Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/retired-generals-analyze-presidents-iraq-plan Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Retired army Lieutenant General William Odom, who worked on the pacification program during the Vietnam War, and retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor, who had two combat tours in Vietnam and one in Korea, analyze the President's new policy and the chances for success in Iraq. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. RAY SUAREZ: We turn to retired army Lieutenant General William Odom, he worked on the pacification program during the Vietnam War and then wrote a book on counter insurgency. He is a former director of the National Security Agency and now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.And retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor. He had two combat tours in Vietnam and one in Korea. He is the coauthor of books about the 1991 Gulf War and the current Iraq War.General Trainor, did the president lay out the military essentials for a successful plan? LT. GEN. BERNARD TRAINOR, USMC (Ret): Ray, I was disappointed in it.There was – we were looking forward to some sort of a new strategic direction that's going to change the equation and it appears that we're just getting more of the same.I'll tell you what bothered me. First of all, if we're going to change the equation out there, the numbers are not that large. Twenty-thousand, 21,000 troops out there are not substantial. Now I understand the military has trouble making those figures but if you're going to talk about a surge you really have to be talking about more forces.But more importantly, from what the president said, we are in large measure mortgaging the outcome of this affair to the Iraqis. We are talking about the Iraqis being the leaders and doing the job but we have seen that the Iraqi armed forces have not been up to the job, either because of lack of training or because lack of commitment, and lack of commitment is very serious because it is a Shia army and a Shia dominated government and if they are going to control the violence in Baghdad, one of the elements of the violence is the Shia militia, the Sadr militia.Now, are they going into Sadr City? Is there U.S. forces going into Sadr City? All of this remains very, very vague and very similar to what we have done, espoused in the past, which is we will support the Iraqis but they must do it themselves and they have proven themselves incapable of doing it so I am rather pessimistic about the outcome of this particular decision that the president has made.