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In this exclusive extract from The Gamble: General Petraeus and the untold story of the American surge in Iraq 2006-2008, author Thomas E. Ricks. a British 'tree hugger' reveals how she fell in love with the US military.

As close at Othman was to Petraeus, Emma Sky grew even closer to Odierno,becoming a kind of physical shadow to him.

The birdlike British woman made a dramatic contrast to the hulking American general, both physically and intellectually.

“People always thought we were funny, this huge man and this tiny British woman who went everywhere with him,” she recalled.

It was a sign of how much Odierno had changed that he sensed he needed someone like Sky to second-guess him in Iraq.

He had seen her in action in Iraq in 2003-4, when he was commanding the 4th Infantry Division, and she was advising the Americans on Kurdish issues in the north.

Odierno asked her to come back to Iraq to be his political adviser, but she resisted.

She had opposed the war, and she didn't have a lot of time for armies, especially the American one.

“From my perspective, the military were the bad guys,” said Sky. A specialist in Third World economics who speaks Arabic and Hebrew, she found the military approach jarring.

“I come from a world where it is, first, do no harm. When you work in development, you are very conscious of that.

“By contrast,” she said, “the military comes in like a great crashing beast.”

(One well-connected US army officer said he believes that Sky works for British intelligence. Upon being asked about this, she laughed.)

She surprised herself by taking the job: “Odierno, by bringing me in, has probably brought in the most opposite person he could find.”

She did it because she thought it was time to get the United States out of Iraq and wanted to see it happen in the least damaging way possible.

Aware of the reputation Odierno carried from his time in command of the 4th Infantry Division, she agreed to join his staff on one condition, that if she ever witnessed him condoning a human rights violation she would report him to The Hague - where the International Criminal Court prosecutes war crimes.

Odierno agreed, probably a bit amused. She only learned later that the UnitedStates isn't a signatory to the statute creating the court, which it maintains doesn't have jurisdiction over US soldiers or other US citizens.

To her surprise, she would become one of Odierno's biggest fans. “He is the only person I would come back to Iraq for,” she maintained.

“I'd follow him to the end of the world.

“Usually when you work closely with people, you see the warts and all, and your opinion goes down. My opinion of him has gone way up.”

She may have been soft on Odierno, but she retained her sharpness about the rest of the world.

In the spring of 2007 she was in a “battle update assessment” as an officer showed gun camera footage of an attack helicopter surprising insurgents emplacing a bomb and blowing them to bits. This was red meat for officers who had spent years being attacked by anonymous roadside bombers.

“They all loved it,” she recalled, so much so that the officers at the briefing began talking about taking the declassification steps necessary to release the imagery to the media. “We should get this out, get it on TV,” they commented.

Sky was shocked. “These are American versions of jihadi videos,” she interrupted angrily, knowing they would be taken aback by the comparison to decapitation photographs and videos posted on the internet.

“Is this the image you want to present to the world? This is America killing people. Yes, it has to happen. But let's not glorify it.”

Furious, she stood up and strode out of the conference room.

After she left, Odierno discussed her comments with his corps sergeant-major, the highest-ranking enlisted man for tens of thousands of troops.

Half an hour later, the sergeant-major walked into her office. “Ma'am, you're right,” he said, and then hugged her.

Yet the two still had their differences. At one point in 2007, Odierno called Sky into his office and told her she was being overly pessimistic.

“I need you on this!” he said, half arguing and half imploring.

“I never liked the idea of this war anyway,” Sky muttered.

Once, when Petraeus pointed out in a meeting to Odierno that Sky, Odierno's political adviser, made a certain argument, Odierno responded,

“She's not my adviser, she's my insurgent.”

To her astonishment, in the course of 2007 she would also become an admirer of the US military.

“I love them,” she said. She added provocatively that she thinks the military is better than the country it protects.

“That's the way I feel about it - America doesn't deserve its military.”

The willingness of American commanders to ask for her advice consistently surprised her. “The Brits came in with more experience in this sort of operation, but over the years I think the American Army has learnt a lot more. I mean, there's no way the British Army would ask someone like me to come along.”

She also came to appreciate the meritocracy of American culture: “What I found with the Americans is they always gave me a place at the table. Once there, it was up to me to prove myself.

“With the British military, it's always a fight to get a seat at the table - I'm female, I'm not military, I'm a tree-hugger.”

- The Gamble: General Petraeus and the untold story of the American surge in Iraq 2006-2008 by Thomas E. Ricks (BooksFirst £22.50 free p&p 0870-160-8080)

© Thomas E. Ricks 2009

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