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Bush Has Gone AWOL
By General William Odom
04/28/07 "ICH"
-- -- The following is a transcript of the Democratic Radio
Address delivered by Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S.
Army (Ret.) on Saturday April 28, 2007:
“Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S.
Army, retired.
“I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican.
Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for
myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a
former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked
me.
“In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the
execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its
perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is
different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let
it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face
of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot
be rescued.
“Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into
trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood,
facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only
mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.
“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief
seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He
neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he
engages in tit-for-tat games.
“Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with
their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no
longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the
absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a
crisis.
“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong
with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And
they are right.
“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is
how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the
first place. The war could never have served American interests.
“But it has served Iran’s interest by revenging Saddam Hussein’s
invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran’s influence
within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda’s interests, providing
a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it
to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that
otherwise would have been possible.
“We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not
our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in
Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.
“A wise commander in this situation normally revises his
objectives and changes his strategy, not just marginally, but
radically. Nothing less today will limit the death and
destruction that the invasion of Iraq has unleashed.
“No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States
until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Only that step
will break the paralysis that now confronts us. Withdrawal is
the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe
that have stood aside and other major powers including India,
China, Japan, Russia.
“It will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and
other countries on Iraq’s borders, making them far more likely
to take seriously new U.S. approaches, not just to Iraq, but to
restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos
that our war has caused.
“The bill that Congress approved this week, with bipartisan
support, setting schedules for withdrawal, provides the
President an opportunity to begin this kind of strategic shift,
one that defines regional stability as the measure of victory,
not some impossible outcome.
“I hope the President seizes this moment for a basic change in
course and signs the bill the Congress has sent him. I will
respect him greatly for such a rare act of courage, and so too,
I suspect, will most Americans.
“This is retired General Odom. Thank you for listening.”
General Odom has served as Director of the National Security
Agency and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s
senior intelligence officer. In his address, General Odom will
discuss why he believes President Bush should sign the
conference report on the Iraq Accountability Act.
You
can download the radio address by clicking
here
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