When Petraeus stumbled.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - David Petraeus - Brief article

While General Petraeus seems to be doing well now, and certainly performed admirably when he was in charge of the occupation of Mosul in 2003 and early 2004, there is an intervening period in his career that cries for critical examination.

He was in charge of training the Iraqi army in 2004 and 2005, a role in which he does not seem to have performed impressively. Indeed, Congress and the media need to investigate why we so totally screwed up training the Iraqi army and police.

The New York Times has taken a first step with an article describing how "the American military lost track of some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq's security forces in 2004 and 2005." The article...