Gen. Raymond T. Odierno took questions from reporters for an hour Wednesday at the Pentagon, his hands frequently resting on a podium elevated to complement his imposing 6-foot-6 inch frame.
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At least 50 people have been killed in Iraq after a truck bomb targeted a crowded Baghdad market, officials say.
Addressing his last Pentagon news conference, Odierno also said the fight against Islamic State was at a stalemate and the U.S. military should consider putting support troops on the ground with Iraqi forces if it saw no progress in coming months.
The highly decorated general was head of U.S. operations in Iraq from late 2006 until U.S. troops withdrew in 2010, and was one of the chief architects of Washington’s “surge” in the country.
Odierno commanded the 4th Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq and served as commanding general of US forces in Iraq from September 2008 through September 2010. “I’m exhausted of someone telling me I don’t care about our soldiers, and we don’t respond”, Odierno said.
Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on parliament and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Friday to focus their anti-corruption campaign first on improving the judiciary.
“We don’t know where we would be right now if Saddam Hussein was still in power”, Odierno continued.
“What I worry about is miscalculation – that they perceive maybe that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation might not be as concerned, and they make a mistake and miscalculate”, he said. After Odierno made a statement in February indicating the 2013 budget cuts could be the greatest threat to our national security, he was asked to give context on what he said. When the U.S. left, Odierno said, violence was down and the economy was growing.
But that wouldn’t include the need for troops, he said, “because you won’t need ’em by the time I’m done”. “So we come together and…combine all of those resources to make sure we’re taking care of these young men and women long term”.
“All of those things are going to be very important to us as we move to the future”.
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“Listen, we all understand why we do this and the risks associated”, Odierno said of military service. In June, the United States opened a fifth training site in the country. “This is why this is not a exclusively military solution”.
