personalities as well as cultures.
‘No soft edges’
Petraeus, widely considered brilliant, is demanding and driven. "There are no soft edges," said one of his colleagues who said Petraeus tends to offend Maliki’s sense of pride by not observing the elaborate Arab rules of courtesy.
Maliki, repeatedly told he’s in charge of a sovereign country but bombarded with instructions from American officials, often bristles at the U.S. demands.
Petraeus is updated by his commanders every morning on progress around the country – everything from significant attacks to electricity levels to construction projects. He absorbs the detailed charts instantly, zeroing in with questions often meant to determine what’s going wrong as well as what’s going right.
As the man who wrote the book on counterinsurgency, overseeing with a Marine general the first revision in decades to the military’s manual on how to fight unconventional wars, Petraeus implemented a lot of those lessons long before they were policy – in fact before the military admitted there was an insurgency. When I covered him in Mosul in 2003 and 2004, he was already reaching out to tribes and ex-Iraqi Army generals who had served under Saddam.
When he can, he gets out to the farthest reaches of Iraq to talk to soldiers and Iraqis and see for himself how things are going.
I was covering the war from northern Iraq in 2003, unembedded, when Petraeus first arrived as commander of the 101st Airborne. In those days, I’d drop by for a chat and if he was going somewhere interesting, we’d hop on his helicopter with him. Those days are long gone. Media coverage now is a carefully orchestrated production.
That was part of the reason why we found ourselves following him around over the weekend as he talked to soldiers and visited markets in the rural area of Abu Ghraib. Attacks have dropped there since tribes teamed up with the U.S. Army to fight al-Qaida.
 |
| Jane Arraf/ NBC News |
| Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, speaks with a local man in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad about the security situation in his neighborhood. |
Still a sense of humor
It was one of those places where Iraqi men hanging around in the 120-degree Fahrenheit heat give soldiers and reporters wary looks, as if they’re not sure yet whether the insurgents or the Americans are going to win and they’re still hedging their bets.
Petraeus though, surrounded by his personal security detail, seemed completely relaxed, walking around with a soft cap rather than his helmet and chatting with shopkeepers and people in the street.
Petraeus was introduced to one local man who had four wives – permitted under Islam.
"Four wives!" Petraeus said. "And I thought I had a heavy rucksack to carry."
It may not translate that well, but he does have a pretty good sense of humor.
