Lebanon War Probe.

[BATMAN]

Probe of Lebanon war sparks cries for PM's resignation
POSTED: 9:40 p.m. EDT, April 29, 2007

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced strident calls for his resignation in the wake of harsh findings of an official inquiry into the shortcomings of his leadership during last summer's costly but inconclusive war in Lebanon.
The commission's first report was to be released later Monday, but government officials confirmed an earlier TV report that the findings would be strongly critical of Olmert and his defense minister, Amir Peretz.

That was enough to trigger calls for Olmert's resignation from coalition partners as well as opponents.

Olmert and Peretz, who took office with limited security experience less than two months before the war, had already lost much of their public support because of the conflict, launched when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two soldiers and killed three others in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006.

Relying heavily on massive airstrikes recommended by the military chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, Olmert pledged to his people that Israel would crush Hezbollah and force return of the captured soldiers. Neither goal was accomplished, and Halutz has already resigned.

Instead, Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with nearly 4,000 rockets, halting only when the U.N. Security Council imposed a cease-fire, its short-range rocket capacity intact. Israel launched a late, costly ground offensive with the Security Council nearing completion of its cease-fire resolution.

In 34 days of fighting, between 1,035 and 1,191 Lebanese civilians and combatants were killed, as were 119 Israeli soldiers and 39 civilians.

The report covers the first six days of the war, when Israel battered Lebanon with massive airstrikes as Hezbollah pounded Israel with rockets.

Report: Leaders did not question military
Also, the report looks at developments during the six years that followed Israel's overnight pullout from southern Lebanon in 2000 -- tracing the Hezbollah buildup across from the Israeli border.

According to the TV reports confirmed by Israeli officials, the commission appointed by Olmert and chaired by a retired judge, Eliyahu Winograd, aims withering criticism at Olmert and Peretz over their decision-making, inexperience and failure to question plans presented by the military.
The report also says that Halutz, a former air force commander, did not provide political leaders with a sufficient range of military options, played down the rocket threat and silenced dissenting opinions within the army command, Israeli media said.

The Winograd panel does not have the authority to fire officials, but the scathing report could ignite public protests and demonstrations, coupled with political infighting, that could force the resignation of Olmert and Peretz. Noisy public demonstrations were expected to back demands that they step down.

Already Sunday, a demand their for resignations came from Labor Party lawmaker Ofir Pines-Paz, who is challenging Peretz for party leadership in a May primary election.

"They should follow the example of Halutz, who did not wait for the Winograd commission to show him the door," he said.

Opposition lawmakers from the dovish Meretz as well as the hard-line National Religious Party also called for the government to step down.

Olmert's office declined comment until the report's official publication, but aides said Olmert was confident he would weather the storm and that he had no intention of quitting.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Vice Premier Shimon Peres pledged that the report's findings would be taken seriously. "We shall correct everything that calls for correction," he said.

Olmert's popular support is nearing single figures in newspaper polls, mostly because of the Lebanon war, but also because of allegations of his involvement in alleged corruption including real estate deals and undue interference in government transactions to favor friends and backers.

Olmert has denied any wrongdoing.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/29/israel.olmert.ap/

 

[kidwaibhai]

this war has really messed isreal up. for the first time she was defeated. now the americans are facing certain defeat in Iraq the world order is really changing. i think if the arabs had fought gurrialla war with isreal then i think they could have won all of the wars that they had lost.

 

[Adux]

Israel was never defeated in the conventional sense. But yes, She failed in her objectives.

 

[BATMAN]

Israel was never defeated in the conventional sense. But yes, She failed in her objectives.

War is all about acheiving defined objectives.
Hizbullah never intended to fought conventinal war and neither Israel went in considering one.
Again, The probe is all about leading a war on the basis of mis-information to the public of state.

 

[BATMAN]

Hizbullah: Report proves Israel failed during war

Hizbullah and Lebanese officials were mostly mum Monday after an Israeli government report accused the country's wartime leaders of severe failures during last summer's war against the guerrilla group in Lebanon.

But one Hizbullah official had harsh words for embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others, saying the report confirmed that Israel's leaders were in a state of confusion during the 34-day war.

The report "confirmed the inability of the Israeli political and military leadership to take the appropriate decision to confront Hizbullah during the summer war," Sheik Hassan Ezzeddine, Hizbullah's most senior political officer in southern Lebanon, told The Associated Press.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1177591166686&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

 

[Adux]

Yes, it is and I agree with you. I thought I was pretty clear in what I wrote. Didnt I write that she Failed in her objectives, therefore the War. By the conventional sense I mean , her war machinery is still intact, not destroyed and there is still a mililtary threat.

