Franks also stayed out of the public eye in the Iraqi capital for the what the US military said was just "a meeting with commanders".

But his success in deposing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein came on the heels of another daunting mission that put him in charge of US troops the war in Afghanistan in 2001.

Franks drew widespread praise for organising the downfall of Afghanistan's Taliban militia, but this was tainted by the US failure to capture Osama bin Laden.

US tactics during the Iraq war came in for intense scrutiny with many retired generals and military experts saying the Defense Department had not sent enough forces to Iraq.

In his messages to the troops and his rare press conferences, Franks repeatedly said that "the outcome is not in doubt".

But Franks is widely seen as a conventional strategist, favoring huge troop deployments and massive aerial bombardments, which reportedly has at times put him at odds with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a strong believer in hi-tech, low-troop number warfare.

As head of the Florida-based Central Command, the 1.90-meter (6 foot 3 inch) general is responsible for US military operations in 25 countries in Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.

With the fighting almost over, Franks will now be the head of the military administration in Iraq, in command of Jay Garner, the retired general who will be in charge of the civilian side.

Franks, who likes to say that "no plan ever survived the first contact with the enemy", prepared the invasion by more than 300,000 US and British troops for more than a year.

Franks' desire for privacy is in stark contrast with his predecessor on the Iraqi battlefield, Norman Schwarzkopf, the media-savvy general who led the 1991 liberation of Kuwait.

When he did, reluctantly, address media during the Afghan campaign, his statements were curt and to the point. In one interview, when asked by CNN about the whereabouts of bin Laden, he said simply: "He's either inside Afghanistan or he's not."

Raised in the windswept Texas town of Midland, Franks dropped out of university at the age of 20 and joined the army in 1967.

He did a brief stint as an artillery lieutenant in Vietnam, where he was wounded three times. Upon his return, he went back to university, earning a business administration degree.

He returned to the army, where he rose rapidly through the ranks, and notably served in Germany, South Korea and the Pentagon. He also served in Schwarzkopf's Operation Desert Storm to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

He was named commander of Centcom in July 2000.

He has recently come under investigation for discussing classified information in front of his wife Cathy, but Rumsfeld closed the probe this month after a Pentagon inspector concluded Franks had "inadvertently" talked about sensitive matters in the presence of his spouse.

Franks has one daughter and two granddaughters who call him "Pooh" after the children's book bear Winnie the Pooh.

SPACE.WIRE