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The New Man in Iraq

By Phillip Carter

By Colin Kahl Yesterday, General Ray Odierno took over the command of Multi-National Force-Iraq from General David Petraeus, who is leaving to become the head of Central Command. Odierno is one of the most controversial figures of the Iraq war, and he is taking over at a time of immense complexity. In 2003 and 2004, Odierno was a two-star general in command of the 4th Infantry Division (4th ID). The division "owned" much of the "Sunni Triangle," including such insurgent hotbeds as Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's home town) and Samarra (the future site of the Golden Mosque bombing that kick-started Iraq's civil war in 2006). Odierno's troops were notorious for their heavy-handed tactics: They conducted indiscriminate sweeps of Sunni towns, arrested thousands of Sunni men, and were often accused of excessive force. The division's approach was devastatingly critiqued by Dexter Filkins in the New York Times Magazine, and Tom Ricks' 'Fiasco'

Full post as published by Intel Dump on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).