Jay Garner

US general, born in Arcadia, Florida, USA. He studied at Florida State University (1962) and Shippensburg University, PA. He joined the US Army in 1960, served in Vietnam, and during the 1991 Gulf War supervised the deployment of Patriot missile batteries. After the war he commanded Operation Provide Comfort for the resettlement of Kurdish refugees in N Iraq. In 1994 he became commander of the US Space and Strategic Defense Command, and was assistant chief-of-staff until his retirement in 1997. After the Iraq War (Mar–Apr 2003), he was briefly appointed director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq.

Jay Montgomery Garner (born April 15, 1938) is a retired United States Army general who was appointed in 2003 as Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq but was soon replaced by L.

Born in Arcadia, Florida, Garner served a hitch with the Marines before attending Florida State University, where he received a degree in history in 1962.

Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1962, Garner served two tours in Vietnam, and later led two air defense units in Germany. Garner helped to develop the Patriot missile system and commanded missile batteries during the Gulf War. He was later named commander of the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command (working primarily on President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative missile shield program), and concluded his Army career as Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, retiring in 1997 at the rank of Lieutenant General.

After leaving the Army, Garner became president of SYColeman, a defense contractor which designs missile communications and targeting systems used in the Patriot and Arrow missile systems.

In 2003 it was announced that Garner had been selected to lead the post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Garner began reconstruction efforts in March 2003 with plans aiming for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base.

It has been suggested that Garner was moved aside because he did not agree with the White House about who should decide how to reconstruct Iraq.