The U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus (L), poses with U.S. soldiers after pinning them with medals during a ceremony at the Camp Bucca detention facility in southern Iraq November 27, 2007. Bucca is the U.S. military's largest detention centre in Iraq, housing more than 21,000 detainees. The number of detainees has swelled during stepped up military operations in Iraq this year. Picture taken November 27, 2007. (REUTERS/Dean Yate)LEADER OF THE YEAR: RIGHT MAN, RIGHT TIME -- GQ
When General David Petraeus arrived in Iraq, it was a disaster. Now he’s leaving, and it’s something else entirely. Lisa DePaulo travels to Baghdad on the eve of his departure to find out how he did it (“You’ve gotta live with the people to protect the people”) and who the hell he is (for starters, he likes Phil Collins)
Precisely ten days before he finally gets to leave Iraq—“ten days out,” as the military types put it, ten more days as the man in charge of a war he didn’t start but was somehow supposed to fix—General David Petraeus rises, like always, before the sun comes up over Baghdad. It’s a bloody hot morning in September, and it’s a Saturday, but that doesn’t mean much, because when you’re David Petraeus, the days are all the same: You work eighteen-plus hours, seven days a week, you pretend it’s not 130 degrees out, you put your fatigues on, and you go run the war.
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