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WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus
for the top NATO command later this year, a move that would give
the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level
post during the next administration but that has raised concerns
about the practice of rotating war commanders ...
If General Petraeus is shifted from the post as top Iraq commander,
two leading candidates to replace him are Lt. Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal, who is running the classified Special Operations
activities in Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, a
former second-ranking commander in Iraq and Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates's senior military assistant ...
Of the potential successors for General Petraeus, Generals
McChrystal and Chiarelli would bring contrasting styles and backgrounds
to the fight. General McChrystal has spent much of his career
in the Special Operations forces. He commands those forces in
Iraq, which have conducted raids against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia,
the mainly Iraqi group that American intelligence says has foreign
leadership, and against Shiite extremists, including cells believed
to be backed by Iran ...
In June 2006, Mr. Bush publicly congratulated General McChrystal
on the airstrike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian
terrorist who was the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The Pentagon
does not officially acknowledge the existence of some of the
classified units that General McChrystal leads, and Mr. Bush's
comments were a rare acknowledgment of the role those troops
played in a high-level mission ...
General McChrystal, a 53-year-old West Point graduate, also commanded
the 75th Ranger Regiment and served tours in Saudi Arabia during
the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and in Afghanistan as chief of staff
of the military operation there in 2001 and 2002 ...
He was criticized last year when a Pentagon investigation into
the accidental shooting death of Cpl. Pat Tillman by fellow Army
Rangers in Afghanistan held the general accountable for inaccurate
information provided by Corporal Tillman's unit in recommending
him for a Silver Star ...
General Chiarelli's strengths rest heavily on his reputation
as one of the most outspoken proponents of a counterinsurgency
strategy that gives equal or greater weight to social and economic
actions aimed at undermining the enemy as it does to force of
arms. General Chiarelli, 57, has served two tours in Iraq, first
as head of the First Cavalry Division, where he commanded 38,000
troops in securing and rebuilding Baghdad, and later as the second-ranking
American officer in Iraq before becoming the senior military
aide to Mr. Gates ...
In a 2007 essay in Military Review, he [Chiarelli] wrote: "Unless
and until there is a significant reorganization of the U.S. government
interagency capabilities, the military is going to be the nation's
instrument of choice in nation-building. We need to accept that
reality instead of resisting it, as we have for much of my career."
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