Word: odierno
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...Chiarelli gets ready to hand over Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno this month, there's some buzz at the Pentagon that he may return for a third tour, to replace Gen. George Casey as the top commanding general in Iraq. A few days before he began to pack his bags, Chiarelli shared his views on Iraq with TIME's Aparisim Ghosh. Exerpts from the interview...
...What advice would you give your successor, Gen. Odierno...
...over to U.S. forces. Some Pentagon decision makers believe that the feuding within the insurgency may help U.S. and Iraqi troops quell the terrorist attacks that have made parts of the country ungovernable. "We're starting to see a little bit more every day," says Army Lieut. General Ray Odierno, assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In places like Ramadi and Fallujah, Odierno says, "we've had some Iraqi insurgents' groups actually put up defenses to protect their people against al-Qaeda forces...
...What's happened since I was here [in September]?" Rumsfeld demands to know. Odierno rattles off an answer, but the flak intensifies. "How many people are you capturing or killing in a week?" Rumsfeld asks. Two hundred captured, up to 100 killed, Odierno responds. "Of those captured, how many do you throw back?" Ten percent. "And the rest we're locking up?" We've locked up probably over 4,000, sir. "Are you getting any decent intelligence?" Sometimes, but a commander always wants more. "How much of the information you get is someone getting even with their next-door neighbors...
...session with Odierno in Kirkuk was vintage Rumsfeld, and Odierno, a rising star inside the Army, passed the test easily. "When it happens to someone who can't hold his own against the boss," says an aide, "you just want someone else to come along and put him out of his misery." Rumsfeld laughs at this report when he hears it a few days later. "I was doing my thing," he says of that day in Kirkuk. "It's what I do all day, every day." Rumsfeld doesn't have a name for his habit of withering cross-examination...