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A profile in courage
Power Line —
... In today's Washington Post Thomas Ricks profiles General Ray Odierno. Most of the profile constitutes a look back. At the end, however, Ricks gets Odierno to look ahead: ...
The Father Of The Surge
JustOneMinute —
Victory has a thousand fathers but Gen. Ray Odierno is credited by the WaPo with paternity for the surge in Iraq: Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as "fairly desperate, frankly."So that fall, he became the lone senior officer in the active-duty military to advocate a buildup of American troops in Iraq, a strategy rejected by the full chain of command above him, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., ...
The Leaders Who Brought Victory To Iraq
Flopping Aces —
The WaPo has a great article on the Father of The Surge, a tactic which ultimately led our country to victory in Iraq:
Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as “fairly desperate, frankly.”
So that fall, he became the lone senior officer in the active-duty military to advocate a buildup of American troops in Iraq, a strategy rejected by the full chain of command above ...
The Dissenter Who Changed the War
Michael Yon - Online Magazine —
Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno was an unlikely dissident, with little in his past to suggest that he would buck his superiors and push the U.S. military in radically new directions. Please click to read the entire article by Thomas Ricks on the Washington Post.com {loadposition user8}
American Caesar's Ghost
Antiwar.com Original —
... a group of senior retired officers were preparing to support Petraeus, Gen. Ray Odierno, and their allies by mobilizing public opinion against Obama's decision. I estimated that support to be part of the larger information campaign that was an integrated effort of the surge strategy from the outset. D-Day of the latest phase of that information campaign arrived on Feb. 8 when Pulitzer Prize-winning Pentagon correspondent Thomas E. Ricks launched a series of TV interviews and Washington Post articles to promote his new book, The Gamble: General David ...
Obama’s High Noon
Antiwar.com Original —
... ." That’s a perfect illustration of why I call Odierno the "Desert Ox." Odierno, by the way, is the point man on pressuring Obama into keeping U.S. troops in Iraq beyond the December 2011 deadline dictated by the status of forces agreement. Thanks to Petraeus hagiographer Tom Ricks , Odie is on record as wanting to see 30,000 to 35,000 troops in Iraq until at least 2015). McChrystal has become the point man in the Pentagon mob’s unrestricted information-warfare campaign against its commander in chief. According to a Sept. 21 Washington Post article by ...
The Velvet Junta
Antiwar.com Original —
... to candidate Obama’s campaign promise to establish a timeline to draw down the Iraq war. Even after Obama had assumed office, Odierno , commander in Iraq, stated publicly (through Petraeus’s hagiographer Tom Ricks) that he expected to keep 30,000 more troops in Iraq through 2014 or 2015, well after the December 2011 exit deadline called for in the Status of Forces Agreement. Mullen, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, has been a leading chanter of the mantra that says we must stay committed in Afghanistan . In a recent Joint Force Quarterly article, Mullen wrote, "The ...
