Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told an inquiry the army command did not perform well in last summer's war in Lebanon and acknowledged he gave short shrift to warnings troops weren't ready, but insisted Israel had no option but to fight, according to testimony released yesterday. Israel had no option but to fight, and should fight the next time Hezbollah does the same thing. But it's pretty obvious that the troops, whether they were ready or not, performed a lot better than the command. You had an air force general in charge of the whole shebang, and he tried to run things as an air war with the ground forces as an afterthought. Then the orders to the ground troops could be counted on to be countermanded or contradicted within 24 hours. The poor guys went in ready to take Hezbollah apart and the politicians spent the time dithering while the missiles rained down upon civilian targets.
Olmert's comments came during hearings by a special commission that issued an interim report last week severely censuring the prime minister's wartime performance - an appraisal that triggered a wave of resignation calls and may yet cost him his political career.
The only reason he hasn't resigned is that he doesn't feel shame like normal people. Even Peretz is stepping down, and he's about as clueless as they come.
The war began July 12 when Hezbollah staged a cross-border raid in which three Israeli soldiers were killed and two were captured and taken into Lebanon.
They haven't been released yet, and by now the public's come to the realization that they're either going to have to fight the war all over again or cough up every Hezbollah sadist and murderer in Israeli jails. Once they've done that, the war will have been for nothing.
Israel launched a full-scale military campaign hours later. Initially strong Israeli public support unraveled after the 34-day war failed to achieve Olmert's two declared aims - recovering the two soldiers and crushing Hezbollah, which pummeled northern Israel with almost 4,000 rockets in the fighting.
The failure to destroy Hezbollah has to be blamed on Olmert. He's the one who kept pulling the punches and changing his mind even while the U.S. held off the nay-sayers in the International Community™.
Olmert acknowledged senior security officials told him troops hadn't conducted military exercises along the Lebanese border. But he said he "didn't really pay much attention" because the defense establishment "always" complains it is short of funds for training. A final report is due this summer. In a statement, Olmert's office yesterday denied he was trying to shift the blame.
In other words, he's denying the obvious again.