WINOGRAD REPORT EVEN MORE DAMNING THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

The committee set up to study the government's performance during the second Lebanon war has officially presented its findings today, and they're very serious indeed:

After months of waiting and speculation, the Winograd Committee's interim report harshly criticizing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and former IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Dan Halutz over their actions during the first five days of the Second Lebanon War, was released to the public Monday afternoon.

In conclusions much harsher than those expected ahead of the report's publication, Judge Eliyahu Winograd said in a press conference that "[The committee] established that decisions and the way they were taken suffered from the most severe flaws. We put the responsibility for these flaws on the prime minister, the defense minister and the former chief of staff."

"If any one of them had acted in a different, better way, the decisions and the way they were made in the period in question, as well as the results of the campaign, would have been different and better," he said.

"The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorized military plan, based on careful study of the complex characteristics of the Lebanon arena," Winograd added

The prime minister bore supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of 'his' government and the operations of the IDF, according to the report.

Olmert made up his mind hastily, the report said, without asking for a detailed military plan and without consulting military experts. According to the findings, Olmert made a personal contribution to the fact that the war's goals were "overambitious and unfeasible."

Read the rest of it, as it is very deservedly damning, and just about all the government comes away scathed by this report.

Extras: an AP Wire report giving special snippets on each of the three main fish blamed in the report. And this one also cites Shimon Peres:

Vice Premier Shimon Peres: Told the commission that Israel's decision to invade was a mistake and the military was unprepared.

The old bag would do well to resign as well and not act stubborn.