William E. Odom, 75; Military Adviser to 2 Administrations

RIP retired general, war critic Odom

By Matt SchudelWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, June 1, 2008; C08
William E. Odom, 75, a retired Army lieutenant general who was a senior military and intelligence official in the Carter and Reagan administrations and who, in recent years, became a forceful critic of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, died May 30 at his vacation home in Lincoln, Vt. An autopsy will be performed, but his wife said he had an apparent heart attack.
Gen. Odom was a career Army officer who was also a serious scholar of international relations and a leading authority on the Soviet Union. He was the military assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser and director of the National Security Agency during President Ronald Reagan's second term.
He had a reputation as a military hard-liner who opposed any compromise with the Soviet Union, which made his vocal opposition to the current involvement in Iraq all the more cogent and surprising.

LinkHere

William Odom's Last OpEd: A Sensible Path on Iran

In a 27 May WaPo opinion piece, William Odom and Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote,

"imagine if China, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a country that has deliberately not engaged in a nuclear arms race with Russia or the United States, threatened to change the American regime if it did not begin a steady destruction of its nuclear arsenal. American reaction would be explosive opposition to such a demand."