Petraeus expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

General Confided White House Ambitions to Iraqi Official
By PATRICK COCKBURN

The US commander in Iraq Gen David Petraeus expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad three years ago according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.

Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser and spokesman at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, says that Gen Petraeus discussed with him his long term ambition to be president when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-5.

“I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said ‘no, that would be too soon,” said Mr Khadim who now lives in London.

Gen 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 or beyond.

His able defence of the ‘surge’ in US troop numbers in Iraq as a success before Congress this week has made Gen Petraeus the best known active soldier in America, An articulate, intelligent and energetic man he has always shown skill in managing the media and impressing politicians.

But Gen Petraeus’ open interest in the presidency expressed during his previous job in Iraq may lead critics to suggest that his own political ambitions have influenced him in putting an optimistic gloss on the US military position in Iraq.

Mr Khadim, a long term opponent of Saddam Hussein, was a senior adviser in the Iraqi Interior Ministry in 2004-5 when Iyad Allawi was prime minister of Iraq.