 

[Bull]

this war has really messed isreal up. for the first time she was defeated. now the americans are facing certain defeat in Iraq the world order is really changing. i think if the arabs had fought gurrialla war with isreal then i think they could have won all of the wars that they had lost.

Israel lost......typical Arab rant. When the war is own they cry about for ceasefire and when its granted they cheer ' victory victory '.

Israel slaughtered and raped Lebonon and you say they lost.

 

[Bull]

War is all about acheiving defined objectives.
Hizbullah never intended to fought conventinal war and neither Israel went in considering one.
Again, The probe is all about leading a war on the basis of mis-information to the public of state.

Pakistan objecitve during the Kargil operation was to block the NH and divide Kashmir, it failed to do that. So do you admit that Pakistan lost the Kargil war?

 

[PakSniper]

Pakistan objecitve during the Kargil operation was to block the NH and divide Kashmir, it failed to do that. So do you admit that Pakistan lost the Kargil war?

No, cause the militants had IA by the balls, before we had to retreat cause of damn US.

 

[PakSniper]

Israel lost......typical Arab rant. When the war is own they cry about for ceasefire and when its granted they cheer ' victory victory '.

Israel slaughtered and raped Lebonon and you say they lost.

Those who care about their seat go ahead and cry.

Even Hassan Nasrallah told KSA and others we don't need you that speaks volume where others cry, whats' funny those who whined and cried were also celebrating Hezbullah stand off, where before they were aganist them, and he had a word for them as well "Don't celebrate cause you have not done anything to lay claim to". After, that the so called Modern Arab world was shut up by him.

 

[BATMAN]

Pakistan objecitve during the Kargil operation was to block the NH and divide Kashmir, it failed to do that. So do you admit that Pakistan lost the Kargil war?

This is not the subject and neither was the theme of discussion and also please, do not drag Pakistan every where.
To answer your question briefly; I have no knowledge of PA obejective in Kargil war, categorically what you described

block the NH and divide kashmir

A supporting link of your source would have helped to consider your point for the sake of discussion.
Again please, try to wrap your ideas, so that they fit to frame of subject.

 

[Shehz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/world/middleeast/01mideast.html?pagewanted=1&ref=middleeast

Olmert Rebuked by Israeli Panel on Lebanon War

By STEVEN ERLANGER and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: May 1, 2007

JERUSALEM, May 1 — Despite a resounding chorus of calls in Israel for the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to resign following a report on Monday that excoriated Mr. Olmert for “severe failures” in last summer’s war against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, his aides insisted today that he had no intention of leaving office.

Robbie Kastro/Associated Press
Eitan Cabel in Tel Aviv today announcing his resignation from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet.
But an early blow to Mr. Olmert came today with the resignation of Eitan Cabel, a Labor minister without portfolio in Mr. Olmert’s coalition government. After announcing his resignation, Mr. Cabel, a junior minister, said he could “no longer sit in a government that Ehud Olmert heads.”

Despite the rising criticisms, the prime minister was carrying on business as usual today with a “regular working schedule,” said Miri Eisin, the prime minister’s spokeswoman.

He was also meeting with some cabinet ministers, she said, to begin preparing the process of “how to learn, and implement, the report’s recommendations within the government.”

The report, by an Israeli government commission, set off a furious debate in Israel on whether Mr. Olmert should remain in office.

The commission accused him of having decided hastily to go to war, neglecting to ask for a detailed military plan, refusing to consult outside the army and setting “over-ambitious and unobtainable goals.”

One result, the commission said, was that Mr. Olmert had been responsible for “a severe failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence.”

Mr. Olmert appeared briefly on Monday night on Israeli television and radio to say that “it would not be right for me to resign and I will not do so.” Instead, he said, he would appoint a team to study the report fully and carry out its recommendations, and he praised the commission for its work. “Failures will be remedied,” he said.

The commission’s language was harsher than Israelis had been led to expect from a series of leaks, although the report, which limited itself to the first five days of the war, did not call on Mr. Olmert to resign. A second part of the report, on the rest of the war, is to be published this summer.

The commission’s findings nonetheless reduce Mr. Olmert’s chances of recovering already badly damaged political credibility.

The commission also sharply criticized the defense minister, Amir Peretz of the Labor Party, whose career is already in tatters, and the chief of staff at the time, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, who has already resigned.

“We single out these three because it is likely that had any of them acted better, the decisions in the relevant period and the ways they were made, as well as the outcome of the war, would have been significantly better,” the report said. But it also made clear that “the prime minister bears supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of his government and the operations of the army.”

