Upward!

Color me unsurprised that Petraeus (AKA the Greatest General EVAR!, or GGE! is going to move up to be the commander of CENTCOM. After all, look at his qualifications:

1. His last commander, Fallon, considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit". That's like music to the ears of Cheney and Feckless Leader.
2. He was in charge of training and equipping Iraq's military, just humiliated by Sadr's ragtag bunch.
3. He was accusing of at least turning a blind eye to rampant corruption in training and equipping the Iraqi army by Col. Westhusing, who then proceeded to blow his brains out, or at least to have his brains blown out.
4. He 'wrote the book' on counterinsurgency, which turned out to be largely plagiarized.
5. Best of all, he gets credit for everything that goes right, or can be spun as going right, and no blame for the continuing clusterfuck.

With this strategically timed exit, he gets to observe the wind down from the surge at a distance. As he must know, Iraq could easily get much worse than it has ever been for the US (it will get worse for the Iraqis, partially thanks to the surge). Odierno has great qualifications to be either the fall guy or follow GGE! up the ladder of success. There are a lot of fall guys out there. The important thing is to be nimble!

It will be interesting to see if this will be the climax of his military career. Whether or not this means that there will be an attack on Iran in the upcoming months, Petraeus is obviously being groomed for civilian office. First SecDef maybe, and then, the highest office in the land, THE VICE PRESIDENCY! With a half-wit like McCain as president, with Petraeus as VP it would be like deja vu all over again.