California Conservative

Lieutenant General David Petraeus formally relinquished command of the Combined Armed Center (CAC) at a ceremony today after fifteen months at Fort Leavenworth, KS. LTG Petraeus was unanimously approved by the Senate last week for promotion to 4-star general and is President Bush’s confirmed choice to command the Multi-National Force-Iraq. He leaves for Iraq next week.

SHORT VIDEO OF THE CEREMONY

The ceremony was open to the Fort Leavenworth community and the crowd braved single digit temperatures to say their final farewell to Petraeus. GEN Wallace, former CAC commander, called Petraeus “exactly the right man for the job” when referring to the command to Iraq, which is Petraeus’ 3^rd year long tour since 2003.

Fort Leavenworth houses the Command and General Staff College, Center for Army Lessons Learned and a new Counterinsurgency Center. Many refer to this post as “the brain of the Army.” It was no surprise, then, when Petraeus referred to the “Battle Symposium” down the hall as “quite a gathering of 5oo lb. brains”!

Petraeus’ impressive list of accomplishments includes literally writing the manual on counterinsurgency.  He said any success he obtained over the years must largely be attributed to Holly, his wife of 33 years.

LTG Petraeus presented awards to several civilians and high ranking military officials for their work, in helping develop the new strategy the President is applying in Iraq as well as the initiation of battle plans that have been mapped out for Iraq. Democrats and pundits alike continually attribute the war plans solely to President Bush when in actually, it is the military that provides the plan for the President; he collaborates with those strategies.

Finally, Petraeus’ good nature and sense of humor will surely benefit him and those he’ll work with in Iraq for the next year or so. He’s extremely qualified to handle the command of Multi-National Force-Iraq.

On a personal note, I’d have say that my favorite part of the ceremonies was hearing a room full of the military’s top notch leaders belt out “The Army Song”, also affectionately known as “The Army Goes Rolling Along”  (take a listen).  There’s nothing in the world like the sound of a bunch of deep voices singing the praises of the Army they love.

HOOAH!

Cross-posted @: Bottom Line Up Front

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Author: Amy Proctor, Iraq, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.