aljazeera | Defence Secretary Robert Gates referred to him as "the pre-eminent soldier-scholar-statesman of his generation".
But his critics say, the legacy of his career is not that stellar and
deserves far more scrutiny than the US media and politicians are
willing to give it.
Earlier this year, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis released a whistleblower report on conditions in Afghanistan.
He said that Petraeus consistently gave glowing and inaccurate
accounts of US military progress and that Petraeus built a so-called
"cult of personality" around himself.
"A message had been learned by the leading politicians of our
country, by the vast majority of our uniformed service members, and the
population at large [that] David Petraeus is a real war hero - maybe
even on the same plane as Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower .... But the
most important lesson everyone learned [was to] never, ever question
General Petraeus or you'll be made to look a fool!"
In his report, Davis was scathing in his assessment of US military commanders:
"Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when
communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to
conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become
unrecognisable.
"This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our
allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political
solution to the war in Afghanistan."
