Four-star General Ray Odierno retired from his position as U.S. Army chief of staff on Friday. Now, less than a week after mustering out, he’s cashing in. The former general has taken a job as a senior adviser to the investment firm JPMorgan Chase.
In a press release posted on JPMorgan’s website on Thursday, the firm announced that Odierno is joining the company in “a senior advisory capacity,” providing “strategic advice and global insights” to CEO Jamie Dimon as well as the company’s board of directors. The announcement also said Odierno “will represent JPMorgan Chase through engagement with clients, government officials and policy makers in the U.S. and internationally.”
Odierno later returned to Iraq and became one of the major architects of the U.S. military’s “surge” strategy. Despite the surge’s failure to achieve its goal — which was to achieve political reconciliation that would result in long-term stability — it has taken on a mythological significance to those who prefer to blame President Obama for the chaos in the region, rather than President George W. Bush.
Odierno rose to become U.S. Army chief of staff in 2011, and in that role was a consistent public critic of plans by the Obama administration to draw down troop levels from their post-9/11 peaks. He has also been a steadfast defender of the original decision to invade Iraq, stating earlier this year that Saddam “was moving toward terrorism and I believe if he continued to have problems, we don’t know what he might have done in terms of being part of the problem with terrorism.”
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/20/iraq-war-surge-general-ray-odierno-gets-new-job-jp-morgan-chase/
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