The partial Winograd committee report on the second Lebanon war will be delivered during the second half of April. The report will make personal recommendations relating to the responsibility of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Minister of Defense Amir Peretz and former IDF chief-of-staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz over their decisions to launch the campaign and how those decisions were made.
A classified report will be given to Olmert and Peretz, and an unclassified report will be made public. The Winograd committee will launch a special website soon.
The Winograd committee said, “In recent days, the media has made speculations, guesses, assessments, and so-called journalist information about the Winograd committee report and the date of its delivery. None of these reports came from the committee or were with its knowledge. There has been publication of baseless information about the opinions of the committee’s members regarding the subjects that the committee is investigating.”
The partial report will include chapters on the following subjects: the general principles of the committee’s work and concept of its role relating to determining its findings, conclusions, and recommendations; the committee’s concepts about the principles of natural justice; and an analysis of the period from the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 up to the campaign, and general conclusions about this period.
The report will also include an analysis of the decisions to launch the campaign from the kidnapping of the two IDF soldiers on July 12 through Olmert’s speech on July 17. This analysis will include detailed findings, conclusions and recommendations. The committee said, “We emphasis that our recommendations in the report do represent a position regarding the overall campaign.”
The final Winograd committee report will cover, among other subjects, an analysis of all aspects of the fighting, including the IDF’s principles and issues of the army’s readiness, force building, operations, commanders’ training, and operational concept.
The final report will also cover the political echelon’s decisions during the campaign, the relations between the political and military echelons on the use of military force as part of the strategy for achieving Israel’s political goals, the ethos of Israeli society, and the relationship between this ethos and the political challenges and the readiness of the home front.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on March 13, 2007
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