from"Stay the Crooked Course" by Ray MCgovern, a 27-year veteran of the analysis division of the CIA
by Ray MCgovern, a 27-year veteran of the analysis division of the CIA, and more recently co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
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A General Speaks The Truth
More outspoken still has been Lt. Gen. William Odom (U.S. Army, ret.), the most respected senior intelligence officer still willing to speak out on strategic and intelligence issues. Unfortunately, you would have to understand German to know what he thinks of “staying the course” in Iraq, because U.S. media are not going to run his remarks.
Her is my translation of what Gen. Odom said last September on German TV’s Panorama program :
When the president says he is staying the course, that makes me really afraid. For a leader has to know when to change course. Hitler did not change his course: rather he kept sending more and more troops to Stalingrad and they suffered more and more casualties.
When the president says he is staying the course it reminds me of the man who has just jumped from the Empire State Building. Halfway down he says, ‘I am still on course.’ Well, I would not want to be on course with a man who will lie splattered in the street. I would like to be someone who could change the course...
Our invasion of Iraq has made it a homeland for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Indeed, I believe that it was the very first time that many Iraqis became terrorists. Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.
Gen. Odom, now professor at Yale and senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, does not confine his criticism to the president, Rumsfeld and the malleable generals they have promoted. Odom has also been highly critical of leaders of the intelligence community, an area he knows intimately, having served as chief of Army Intelligence (1981-85) and director of the National Security Agency (1985-88). Commenting on the farcical pre-election-campaign “intelligence reform” last summer, he wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post , observing, “No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents.”
Odom is spot-on. In my 27 years of experience as an intelligence analyst, I learned the painful lesson that lack of professionalism is the inevitable handmaiden of sycophancy. Military and intelligence officers and diplomats who bubble to the top in this kind of environment do not tend to be the real professionals.
-from tompaine.com
...
A General Speaks The Truth
More outspoken still has been Lt. Gen. William Odom (U.S. Army, ret.), the most respected senior intelligence officer still willing to speak out on strategic and intelligence issues. Unfortunately, you would have to understand German to know what he thinks of “staying the course” in Iraq, because U.S. media are not going to run his remarks.
Her is my translation of what Gen. Odom said last September on German TV’s Panorama program :
When the president says he is staying the course, that makes me really afraid. For a leader has to know when to change course. Hitler did not change his course: rather he kept sending more and more troops to Stalingrad and they suffered more and more casualties.
When the president says he is staying the course it reminds me of the man who has just jumped from the Empire State Building. Halfway down he says, ‘I am still on course.’ Well, I would not want to be on course with a man who will lie splattered in the street. I would like to be someone who could change the course...
Our invasion of Iraq has made it a homeland for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Indeed, I believe that it was the very first time that many Iraqis became terrorists. Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.
Gen. Odom, now professor at Yale and senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, does not confine his criticism to the president, Rumsfeld and the malleable generals they have promoted. Odom has also been highly critical of leaders of the intelligence community, an area he knows intimately, having served as chief of Army Intelligence (1981-85) and director of the National Security Agency (1985-88). Commenting on the farcical pre-election-campaign “intelligence reform” last summer, he wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post , observing, “No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents.”
Odom is spot-on. In my 27 years of experience as an intelligence analyst, I learned the painful lesson that lack of professionalism is the inevitable handmaiden of sycophancy. Military and intelligence officers and diplomats who bubble to the top in this kind of environment do not tend to be the real professionals.
-from tompaine.com