After militants from Hezbollah crossed into Israel last July, killing three Israeli soldiers and seizing two others, Israel retaliated with a ground and aerial assault, vowing to destroy Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.

Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets at northern Israel, while Israel pounded southern Lebanon. The fighting lasted for 34 days, and Hezbollah was widely portrayed as surviving the conflict relatively intact.

The commission, led by a retired judge, Eliyahu Winograd, was appointed by the Olmert government, but it pulled few punches. “Only one sentence is missing” about Mr. Olmert, said Amnon Abramovitch, a respected commentator on Israel’s Channel 2 television — that “this being the case, he cannot continue in his post.”

Despite Mr. Olmert’s vow to continue in office, a cabinet minister who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the matter said, “This isn’t over yet.” With an antigovernment demonstration scheduled for Thursday, the minister said, “the next 48 hours will be crucial.”

He said he expected, since no one in the government wanted new elections, that Mr. Olmert would try to use the next three months “to see if he can correct matters,” with the help of a new finance minister and a new defense minister — perhaps Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, or Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet security service, either of whom seems able to defeat Mr. Peretz next month for the Labor Party leadership.

Israel’s finance minister, Abraham Hirchson, is temporarily on leave as the police investigate allegations of embezzlement from before he joined the government, only one of several continuing inquiries into the government and Mr. Olmert.

Miri Eisin, Mr. Olmert’s spokeswoman, noted on Monday that the prime minister and the army had already begun reforms in the defense structure and in military training and procedures.

Mr. Olmert’s coalition government of the center and left has a large majority in Parliament, and if he were replaced, it would most likely be an internal move, without new elections.

Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a conservative research institute here, said that “given historical precedent, no government has been able to survive the disillusionment of the Israeli people.

Israelis have a grudging respect for Mr. Olmert for deciding to go to war, which they supported, Mr. Halevi said. “But they knew the war was a failure,” he added. “The question is why we didn’t win the war. It’s a question of competence.”

The use of the word “severe” by the commission, he said, will be taken by the Israeli public as “an implicit call for Olmert to resign.”

Arye Carmon, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a liberal research organization, said that the commission had gone too far into politics, and that its conclusions may push the government “into preparing for the last war, not the next one.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “Israeli democracy has been caught up in a culture of investigating committees. It leaves the public passive and ignites another ill phenomenon — a terrible deterioration of public trust in public institutions.”

Mr. Carmon doubted there would be a large political outcry, in part because of the lack of clear alternatives to Mr. Olmert as prime minister and a reluctance to reward the political right wing.

Asher Arian, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and a political scientist with the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said the report also laid blame on the cabinet and the system, and therefore may have “pulled its punches” with “too broad an indictment.”

The report must be seen in the context of tough Israeli politics, Mr. Arian said. “No one wants elections now, and that gives Olmert his real safety net,” he said.

In three months, when the next part of the report comes out, it will seem even more like Monday morning quarterbacking, Mr. Arian said, “and Olmert may be in negotiations with the Palestinians.”

He, like others, noted that the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, had not been mentioned in this first report, even though she is also a deputy prime minister. She has complained that Mr. Olmert consulted little with others in the early days of the war; he has complained that she was a reluctant bystander and was not fully supportive.

While Ms. Livni did not criticize Mr. Olmert openly during the war, she and her staff have made it clear since then that she favored an early halt to the fighting, to move toward a quicker diplomatic resolution.

Ms. Livni is the most likely beneficiary if Mr. Olmert does resign or if their party, Kadima, forces him out, but Mr. Arian said that she must not be seen to be “raising a knife.” Some in Kadima would rather change prime ministers after the second part of the report comes out, to try to have a fresher start.

The report also lambasted the defense minister, Mr. Peretz, a former trade union leader, for what it called his inexperience and lack of curiosity, his lack of strategic vision and his failure to press General Halutz and the army for options, details and the nature of its own internal debate.

Still, the report concluded by describing the failures of previous governments and commanders to keep the army in a state of readiness, in part because of an assumption that “Israel is beyond the era of wars” and could rely on deterrence alone. “The conclusion was that the main challenge facing the land forces would be low-intensity asymmetrical conflicts,” the report said, like the counterinsurgency tactics used in the Palestinian territories.

The military “was not ready for this war,” it said.

It also recommended a better use of the National Security Council, a better system for crisis management in the prime minister’s office and the “full incorporation” of the Foreign Ministry “in security decisions with political and diplomatic aspects.”