Gen. David Petraeus is bidding farewell to the Army that has been his life and the troops that have been his family for 37 years.
America's best-known general is taking off his uniform before starting a new chapter as the 20th director of the CIA next week, where he will keep waging war on al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, but in a far different manner.
The soldier-scholar-statesman is to be sworn in as the nation's spy chief on Sept. 6, less than a week before the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
It's a sharp and unexpected career turn for the man many thought would ultimately become the top officer in the land — chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — after six command assignments, including four in war zones. He is credited with turning around the Iraq war and helping pivot the still uncertain campaign in Afghanistan.
Instead, President Barack Obama asked him to take over at CIA as part of a major shuffle of top national security officials that included Leon Panetta moving from CIA director to succeed the retiring Robert Gates as defense secretary.
Close friends and colleagues of Petraeus say that when he realized the White House would not make him chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he saw the CIA as the best alternative.
Gen. Petraeus Exclusive: 'This is a Serious Blow'
Watch Video "I wanted this job," he told senators at his confirmation hearing, saying he had discussed the CIA post with the Obama administration for months.
Although he could have stayed in uniform at the CIA, Petraeus, 58, chose to shed it to avoid what some might see as the militarization of intelligence.
"I have a certain profile in various parts of the world," he told the Pentagon Channel in an interview Aug. 18. "And were I to travel there in uniform, it might create some confusion, frankly, as, you know: 'Who is this guy? He's still in uniform. Is he the director of the CIA or is he actually something else?'"
Petraeus soared to public acclaim in 2007-08 with his surprising success in reversing an escalation of insurgent violence in Iraq.
At a September 2008 ceremony in Baghdad marking the end of Petraeus' 19 months in command, Gates credited him with dealing a "tremendous, if not mortal, blow" to an insurgency that two years earlier seemed beyond U.S. or Iraqi government control.
"I believe history will regard you as one of our nation's great battle captains," Gates told Petraeus.
Petraeus is credited with similarly solidifying gains against the Taliban in Afghanistan, though he himself says progress is "fragile and reversible."
Some critics of his push to add troops into the conflict there say Obama's decision to draw down those troops over the coming year shows the administration is abandoning Petraeus' counterinsurgency campaign.
Petraeus' aides disagree.
"That was the whole strategy from the beginning," to withdraw U.S. troops and replace them with Afghans, said Mark Jacobson, who just left the post as deputy NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan.
Petraeus also is seen as one of the Army's most accomplished accumulators of personal publicity. The Iraq war made him a household name. A July 2004 Newsweek magazine cover featuring Petraeus posing in front of a Black Hawk helicopter asked, "Can this man save Iraq?"
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