War news round-up
Ha’aretz reports:
Some 160 infantry reserve soldiers are accusing their commanders of preventing them from participating in a demonstration against the war in Lebanon, which they called a “debacle.” The soldiers said they had been used as “sitting ducks.”
“I’ve been in the army and reserves for 26 years and what happened this time was not merely a fiasco, it was a complete debacle. We felt like tin soldiers in a game of Olmert and Peretz’s assistants and spin masters,” said Avi, a soldier in the brigade.
At noon yesterday 160 brigade soldiers signed a request to take part in the demonstration that would call on the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz. However, their release was put off until today, preventing them from reaching the protest.
They wanted to protest not only the army’s moves in Lebanon but the decisions of their commanders, whom they accuse of sending them needlessly to their death.
Full story.
[UPDATE] And, in related news: also from Ha’aretz:
Senior Israel Defense Forces officers expressed dissatisfaction yesterday with the announcement by Chief of Staff Dan Halutz that he had recently instructed the Field Security Directorate at the General Staff to keep track of their telephone conversations.
According to a report in Haaretz yesterday, Halutz instructed the Field Security Directorate to provide him with the telephone logs of the generals, their department heads and their secretaries, in order to crosscheck whether they have had contacts with journalists.
[…] According to the disgruntled officers , the chief of staff’s action “stinks of McCarthyism” and reflects “pressure on the part of the head of the army who feels under siege and is focusing on minor details.”
As much as I’d like to see Olmert, Peretz join Bush and Cheney at a meeting in The Hague, there is that frying pan/fire relationship that we must be careful about. As the Dick must be impeached before idiot-boy can be removed per Amendment 25 of the US Constitution, no move should be made against Olmert & Peretz unless we are assured that Bibi will not move in to ‘fill the void.’
Of course, there is some wiggle room for t’shuvah. Were Olmert and his underling to call a press conference to announce that they are immediately moving with Dr. Beilin’s call for a Madrid II, perhaps their tuchases might be saved.
Hmm. That would be quite a quandry for idiot-boy, who occasionally tells the media that we went into Iraq to protect ‘our friend, Israel.’ Would we still be friends, I wonder?
Well, we know that the Israeli mass-media is definitely leftist, but we also know that they are primarily populist. While they should naturally be protecting the three stooges Olmert, Peretz, and Halutz’s butts so that they can execute the convergence plan, the public outcry of the corrupt handling of this most recent war/high-intensity conflict is impossible to hush up and ignore.
So now that the cat is out of the bag, where do I sign up for this protest? While my unit had plenty of food, water, and ammo, the orders and handling of the unit seemed very bogus.
Josh, can you be more specific about the ‘bogus’ handling of things?
Beilin did an interesting conference call with Brit tzedek v’ shalom, yesterday. He said that ‘convergence’ is off — hopefully forever — and that Olmert et al could actually save themselves by immediately moving to a Madrid II, or some similar significant diplomatic project. He also said that the biggest impediment to the peace process, is that the US supports whichever Israeli government exists.
Specifically, he attacked the Bush administration as being the “impediment to peace. This is unprecedented…Bush has committed nothing to peace…”