The Fromson File

CALLING IT AS HE SEES IT Retired Lt. General William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, uttered the unmentionable on Iraq, appearing on Nightline with Ted Koppel Friday night (5-7-04). Unequivocally, he said the U.S. should get out of Iraq now before it is too late and turn over responsibility for it to the United Nations. This is only a hunch. But I would guess that Odom reflects the feeling of many of his former colleagues who recognize as he does that current manpower levels simply will not allow the United States to sustain its operations in Iraq for much longer. General Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff, said the same thing before the war began. The U.S. needed a minimum of 300,000 men immediately. Almost before he could get the words out of his mouth, he was retired by the Bush White House. Odom told Koppel the U.S. forces in Iraq are now retreads, that is for the most part back in Iraq for the second time and tired. He said the size of the U.S. garrison in Faluja is inadequate, the hostility toward the United States is worsening by the week, we need to rebuild our alliances in Europe and strengthen those with Japan, Korea, China to prepare for the long haul. The U.S. can rebuild and restore its prestige in the Middle East, but that Odom said will take a number of years. The longer the United States stays in Iraq, Odom said, the more likely it is that it actually will become a base for al Qaeda, which it was not at the onset of the war and is not yet powerful enough to establish itself in Iraq at the present time. A scholarly career officer, Odom is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy who has a Ph.D. from Columbia University, is a senior fellow and and director of National Security Studies at the Hudson Institute’s Washington D.C. office. He also is an adjunct professor at Yale University. He was director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988 and was the Army’s senior intelligence officer from 1981-1985. Odom has a dazzling knowledge of international affairs that I first was exposed to when he was a U.S. Army captain and military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and I was the CBS News correspondent there in the early 1970s.