William Odom
William Odom
William Eldridge Odomwas a retired U.S. Army 3-star general, and former Director of the NSA under President Ronald Reagan, which culminated a 31-year career in military intelligence, mainly specializing in matters relating to the Soviet Union. After his retirement from the military, he became a think tank policy expert and a university professor and became known for his outspoken criticism of the Iraq War and warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. He died of an apparent heart attack at his vacation...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSoldier
Date of Birth23 June 1932
CountryUnited States of America
In World War II in Germany, we had a ration for one U.S. soldier, or one allied soldier for every twenty inhabitants. The ratio in Iraq is about one for a hundred and sixty.
In reality, I don't think that many of the policies we've attempted to apply to deal with it are going to have any serious effect.
I don't think that the war serves U.S. interests. I think Osama bin Laden's interests and the Iranian interests are very much served by it, and it's becoming a huge drain on our resources both material and political.
Firing off 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 nuclear warheads on a few minutes' consideration has always struck me as an absurd way to go to war.
Therefore, once U.S. forces leave, it is almost inevitable that an anti-Western, anti-U.S. regime will arise.
So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.
We've already seen proliferation. We started it with Britain, then France. Then we benignly let the Israelis do it. The Pakistanis and the Indians have recently done it. The Chinese have nuclear weapons.
It was, however, in the interest of Osama bin Laden for us to destroy a secular Arab leader; it was very much in the interest of the Iranians because they wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's invasion in 1980.
To say that you now trust the Russian military command and control system because some Russian general told you from the bottom of his heart that's the case, strikes me as most unrealistic.
Once we destroyed the Saddam regime, we knew there was going to be a civil war.
Second, recent polls over there show that the majority of Iraqis want us to leave precipitously.
I have never belonged to a party. I don't have party affiliation.
The presidents I served under don't have anything to do with my politics.
I will make a general statement that we have not had anything like the policy of holding people in high office responsible for their acts that I think we should.