William Odom, retired Lieutenant General, US Army, and former head of the NSA, continues to speak suprisingly strongly against the war in Iraq.

Phase Two in Iraq reveals that the same kind of strategic denial error [committed in Vietnam] prevails today. Since 2003, public discourse has focused on how the war is being fought. Reconstruction is inadequate. Not enough troops are available. We should not have dismantled the Iraqi military. Elections will save the day. The insurgency is in its “last throes.” And so on. Some of these criticisms are valid, but they fail to address the fundamental issue, the validity of U.S. strategic purpose.

As al Qaeda marched into a country where it had not dared to tread before, the White House refused to admit that its war allowed them in. As Iran’s influence with Iraqi Shiite clerics and militias quietly expands, the administration refuses to confess its own culpability. As Shiite politicians appear headed to dominate the U.S.-created “democracy” in Iraq, no one is asking “Who lost Iraq to Iran?”

Instead, after each election and referendum in Iraq, hope surges in the media. The New York Times’s reporting on the elections in February of last year was eerily reminiscent of its reporting from Saigon on the 1968 elections.

It feels weird to find myself agreeing so consistently with a former head of the NSA, but there it is: the fundamental issue is the validity of US strategic purpose. Damn straight.

Makes an interesting contrast with Michael Hayden, also a Lieutenant General and also a former head of the NSA, currently Deputy Director of National Intelligence, working for Director Negroponte, and thus in the position of issuing position papers and statements explaining and justifying administration strategies and tactics.

Another interesting contrast is made by a commentor, who identifies himself as having been a Navy officer on a destroyer in Vietnam. He’s unhappy with General Odom’s article:

We have a critical national security interest to see it through, not an easy task certainly, but the cut and run crowd is completely off base. Leave Iraq to fall to the terrorists and 9/11 will be a monthly occurrence all over the world until there’s nothing left. The general smoked too much of that Thai stick in VN and it has addled his brain. Time for the rocking chair, general. Thanks for serving your country once upon a time, but you do it a vast disservice now.

Those who posted later comments were kind enough to assume that this guy was himself a bit addled; but they certainly disdained his argument.