The Time Has Come, the General’s Here: Petraeus Preps for Testimony on Iraq

The Time Has Come, the General’s Here: Petraeus Preps for Testimony on Iraq
The New York Times
THOM SHANKER
September 8, 2007

Gen Petraeus met with LTC Gadson at the opening of the new Walter Reed rehab center (see paragraph in bold)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — Although a resident of Baghdad, General David H. Petraeus is assigned military housing just above the Potomac River at Fort Myer, Va., whose lush grounds give way to the somber geometry of simple white tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery

General Petraeus arrived quietly on Tuesday night with a small team that included his brain trust: three colonels, all Iraq veterans and Ph.D.’s, along with a Rhodes Scholar wearing captain’s rank.

He has spent long hours in those quarters studying three large binders of classified statistics, maps and analysis, and will head to the Pentagon on Sunday for a final dress rehearsal, including tough questioning, in a process known in the military as a “murder board.”

Already, the testimony about the status of Iraq that General Petraeus will deliver to Congress beginning Monday has become the most anticipated by an Army officer since April 29, 1967, when, under President Johnson, Gen. William C. Westmoreland traveled from Vietnam to address a joint meeting of Congress at a time of deep public doubts about a faraway war.

In recent weeks, President Bush has himself made high-profile speeches on Iraq and visited a desert base west of Baghdad.

But as it seeks to sell Americans and the Congress on the wisdom of continuing an unpopular conflict, the White House clearly wants to make General Petraeus its public face, believing that the lean, 54-year-old scholar-warrior will prove more successful in making the case than Mr. Bush has been.

“The one who should be trusted more than anyone on this is General Petraeus,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

One senior administration official involved in planning the testimony expressed hope that the words of General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker would be given particular weight as the recommendations not of politicians but of “professional soldier and professional diplomat.”

The appearance will be the culmination of a carefully choreographed campaign that has included the lobbying of lawmakers by White House officials and supporters, and the coordination of a $15 million, 20-state television advertising blitz by a new group called Freedom’s Watch, led by a former White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer.

Military aides have coordinated the general’s schedule with the White House, but officials confirmed that some suggestions for public appearances offered by Mr. Bush’s staff for General Petraeus had been rebuffed.

The fact that most of the administration’s projections about Iraq since the invasion of 2003 have not been borne out has contributed to a deep erosion in White House credibility.

Only after General Petraeus and the ambassador have made their case in two days of hearings does the White House plan to present its own strategy, which is to hew closely to what General Petraeus recommends, sustaining the American involvement in Iraq at a high level.

While early accounts of the general’s testimony have been reported, those hoping for a further public preview will not get any help. He is under wraps, with no advance interviews scheduled and no appearances on the weekend talk shows, which traditionally open the policy plans and politicking of the week ahead.

The first official word that anyone is scheduled to hear of General Petraeus’s assessment will come when he opens his testimony before a joint session of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The advance text is not even being previewed for committee members.

The general and the ambassador then appear Tuesday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, in testimony first before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the afternoon before the Senate Armed Services Committee for what one administration official has called “closing arguments.”

General Petraeus has kept in close touch this week with the Defense Department’s most senior civilian and military leaders, using the secure communications within his traditional brick residential quarters at Fort Myer.

But he also has taken short breaks for walks with his wife, the former Holly Knowlton, daughter of a retired superintendent at West Point; for dinner with their daughter, who lives in the area, and for lunch with his wife’s parents.

On his daily jogging route he maintains a brisk, steady pace over a seven-mile route, snaking from Fort Myer, across the Potomac and through Georgetown.

The general holds a doctorate in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and has spent most of the past four years in Iraq, first in command of the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion and for the early occupation of northern Iraq, based in Mosul.

On his second tour, he was assigned the training of a new Iraq Army, a posting that generated a Newsweek cover in 2004 asking, “Can This Man Save Iraq?” The headline certainly set up General Petraeus for potshots from some at the Pentagon, and his anointment as savior of an entire military campaign worried many of his general officer colleagues, and angered not a few others.

The general has also been criticized for writing an op-ed essay before the 2004 election that a number of commentators said far overstated progress in Iraq.

The decision to place the general and the ambassador as the advance guard for the president’s own announcement on Iraq strategy continues with what one aide called “an aggressive schedule” even after the two days of hearings.

A joint news conference by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker is scheduled for Wednesday. The venue will be a large public hall, not at the Pentagon or State Department; the location remains undisclosed for security reasons. Interviews with television anchors and newspaper and magazine reporters are planned.

“Presidents galore have hidden behind the military and tried to use the military in war or national security situations in which there is controversy or their policies are under assault,” said Richard H. Kohn, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in civilian-military relations.

“There is never a perfect congruence, but this seems to me to be like Johnson bringing Westmoreland back in ’67 to persuade the Congress and the country of progress in Vietnam.”

Mr. Kohn said that “Westmoreland knew what was going on, and knew the problems — but also believed there was progress.” If General Petraeus “is to keep faith with his profession and his soldiers,” Mr. Kohn added, “he simply has to tell the truth as he sees it and answer the questions that both the president and the Congress pose to him.”

Another comparison offered by some is to the address by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951, although there is a stark difference: MacArthur spoke to Congress after he was removed by President Truman over his handling of the Korean War.

After his testimony, General Petraeus will meet with the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, Samir al-Sumaidaie, and gather with a group of his West Point colleagues, Class of 1974.

General Petraeus’ schedule includes a visit that will be viewed as honoring the memory of the 3,071 Americans killed in action in Iraq and a tribute to the 12,476 wounded too severely to return to duty when he attends the opening of a rehabilitation center at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The general will spend time there with one of his former battalion commanders, Lt. Col. Greg Gadson, a West Point football star who lost both legs to a roadside bomb in Iraq.

On Friday, General Petraeus left Washington to visit Fort Benning, Ga., where he spoke at a graduation ceremony for new Army Rangers, and stood at the drop zone as his son, an R.O.T.C. cadet, made his final jump of airborne training.

He also sent an open letter to all American soldiers, sailors, marines and air crews serving in Iraq, to alert them to his planned testimony.

The general told the troops that he would appear before Congress “conscious of the strain on our forces, the sacrifices that you and your families are making, the gains we have made in Iraq, the challenges that remain, and the importance of building on what we and our Iraqi counterparts have fought so hard to achieve.”