wow. this was really a surprise. Nobody saw it coming.
(roll eyes)

I have a copy of the Winograd Report.

I have no idea how anybody could quote it and pick out lines from it and be experts in what it says just minutes or even hours after it was released yesterday. The darn thing is 617 pages long! That will take days, minimum, to read! How is it possible that moments after it was released yesterday, all the news sources and politicians were already quoting all the salient points???

A newspaper I read yesterday mentioned that the Kadima Party has drafted its best and most eloquent members for a public relations blitz in an attempt to pre-empt any harsh findings in the soon to be released Winograd Report. The newspaper mentioned it had seen an internal document with talking points that will be stressed by the various Kadima people who will be on the airwaves defending Olmert.

One of those talking points mentioned in the list was that the Interim Winograd Report had been very harsh, but had not listed names of people responsible, and therefore there was never any intention to cause heads to roll, rather to pressure them to repair the flaws in the system.

I just heard on the radio part of an interview from last night with Roni Bar-On. Bar-On is the Finance Minister. He is one of the stars of Kadima - he is very eloquent, he is very close to Olmert, he holds a senior ministry.

In the interview, which I only heard a part of, Bar-On used the talking point I mentioned above. He stressed greatly the idea that the Report had been harsh but no names were mentioned and clearly the intention was that Olmert should remain to repair the flaws in the system. He said, Taking responsibility does not necessarily mean resigning, as people claim it does. Taking responsibility means fixing what you broke.

This claim is the height of cynicism. the Winograd Report did not mention names so it means the intention was that people should not resign?

I remind you the Winograd Commission had every intention (so stated) to name names and declare responsibility, but Kadima and Olmert's people, and then representatives of the IDF all took the Winograd Commission to the Supreme Court a number of times in order to force delays and to disallow them from naming names. And now they are claiming that names were not mentioned so the intention was not to force resignations?

When Ehud Olmert agreed to set up a commission to investigate the failures of the Lebanon War part II, he was under tremendous pressure to establish a State Commission of Inquiry. A full blown State Commission has teeth to implement decisions and recommendations.

Olmert was obviously against that because it threatened him and his job the most. He withstood the pressure and established an investigative commission called the Winograd Commission. He claimed he would allow it to have the power to implement recommendations, though by law it does not have that power, so I think he was only saying that in order to be able to deflect criticism.

Olmert justified his decision with the rationale that a full blown commission would take too long to investigate because of legal issues and bureaucracies. Olmert " was concerned" that delays in the investigation would mean delays in implementing improvements to the system and resolving the failures.

By establishing a lesser body of inquiry, they would be able to come to their conclusions within just a few months and the country could move on, with the government fixing the problems.

So now we have the Winograd Commission still not having given its final report, with no date for it yet to be announced. It is assumed to be expected sometime in December/January. That means the "few months" of efficiency to investigate quickly and implement recommendations will have taken, in the best case scenario, about 1.5 years.

There have already been numerous delays. Most of these have been due to politicians and army people being concerned they would be named at fault in the report for various levels of failure. they took the Commission to court a number of times to force them to change their methods, to not name anybody, to send warning letters, etc.

The Commission said in its interim report that it would not name anybody but would leave it up to the public to decide who to blame and what to do with them and the politicians should be able to figure out how to take responsibility. The main person to blame avoided any responsibility, so Winograd announced that in the final report it would name names and make recommendations, due to certain people obviously not having gotten the message.

Yet today the Winograd Commission announced that it would not name names. It would not make personal recommendations. It would be up to the Israeli public to decide whom to blame and what to do with them.

All that for this? All those trips to court to finally give in and not name names or make recommendations? So what were all the delays for if you were not going to name names anyway?

Everybody thought that when Olmert named his buddies as the people who would investigate him, that he was making a mockery of the system.
When the Winograd Commission came back with its harsh interim report, people were surprised and thought the Commission figured out how not to be beholden to Olmert and that they would actually work independently.

Now it turns out the whole thing was a bluff. Winograd had no intentions of making waves. They have been beholden to Olmert. They delayed as much as they could to get people to forget the importance of the issues. And Olmert comes out having manipulated the whole system.