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A goodbye | Looking back at Nieman Watchdog
COMMENTARY | August 20, 2012
Barry Sussman reflects on the accomplishments of the Nieman Watchdog website, and the challenges to watchdog journalism that remain ahead.

The Essential Odom | Farewell to a general who saw everything so clearly
COMMENTARY | September 09, 2008
Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, who was laid to rest Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, was the earliest, most prescient and most persistent senior military critic of the war in Iraq. Here's an annotated bibliography of his commentaries.

A frequent Watchdog contributor | Soldier-scholar-war critic William E. Odom dies
COMMENTARY | June 02, 2008
An outspoken critic of the Iraq war, the retired general was one of the first to argue strongly for a full withdrawal of American troops.

Odom's view | The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for success
COMMENTARY | April 02, 2008
Gen. William Odom suggests that Congress ask the Bush administration to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strongmen to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner. He once again calls rapid withdrawal from Iraq the only effective and moral choice.

Speaking out | A hero of the war
COMMENTARY | February 29, 2008
Greg Mitchell, whose new book chronicles the press’s failings before and after the invasion of Iraq, gives credit to one of the rare public figures brave enough to speak out against the war early and often: Gen. William E. Odom.

Odom's view | The war and the recession: a connection?
ASK THIS | February 14, 2008
The economy has supplanted the war at the top of the national agenda – but only because of two mistaken perceptions, writes Gen. William Odom. Contrary to popular belief, the surge isn’t working; it’s just postponing the inevitable. And that looming recession? A trillion-plus dollars squandered in war spending may have something to do with it.

Waiting for Petraeus | Questions for Congress, for Bush and for Petraeus
ASK THIS | September 06, 2007
General William Odom, a longtime advocate of pulling American troops out of Iraq, sees legislators as irresponsible and bamboozled by Bush. He calls the new twists in Bush’s war policies muddled, contradictory, ludicrous and tragic.

Odom's view | 'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them
COMMENTARY | July 05, 2007
Gen. William Odom writes that opponents of the war should focus public attention on the fact that Bush’s obstinate refusal to admit defeat is causing the troops enormous psychological as well as physical harm.

Odom's view | The path out of Iraq starts with Iran
COMMENTARY | June 26, 2007
Restoring cooperation between Washington and Tehran is the single most important step that could be taken to rescue the US from its predicament in Iraq, writes Gen. William Odom.

Odom on the radio | 'The Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL'
COMMENTARY | April 28, 2007
Retired Gen. William Odom, who ran the National Security Agency under President Reagan, was an unusual choice to deliver the weekly Democratic radio adddress. His message: No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq.

Word choice | Shouldn't we drop the name 'War on Terror?'
COMMENTARY | April 23, 2007
Bush's favorite phrase has created a culture of fear -- but beyond that has no useful function. And while we're at it, what's the right way to describe what the U.S. is doing in Iraq?

Pullout in 4 to 9 months? | Odom on Iraq, Iran and what it means to be a democracy
SHOWCASE | February 20, 2007
There are few true democracies in the world, William Odom says in a radio interview. ‘If the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we’re headed there now.’

Clear-eyed reporting needed | Six brutal truths about Iraq
COMMENTARY | December 11, 2006
General William Odom, one of the earliest advocates of an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, attacks some of the mythologies that are interfering with an honest debate about how to proceed in the Middle East and says the media have failed to recognize dramatic changes in the region.

Creating monstrosities | Does our safety diminish as our laws increase?
COMMENTARY | October 09, 2006
"It is high time," writes Gen. William E. Odom, "that leaders in Congress, opinion makers, candidates for public office nationwide and the press unmask the so-called 'Global War on Terrorism' for what it is: a slogan and a campaign that make al Qaeda and other such organizations far more effective than they would be if publicly ignored and quietly attacked by methods entirely within the limits of our constitutional rights."

Don't ask, don't read | Pentagon excels at blacking out the text
COMMENTARY | August 01, 2006
The Pentagon says it is committed to transparency and offers as evidence two reports on the subject of detainee policy. But huge portions are redacted, so that, for example, under a sub-head called ‘Interrogation techniques,’ all the text is blacked out.

Odom's view | A reverse domino theory may be playing out in the Middle East
COMMENTARY | July 17, 2006
Gen. William Odom says Vice President Cheney has it all wrong when he warns that the U.S. must stay in Iraq because failure there could prompt collapse elsewhere. In fact, now it looks like a new Arab-Israeli war could be breaking out precisely because our actions in Iraq have emboldened Iran and Syria.

For the U.S., Iraq is more devastating | Iraq through the prism of Vietnam
COMMENTARY | March 08, 2006
Those who say Iraq is nothing like Vietnam have another guess coming, says retired Gen. William Odom. He lists striking similarities and asserts that only after it pulls out of Iraq can the U.S. hope for international support to deal with anti-Western forces.

John Burke from Paris | Overseas reaction: Disgust over Abu Ghraib, disbelief over Guantanamo
COMMENTARY | February 20, 2006
Says an Arab paper: “The US has to be judged by its own standards. That is what is so damaging about Guantanamo. It makes the US out to be dishonest. It is ‘do as I say’ not ‘do as I do.’”

The general's postscript | Odom: Want stability in the Middle East? Get out of Iraq!
COMMENTARY | November 11, 2005
In his last piece for NiemanWatchdog.org, retired Gen. William Odom argued that all the terrible things the Bush administration says would happen if we pulled our troops out of Iraq are happening already. In a new postscript, Odom writes that the converse is true as well: Bush says he wants to bring democracy and stability to the greater Middle East -- but in fact the only way to achieve that goal is to get out of Iraq now.

About those bases | Does the U.S. plan to be in Iraq forever?
ASK THIS | August 16, 2005
The question of permanent U.S. military bases is an incredibly contentious one in Iraq. But for some reason, Dan Froomkin writes, the press isn’t pinning the Bush administration down on this one.

Covering the war | What’s wrong with cutting and running?
ASK THIS | August 03, 2005
Everything that opponents of a pullout say would happen if the U.S. left Iraq is happening already, says retired Gen. William E. Odom, the head of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. So why stay?

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Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), a frequent contributor to NiemanWatchdog, died May 30, 2008, apparently of a heart attack. Odom in recent years had been an aggressive critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and was one of the first to call for removing American troops from Iraq. For many years a highly popular professor at Yale, he had been director of the National Security Agency under President Reagan from 1985 to 1988.