Raymond Odierno, commander during US war on Iraq, dies at 67
Raymond Odierno, a US general who commanded American and coalition forces in Iraq at the height of the US invasion of the country, has died at age 67.
Odierno, who capped a 39-year career by serving as the US Army’s chief of staff, died on Friday, according to a statement issued by the Army on Saturday which said that the cause of his death was cancer.
He served three tours of duty in Iraq from 2003 to 2010 and rose to become chief commander of all allied forces in the war-torn country. In total, he spent over 55 months in Iraq over the three tours.
Backed by the UK, the US invaded Iraq in 2003, claiming that the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which it said posed a threat to the US. However, no such weapons were ever found in the Arab country.
More than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the invasion and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.
As commander of the 4th Infantry Division during his first tour in Iraq, Odierno helped lead the capture of Saddam, who was found hiding in a hole in the ground in 2003.
"It was very important for us to capture him to make sure that he would never be able to come back and terrorize the Iraqi people," Odierno said in an interview.
However, imprisoning Saddam did not end the war and, instead, an insurgency grew over the next two years.
In 2004, the insurgency gained greater momentum and resulted in the rise of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, a precursor of Daesh, which later overran vast swathes of land in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
The US withdrew its soldiers from Iraq between 2007 and 2011, but redeployed them in 2014 along with other partners to allegedly counter the threat of the Daesh terrorist group.
On January 3, 2020, the US assassinated Iran’s legendary anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Hashd al-Sha'abi, in a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.
Two days later, the Iraqi parliament unanimously approved a bill, demanding the expulsion of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the Arab country.
Since then, however, Washington has been dragging its feet on the troop pullout and targeting anti-terror groups from time to time.
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