Well put it that way. I dont consider myself a journalist. Life of being an interviewer. How do you define readership . Leadership . Thank you for coming. Good to be with you. You have served the country. Equity, aw in private higher calling. How do you compare the military to private equity. I would not agree wholeheartedly, but i feel privileged to be in the private i think itness and privilegestop the and have a famous exercise. So, living in new york, you run around central park and how hard was that . You wear sunglasses and a hat and you go unrecognized. Ask if veterans would please stand up to be recognized so that we could thank you for what you have done in a uniform . I have often said that those all take an oath that they would the in a combat zone. I have often described them as americas new greatest generation. Something tom brokaw shouted in my ears after he heard our soldiers in the first year in iraq in the first year in mosul. And he saw all that they were doing, myriad tasks from combat to helping rebuild cities that had been damaged during the war, all of these different tasks. And he said, you know, that world war ii crowd was the greatest generation, but surely the men and women we have seen today is americas new greatest generation. And i very much believe in that. David lets talk about how you came into the military. Your father was a dutch sea captain, and he met your mother, who was from brooklyn, and they met at a Church Service . General petraeus yes. David and he later stayed here during world war ii and became a commander of a u. S. Merchant 00000000000000yu7777777777777777 00000000000000yu7777777777777777 general petraeus during the war, he sailed with u. S. Merchant marine. They all signed on. I think it was in 1939 when the nazis overran holland. They couldnt go back to rotterdam. So they came to the United States. David you grew up in new york city . General petraeus about 50 miles north of here. About seven miles north of west point. I could actually run home from west point, to and from. David when you were growing up, what was your nickname growing up . General petraeus peaches. [laughter] general petraeus i was in a Little League game, and an announcer cannot pronounce it. He said it peaches, and it stuck. It followed me all through my time at west point. There was a girl in the laundry who had been a High School Friend of mine, doing that as a summer job, and she would send me notes, and the laundry you would send once a week to someone in class and opened up and it said dear peaches, so it jumped to west point. It jumped the air gap to west point. David how did you get appointed to west point . You seem like you are qualified and a good athlete. Somebody had to call a member of congress to get you in. General petraeus you just make an application, right to your congressman and the congressman rights you in. It is a competitive process. David suppose you hadnt gotten in, where would you have gone to college if you had not done it . General petraeus colgate. I had a full ride for soccer and academics. David ok. Have you ever thought about how your life would be different . Gen. Petraeus not only did i think about it, at the end of two years at west point, we had this spectacular summer where i was in alaska, mountain climbing, glaciers, rivers, so forth. First, in a training course, then as an actual unit. This is our summer training and then i went down to los angeles and a friend of mine who lived in the hills over there overlooking los angeles, had such an extraordinary experience, i decided, should i really go back to west point for the remaining years or should i enjoy more of this . In the end, i went back, obviously. David at west point, did you play on the soccer team . General petraeus i was on the soccer team and a skier. David you are also a scholar. You graduated near the top of your class, so when you graduated, did you decide you wanted to make the military your career . General petraeus i just wasnt sure. You know, what was interesting was, of all things, at west point i was in the premed program. I love that particular body of academic inquiry. I think it was also that it was the highest academic peak to scale. It was sort of known as the toughest. All of a sudden, i found myself in the senior year with an actual slot in the program and i realized at that time i was not absolutely certain i wanted to be a doctor, i just wanted to kind of climb that mountain so i picked infantry instead. I had a wonderful, wonderful experience. David you got married a few weeks after you graduated to the daughter of the commandant of west point. General petraeus superintendent is the overarching guy. Threestar general. It was a strange blind date i must say, when i found out. David but it wasnt nerveracking dating the superintendents daughter . Was in that kind of complicated . General petraeus we tried to do it clandestinely for a while. That was not very successful and i took a lot of flak over that. Yes. There is a particular generals march that they played parades, and one of my classmates i was on the brigade staff, and we were a little way away from the crowd and one of my classmates would sing my soninlaw, my soninlaw. So, i took a little flak. David so, you graduated and went into the infantry, working your way up, and there were two incidents that occurred where you almost lost your life. Not in combat. Gen. Petraeus yeah. There was a pretty aggressive live fire exercise, live grenades, supporting machinegun fire and all the rest of that. We were following, in fact general keane, the one star general and the vice chief of staff of the army fourstar, was with me when we were walking behind the soldiers. One of them knocked out a bunker, spun out, tripped, fell down, and we think as he did he probably squeezed because you tense up when you are about to take a blow, and a m16 round went through my chest. Luckily, it went over the a in petraeus rather than the a in army. David so, what happened . You had a bullet in there . General petraeus the medics start working on you. And initially, shock set in. They get an iv running, aircraft in. They picked me up and keane held my hand the whole way. Went to the hospital. In fact, it has knicked