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General David Petraeus Bio

General David Petraeus

Until January 2007 General Patraeus was a little known name in the media but after having been confirmed as the commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq to oversee all the U.S. forces in that country, he has been propelled into the public arena.

David Patraeus was born on November 7^th 1952 to Dutch American parents. His father, Sixtus, was a captain in the Navy and immigrated to the USA after the Second World War. Petraeus was raised in Cornwall on Hudson in the state of New York where he graduated from Cornwall Central High School in 1970.

Petraeus attended the U.S. Military School at the prestigious West Point academy in New York. He graduated in 1974 and just two months after graduating he married his wife Holly Knowlton. Their marriage still survives today and they have a son and a daughter. Petraeus began his military career in 1970 when he entered the U.S. Military Academy.

As soon as he graduated he was commissioned an infantry officer, a position which came after the end of the Vietnam War. Light infantry has always been the mainstay of his career since he was assigned to the 509^th Airbourne Infantry Battalion in Italy. After leaving the infantry Petraeus returned to university at Princeton where he earned a MPA and a Ph.D in international relations in 1985. He also completed a military fellowship at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 1994-95, although he was called away early to serve in Haiti.

A staff officer once observed several years ago that at 5-foot-9 and 155 pounds, Petraeus evokes George Bernard Shaw's description of the British general Bernard L Montgomery: "an intensely compacted hank of wire." General Petraeus climbed the ladder of military success but it wasn’t until his deployment in Iraq in 2003 after the downfall of Saddam Hussein, at which time he was a major general, that Petraeus encountered combat.

He commanded the 101^st Airbourne Division in Baghdad. Petraeus led his division through the battles of Karbala, Hilla, and Najaf where he came under fire during an ambush by Iraqi paramilitary forces. From 2005 until February 2007 Petraeus served as commanding general of Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. It was in 2007 during President George W Bush’s overhaul of Iraq strategy when announced that Petraeus would succeed General George Casey as commanding general of MNF-F to lead all U.S. troops in Iraq.

Twice, accidents almost ended his career, or even his life. In 1991, as a battalion commander at Fort Campbell, Ky., he was shot in the chest with an M-16 rifle when a soldier tripped during a training exercise. Rushed into surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, he underwent five hours of surgery by Bill Frist, who a decade later became Senate majority leader. While skydiving in 2000, Petraeus survived the abrupt collapse of his parachute 60 feet up. His shattered pelvis was reassembled with a plate and long screws.

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