Word: iraq
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When Ray Odierno took over the top military post in Iraq from General David Petraeus in September, there was a lot of hand-wringing among folk at defense think tanks in Washington worried that he was the wrong man for the job. They pointed to Odierno's reputation from his first tour in Iraq, in 2003, as a heavy-handed division commander who had neither a grasp of the subtleties of fighting an insurgency nor the political acumen to sell his ideas back home. Some correspondents who covered Iraq in the months after the fall of Saddam Hussein also came...
...played tight end at West Point. A native of Rockaway, N.J. (pop. 6,000), he speaks with the occasional New Jersey grumble, and bluntly. Odierno usually suffers in comparisons with the suave, diplomatic Petraeus. As a senior commander in Iraq told TIME in 2006, "If Dave is polish, Ray is spit." (See pictures of U.S. troops' 5 years in Iraq...
...doubters didn't take into account the evolution of Odierno's thinking during his second tour in Iraq, in 2006, when he helped develop the military's surge strategy--which contributed hugely to the reduction of violence in much of the country. Petraeus sold Washington on the surge, but it was Odierno who gave him something to sell. "It is clear that by late 2006, he was as important as Petraeus, if not more important, because he was the guy on the ground," says Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution...
...cameras, allowing each small outpost to watch over many city blocks. He also worked with the Iraqi forces to bring National Police and Iraqi army soldiers into Baghdad from all over the country. Displaying political dexterity, he persuaded a nervous Iraqi government to sign on to the Sons of Iraq program, which turned thousands of insurgents into neighborhood-watch groups. If Petraeus gets credit for ushering in the surge, it was Odierno who "made it work," says Lieut. General Nasier Abadi, deputy chief of staff of the Iraqi joint forces...
These days, Odierno and his staff are brainstorming over what the next phase of U.S. military presence in Iraq will look like. A tough battle is still being fought in Mosul and Diyala province against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iran continues to wage a hot and cold war for influence over the future of Iraq. Militant groups are trying to regain footholds around Baghdad. And Odierno's political skills have been put to the test in negotiations over a status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi government, which the Iraqi Cabinet endorsed on Nov. 16. Under the terms...