The Most Important Fight For Petraeus... Contributed by Bill Faith
Russ Vaughn's "stuck in a crappy room in Patzcuaro, Mexico, with beds hard as a rock and [not very good] internet service" but he wrote to make sure I knew about this:
Steven Alvarez
In May 2004 I e-mailed then-U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division. It was early in the evening in Baghdad, which meant it was around 3 o'clock in the morning in the States. I introduced myself as the current public-affairs officer for the command he was about to assume and gave him an update about press activity surrounding his arrival in Baghdad.
Within minutes, I got a reply from him, written on his BlackBerry, thanking me and saying he looked forward to getting a full briefing when he arrived. Little did I know that his immediate reply was the harbinger of the pace he would set for the command during his tenure as commanding general of the Iraqi-training mission.
In his reply, he wrote, "Super, Steve," which I later learned was Petraeus-speak that meant he was very happy.
During my tour with Petraeus, from 2004-2005, he proved to be an unbelievably energetic and upbeat man. He had an internal power source that enabled him to operate at 100 percent throttle all the time, but his professional pace wasn't reckless, sloppy and visibly hyperactive as is seen when people do too much at once. He was conditioned to maintain a grueling professional pace. He was steady, calculated, calm and fiercely competitive, but the only person he ever seemed to be competing with was himself.
But while Petraeus is a skillful program administrator, he is still at his core, an infantry officer and a soldier. ...
Contributed by Bill Faith on February 11, 2007 at 08:13 PM in , , , , |