Letters to the Editor
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It's not who you are, it's what you say
War with Iran is the new way to peace.
-- Svensker
It doesn't matter who you are or how smart or experieiinced you are. It only matters what you say. It must be in accord with the neocon vision. You should check out Odom's bona fides.
William Eldridge Odom (born June 23, 1932) is 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 has since became known for his outspoken criticism of the Iraq War and warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.
1954 Graduated from the United States Military Academy and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant.
1954-1960, Served in both the United States and West Germany.
1962, Earned a Masters Degree from Columbia University, and married Anne Weld Curtis.
1964-1966, Served as part of the military liaison mission to the Soviet Union at Potsdam, Germany.
1966-1969, Taught at West Point as an assistant professor of government.
1970, Completed a Ph.D. at Columbia.
1970-1971, At this point a Lieutenant Colonel, served in Vietnam, being on the Staff of Plans, Policy, and Programs, and working on the Vietnamization phase of the war.
1971-1972, Odom was a visiting scholar at the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia.
1972-1974, US military attache at the United States embassy in Moscow.
1974, Published The Soviet Volunteers: Modernization and Bureaucracy in a Public Mass Organization, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 360 pp.)
1974-1975, Associate of the Research Institute on International Change at Columbia
1974-1977, Associate professor, Department of Social Science at West Point.
1975-1976, Associate member of the Columbia University Seminar on Communism
1975-1977, Senior research associate, Research Institute on International Change at Columbia
1981, promoted to Major General
1977-1981, Military assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the assistant to the president for national security affairs.
1981-1985, Assistant chief of staff for intelligence, United States Army.
1984, promoted to Lieutenant General.
1985-1988, Director of the National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland
Post-Military
1989, Director of national security studies, Hudson Institute, Indianapolis, Indiana
1989, Adjunct professor, political science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Extensive publications; see bibliography below
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eldridge_Odom
Most radically, Odom sees the hallowed US concern over non-proliferation of nukes as damaging. "Over the past decade the pursuit of non-proliferation has contributed to instability and the loss of American influence. It dictated the invasion of Iraq, and now inspires calls for invading Iran. At the same time we ignore Israeli nukes, we embrace Pakistan and India, in spite of their nukes. This policy is not only perverse, but downright absurd. We will have more proliferation and we better get used to it.
(...)
Iraq “will have some sort of dictatorship- either a highly disciplined party or military organization. We just don’t have fragmented societies with such deep sectarian and ethnic divisions that are also nice stable liberal systems. Look at Canada with just two ethnic groups, that teeters occasionally. Where is Saddam when you need him?”
On escaping Iraq: “Once it became obvious I was getting out, I would go to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Turkey, and Iran and say, ‘I invite you to this meeting to handle stabilization issues as I get out.’ I would have a secret chamber with Iran and say, ‘You hate the Taliban, we hate the Taliban; you want to sell oil, we need to buy oil; your alliance with Russia is very unnatural; if you want to discuss the West Bank- I’ll talk about it but won’t give anything away.’"
"'Oh, and by the way, I’m taking the nuclear issue off the table. You want nukes, have them. You live in a bad neighborhood.’ There’s no single diplomatic move that would so revolutionize our position up there.”
(...)
“If they (military power) get ahead of political consolidation, we know what happens then- a military coup.”
“This was imminently foreseeable by my poly sci colleagues who did not stand up and speak out loudly enough at the absurdity of spreading democracy when we’re really talking about Constitutionalism. Creating Constitutions- we don’t know how to do that! (at least not for 220 years) We are essentially paralyzed and can’t do much in the world cause we are bogged down in Iraq.”
“My message of decline is grim, but let us not despair. The declinists wake us up, so that we avoid decline; but the endists urge us to celebrate as we drift towards disaster. Those who urged us to invade Iraq are endists; I’m a declinist…. but only to revive my strategic optimism.”
http://hammernews.com/odomspeech.htm