WHEN Jay Garner last set foot in Iraq, he was hailed as a hero for commanding American and British forces on a humanitarian mission to save the Kurds of northern Iraq from revenge attacks by President Saddam Hussein’s regime.

But as he was carried shoulder-high by the Iraqis he had been sent to protect, one placard held by a Kurdish supporter should have alerted him to the possibility that he might one day be forced to return. “Thank you, but the job is half-done,” read the prescient message.

Twelve years later the retired US Army general finds himself like a latter-day Douglas MacArthur, who memorably promised, “I shall return,” after being driven out of the Philippines by Japanese forces. General Garner’s summons to duty was less spectacular, but the job he faces running Iraq after President Saddam Hussein is no less daunting than MacArthur’s in the Pacific.

The retired general was fixing the deck on his boat at his lakeside home in Windermere, Florida, recently when the Pentagon rang. He was asked if he would be willing to go back to Iraq and finish the job. “I am going to be away for a while,” he told his family. “I have to do a little work for Donald Rumsfeld.”

After weeks of secret preparations, involving close co-ordination between Washington and London and including bitter turf battles between the Pentagon and the State Department, General Garner is finally to come out of the shadows.

Most Iraqis have probably never heard of him. Certainly the white-haired career soldier, who celebrates his 65th birthday next week, looks more like an elderly American tourist than a man hailed by some as a saviour and condemned by others as a modern colonial viceroy. From today General Garner, who will be accompanied by a team of Gurkha bodyguards, is will be presented to the world as the new leader of Iraq.

Although his title is simply director of the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq, he will command several hundred American and British staff and run an entire civil administration, complete with regional governors and ministers responsible for everything from education to health.

Friends say that General Garner’s avuncular appearance and his backslapping style conceal a determined and effective commander.

“We are here to do the job of liberating them, of providing them with a form of government that represents the freely elected will of the people,” he said last week. “We’ll do it as fast as we can.” One friend described him as “a bulldozer — but a very bright bulldozer, and exactly the right man for this job”.

His officials have already hinted that, even before Saddam is overthrown, General Garner proposes to establish his headquarters at Baghdad’s captured international airport to “create facts on the ground”.

Nevertheless, there are serious questions about his background. During his last posting at the Pentagon, he was in charge of the controversial missile defence programme, which is closely associated with hawks in the Republican Party.

When he retired from the military, he worked with a defence contractor involved in developing “Star Wars” technology. He is also known to be a good friend of Mr Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary.

His links to Israel have also raised concerns about his qualifications for running postwar Iraq.

In 1998 he visited Israel as a guest of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a pro- Israeli lobby group. Two years later he co-signed a letter, with other former generals, blaming Palestinians for starting the violence against Israel and praising the Israeli Army for its “remarkable restraint”.

Colleagues, however, said that these criticisms would not deter him; neither would the danger of the job ahead. “He would not dodge bullets, he’d bite them,” retired General Thomas McIrnerney told Fortune magazine.

The complex resume of a Vietnam veteran

1938: Born April 15, Arcadia, Florida.

1962: Receives commission in US Army. Serves two terms in Vietnam.

1991: Commands “Operation Provide Comfort” to Kurds in northern Iraq.

1997: Retires with rank of lieutenant-general. Joins S.Y. Coleman, defence contractor in missile defence. 1998: Visits Israel as guest of American-Jewish lobby group.

2000: Signs letter praising Israeli Army’s “remarkable restraint” in dealing with Palestinian uprising.

2003: Appointed by Pentagon to head civil administration in postwar Iraq.

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• How to get Madonna’s Thighs