an artery, but not severed it. If it severed it, you would bleed out and you are finished very quickly. It is one of the times when someone turned to me and the doctor said this is really going to hurt and he took a scalpel and cut an x in my side right down to my ribs, shoved a plastic tube into the long to try to get suction so the fluid is draining, and that is really what saved my life. I was put back in a helicopter and flown back to vanderbilt medical center. And of all people, they called in the surgeon on call that day was dr. Bill frist and he came in, later the majority leader of the senate and some people were jokingly said petraeus was dying to meet bill frist, and so you did. They did thoracic surgery and i was out of the hospital and about five days. David the did not want you to leave the hospital, so you did 50 pushups, 100 pushups to show them that you could get out of the hospital earlier . General petraeus thats the only time i stopped at 50. [laughter] david ok. Ive never gotten to 50. Gen. Petraeus yeah. I wanted to get out of there. Things were fine. There was no reason to keep hanging around. I was doing laps around the hospital. I put all my tubes in a wheelchair and push them around. I think it was driving them crazy. David the other incident was you were skydiving, and your parachute didnt quite work and you broke your pelvis. What is that like . General petraeus thats horrific. That was actually worse in terms of pain because it fractured front and rear. Your body is literally in two parts. Anything that touches i rode in an ambulance, and every single crack in the street, not just a bump, was agony. David did you ever skydive after that . General petraeus i was told by the army, general keane, in fact, who was then a fourstar hey, no more skydiving. And i said, ok, you give me a Division Command and i will quit skydiving. David so they gave you a command. General petraeus and i was very privileged. David and you had never had anyone who were killed directly under you working in combat. General petraeus it was a chilling experience. I remember the radio call when our first soldier was killed, and it takes the wind out of you. Was made by president bush to invade iraq and you became a commander there and you went over there as the first part of the military that went into that. It was supposed to be relatively quick. When did you realize this wasnt going to be as easy as we had thought . General petraeus well, first of all, we did actually in a matter of weeks actually topple the regime, although there was stiffer fighting along the way in various points, and certainly was predicted by a variety of different folks prior to the invasion, which was that the iraqi units were going to surrender and come over to our side, and then they would help us establish order and so forth did not prove out. There was tough fighting along the way, and i had a nagging sense very early on, probably certainly in the first week once that dust storm blew through, and i had rick atkinson, a Washington Post reporter ride in the back of my humvee, and i remember turning to him at one point and asking him, tell me how this ends . Because i am not sure this is going to according to script. The idea that we are just going to topple saddam and his sons some henchmen, and then every one will stay in place and then there will be a political negotiation, and then we will hand it over to them, obviously proved. David do you think it would have been different if we had not decided to get rid of the entire saddam army . General petraeus these were huge mistakes. We used to have a question on Operation Centers wall when i was a Division Commander and it asked will this Operation Take more bad guys off the street than it creates by its conduct. The same is true of policies. Firing in the military without telling them what their purpose was proved this meant you are taking tens of thousands of people, and there is no reconciliation process agreed. So you have just created tens of thousands of people whose incentive is to oppose the new iraq rather than support that. David you led the effort to get control of mosul. Is that right . General petraeus we were in baghdad, which is where we were told we were going to end up, and then all of a sudden, we got this emergency order to get up to mosul, it is out of control, there is a small u. S. Unit up there and there had been 17 civilians killed in responding to a ride. Within about 36 hours, we did one of the biggest air assaults in history up to mosul. We had 250 helicopters or so in the 101st airborne. We had we immediately blanketed the city with our soldiers, literally pushed right into the city, calmed it down, stopped the looting, and the rest of that and gradually took control of that, and then we actually had an interim government out there within two weeks of arriving. David you may remember, early on in the work, it was thought that shock and awe was all that would be necessary. General petraeus that didnt completely succeed. I think it did impose a little awe, but there were some folks certainly fighting, shooting at us. We had casualties and lost heavy equipment. David when president bush decided to invade iraq, part of it was the theory that they had weapons of mass destruction. General petraeus right. David and that information came from the cia, among other places. When you became the head of the cia, did you ever dig into it . General petraeus i didnt dig into that as much as i dug into other issues, such as the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, something which i personally opposed for two reasons. First, i think it is wrong. I think it is beyond the International Law and geneva convention. Number two is i do not think it is as effective as proponents believe it is. As jim mattis colorfully said, give me a beer and a cigarette and i will get more information than by waterboarding him. Its not quite that simple, but more simply, it would be that you want to become the detainees best friend in detention than the interrogator does. And i say this having been the commander who oversaw the holding a more detainees in iraq than at any other time. 27,000 of them, so we have some experience with what works and