Iraq's Repairman

But Petraeus's most important asset may be his intellect, and his knack for politics. He graduated in the top 5 percent of his class at West Point, which means he's just what the Army likes (smart, but please God, not brilliant). He also married the daughter of the West Point superintendent. Graduating in 1974, he was too late for Vietnam, and he spent the gulf war serving as aide to the Army chief of staff. In 1991, Petraeus nearly died in a training exercise, when an infantryman tripped and discharged his M-16, firing a bullet into Petraeus's chest. The wounded Petraeus was medevaced to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., where a young surgeon rushed off the golf course to operate on him. The surgeon, Dr. Bill Frist, is now the Senate majority leader. The two men are firm friends.

Oddly, Petraeus saw combat for the first time only in March last year, and that's where the whispered questions arise. Everyone agrees that Petraeus is ambitious, intense, competitive to the point of obsession and a driven leader of soldiers. No one doubts that he's smart: he got a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1987, with a provocative dissertation on lessons the Army drew from Vietnam. (One of his conclusions: "American involvement in low-intensity conflict is inevitable," and the military had better prepare for it.) But what, exactly, does that add up to on the battlefield?

Nobody seems neutral. His fans believe he's a new-style officer for a new type of warfare, where battles can be won with superior technology and firepower, but true victories can be secured only by good peacemaking and politics. They say he proved himself--and his methods--in the aftermath of the war last year. (It's widely accepted that no force worked harder to win Iraqi hearts and minds than the 101st Air Assault Division led by Petraeus.) These boosters include many in the White House. "People's body language shifts" when they talk about Petraeus there, says one official. Yet critics regard Petraeus as one of a type they call "perfumed princes," a derisive term for officers who have advanced from one staff job to another, essentially working as efficient courtiers to the four-stars. They say he won a short-term peace in Mosul at the expense of allowing insurgents to organize themselves mostly unmolested. They rankle at Petraeus's penchant for self-promotion and PR.

Such voices are mostly muted now, if only because so much is riding on his mission. Petraeus rarely fails to tell Iraqis that it was the president who appointed him: "When the president personally tells you something is important--and I was still a two-star at the time--you know he's serious about it and we're serious about it." Both the president and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz met with Petraeus before he was sent back to Iraq with his third star. "They told me, 'Whatever you need, you've got it'."

The last guy on the job didn't have that kind of backing. "I would just love it if we could get our troops out of the cities and just worry about the external security," says Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the man Petraeus is replacing. "I would just love that." And so would most Iraqis. The latest American-commissioned poll shows that a large majority want American troops to leave the country immediately. If only Iraqi security forces could become more visible and effective, it would be easier for the new government to convince a skeptical public that sovereignty is real. But as Eaton wryly notes (quoting an old Army maxim), "Hope is not a method."

Iraqi police have turned and run in most places where they've been challenged by insurgents. They're backed up by a numerous and more heavily armed group, the Iraqi National Guard (until last week, called the Civil Defense Corps), but its record has been little better. In Samarra two months ago, entire units switched sides to the insurgents. The nascent army, so far only 9,000 strong, has been sent into combat once, in Fallujah--and it mutinied. (It was General Eaton who dispatched the Iraqi battalion. "I really screwed up," he says. "A Marine major, faced with disgusted Iraqis, decided to stand the unit down, and God bless him for it.") Whether police or soldiers, the Iraqis have been under-equipped, poorly paid and demoralized. Whenever pressed, they have called for American troops to rescue them. Yet their reticence to engage the enemy hasn't protected them: suicide bombers and other insurgents have targeted Iraqi police and recruits, killing more than 800.