And This Is Obama"s General

Good thing he is retiring soon or he would have been fired.
From Fox News: The Army’s top officer told Fox News Tuesday it’s “frustrating” to watch the gains he helped achieve in Iraq disintegrate at the hands of the Islamic State, saying in an exit interview that the chaos now unfolding “might have been prevented” had the U.S. stayed more engaged.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, weeks away from retirement after 39 years in uniform, spent more time in Iraq than any other U.S. Army general -- more than four years, the last two as top commander. He is widely viewed as a key architect of the Iraq surge....
“It's frustrating to watch it,” Odierno said. “I go back to the work we did in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 and we got it to a place that was really good. Violence was low, the economy was growing, politics looked like it was heading in the right direction.”
Odierno said the fall of large parts of Iraq was not inevitable, reiterating concerns about the pace of the U.S. troop withdrawal there.
“If we had stayed a little more engaged, I think maybe it might have been prevented,” he said. “I've always believed the United States played the role of honest broker between all the groups and when we pulled ourselves out, we lost that role.”
In 2009, while still the top commander in Iraq, Odierno recommended keeping 30,000-35,000 U.S. troops after the end of 2011, when the U.S. was scheduled to pull out. The recommendation was not followed.
“I think it would have been good for us to stay,” Odierno said, when asked if it was a mistake to pull out....
While Odierno says he supports the recently announced nuclear deal with Iran, he warned that Iran will not change its behavior in the region.
“Iran has continued to do malign activities throughout the Middle East [and] they will continue,” warned Odierno, who blamed Iran for contributing to the unraveling of Iraq and the rise of ISIS.
Dempsey recently told Congress that Iran was responsible for roughly 500 American deaths, an estimate Odierno did not dispute.
Odierno said of Iran: “We can't be naïve.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/21/exclusive-army-chief-odierno-in-exit-interview-says-us-could-have-prevented/
General Odierno must have bit his tongue a couple of times a day when he worked as Obama's lead General and the poor guy probably has no feeling in his tongue.