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According to high-level Iraqi officials, General David Petraeus has had his eye on the presidency for some time:
The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad, according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.
Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05.
"I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'," Mr Khadim, who now lives in London, said.
General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012.
Putting aside the veracity of the claim - Khadim, after all, might be playing politics here, trying to hurry U.S. withdrawal from the country -- it puts the September report in some doubt then, doesn't it? Can the report be untangled from Petraeus' presidential ambitions? Is he currying favor from the Republican party with the report, instead of offering his honest assessment?
smintheus at unbossed.com finds evidence of Petraeus' political ambitions in other of the general's deeds, from his penning of a pre-2004 election op-ed praising progress in Iraq to accusations from other high-ranking military officers as to Petraeus' motivations. (A "sycophant" and "ass-kicking little chickenshit," said Admiral William Fallon.) And remember this little op-ed from The New York Sun? Coincidence? Or the first muffled drumbeats of a 2012 campaign?
If, indeed, Petraeus' recent actions - his recent appearance on Fox with Brit Hume, for example - are angled towards achieving personal ambition rather than faithfully executing his duties to the country as a U.S. general, it sort of dulls the hyperbole of MoveOn.org's silly ad, doesn't it?
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