Gwinnett Daily Post

LAWRENCEVILLE - U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, will deliver the keynote address to Georgia Gwinnett College graduates during the May commencement, college officials announced Tuesday.

Petraeus assumed the post of commander of Central Command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., in October after serving for nearly two years as the commanding general of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, where he planned and implemented the 33,000-troop surge that started in January 2007, a news release states. He was also the first commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq and the NATO Training Mission-Iraq.

Central Command is responsible for a large swath of land stretching across the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa - as well as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the contentious areas of Pakistan, the news release states.

Petraeus, a four-star general, and GGC President Daniel Kaufman, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general, are well acquainted and taught together at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.