treating them humanely while still eliciting information from them is the way to go about it, and afghanistan as well. David you had never before had people working directly that were killed in combat. What was it like to have command of people who were dying . General petraeus it is a chilling experience actually. I remember the radio call when our first soldier was killed and it takes the wind out of you. I remember when i heard a sister unit, the third infantry division, which really spearheaded the fight along with the Marine Division up in baghdad on the ground with tanks and bradley fighting vehicles, i remember the radio call. I was monitoring their net because we were fighting together, and hearing that they had had a couple of heavy vehicles blown up. David right. General petraeus it is chilling. David right. You were there for how long before you were sent back to the states . David that was about . General petraeus that was about a yearlong deployment, and i was back for a couple of months and asked to go back over quickly for an assessment for few weeks for the command, Central Command, and the secretary of defense on the Iraqi Security force effort. I reported back to secretary rumsfeld and he said great report, now go back and change out of your division and do what you recommended we do. David have you thought that if you hadnt written such a good report that maybe you wouldnt have been sent back . Or never thought that . General petraeus secretary rumsfeld had an interesting way of giving rewards. The next tour was 15 and a half month tour in the final week or so he was literally patting me on the back. And i thought, this is really nice, and then he said, you know, on the way home, i want you to come through afghanistan. I said, thats not exactly the direct line between two points here, but we did an assessment over there for him all the way home actually. David president obama calls you into the oval office and says i would like you to give up the Central Command and go back and be a military commander in afghanistan. What did you think about that . General petraeus if the president calls on you and asks you to do something, you do it. David you didnt say let me think about it, give me a few minutes . You dont do that. General petraeus no. David you finished your second tour of duty in iraq and went back to the United States. General petraeus and then we had six months in leavenworth, kansas, it is really quite an extraordinary command. We really revamped the whole process of preparing units, soldiers, and their leaders to go to iraq and afghanistan. And we did the counterinsurgency field manual, which is the intellectual foundation for that. David you wrote a very good report. You oversaw the counterinsurgency manual, it was so good that people said maybe this person should be in charge of the counterinsurgency efforts. So, you were asked by president bush to go back and lead the socalled surge. General petraeus right. David when he said, i would like to go lead the surge and you said i have already served two tours of duty in iraq and i dont want to need to go back a third time . What did you say . General petraeus you say it would be a privilege to do that, and its the same thing i said president obama sent me down a a few years later. With no pleasantries and no one else in the room except the photographer, he said i am asking you as your commander in chief to go to afghanistan, take command of the International Security assistance force. I think the only answer at a time like that can be yes. David what i didnt understand at the time is how many troops did we have in iraq at that time . General petraeus we had about 140,000 u. S. Soldiers that were there. Marines, coalition had some tens of thousands of additional and then we added about 25,000 to 30,000 Additional Forces during the surge. If i could, i would just point out and i am sure there are some surge veterans in here that would validate this the surge that mattered the most was not the surge of forces. It was the surge of ideas. It was the change in strategy, complete change. It was really a 180 degrees shift from consolidating on big bases in getting out of the faces of the iraqi people to going back to living in the neighborhoods with them because that is the only way you can secure them. Realizing that you cannot kill or capture your way out of industrialstrength insurgency. You have to reconcile with as many as you can from handing off to iragi forces who couldnt handle the escalating level of violence after the bombing in february of 2006 to actually taking back over. We created 77 additional locations just in the baghdad divisional area of responsibility alone during the course of the surge. David so, we had about 140,000 american troops. We sent over an additional 25,000 to 30,000, and that was enough given the techniques you used to bring it to a stable position, relatively speaking. General petraeus it dramatically reduced violence. Violence was reduced by some 80 to 85 during the course of a 18 month period. That was about the duration i served. David after 18 months you came back . General petraeus no, i came back about 19. 5 months after that and went to u. S. Central command. David so, the president asked to head the u. S. Central command, and the u. S. Central command is in charge of military operations in the middle east. General petraeus it is 20 countries, from egypt in the west to pakistan in the east, kazakhstan in the north and to yemen and the pirate infested waters off somalia in the south. We were very proud to have 90 of the worlds problems at the time. David after you have one of these commands, usually, not always, gets to rise up to be the chairman of the Army Joint Chiefs of staff. So you were kind of rising up, and then one day, president obama calls you into the oval office and says i would like you to give up the Central Command and go back to be a military commander in afghanistan. What did you think about that . General petraeus you know, if the president calls and asks you to do something, i think you do it. David you didnt, i think you did it. Say let me think about it, give me a few minutes . General petraeus no, the only answer to a question like that can be ye