Bullies feast off indecision, and fear to use force!

Iran's missile claim is questioned. (See 1 below)

Israel's weakness, perceived and real, could cause its enemies to feel emboldened and attack. This is of true concern to Shin Bet's Diskin.

This should be a wake up call to Obama and others who believe appeasement is the best deterrent. Bullies feast off confusion, uncertainty and a dandelion approach towards use of force.(See 2 and 2a below.)

Rice repeats all "options are on the table." Were options bread or cheese they would be stale and rancid by now. The constancy of repetition connotes weakness not strength. (See 3 and 3a [a repeat] below.)

Olmert the unloved but not soon to depart took a Nixonian stance when he announced his resignation and an embarrassed Israeli. (See 4 and 4a below.)

A tongue in cheek proposal regarding windfall taxes. (See 5 below.)

Now would this not be something? Black voters would probably desert The Party and form their own. (See 6 below.)

Sarajevo '08?

Marshall Goldman discussed Russian sensitivity to the location of the gas pipeline bringing gas to Europe. Now we have evidence of the bad blood betweem Georgia anmd Russia over this matter and the complexities it can cause now that Israel is helping Georgia with the blessing of our own country.

Will this cause Russia to respond by advancing the sale of equipment to Iran? (See 7 below.)

Sad day yesterday. Mike Metz, a dear friend of long standing, a man of impeccable integrity, good humor, keen insight and decency passed away.

Dick

1)Iran’s vaunted 300-km range sea missile is non-existent

Military sources discount the claim by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Maj. Gen. Ali Jafari that Iran had test-fired a new naval weapon that could destroy any vessel within a 300-km range.

Jafari boasted to reporters Mon. Aug. 4: “Today the IRGC has the capability to target the enemies’ targets with a wide range of missiles and in a few minutes in case of any attack.”

Responding to a question, Jafari said: “The Strait of Hormuz is an important and strategic strait. … Considering its proximity to our shores, it is completely within the range of our weapons and shutting the strait for an unlimited time is easily possible. There are no limits for us in this regard.”

Wednesday, an American spokesman commented that closure of the Strait, through which 40 percent of the world’s oil passes, would hurt Iran most of all because its own oil exports and refined fuel products imports would be blocked.

Western intelligence sources were skeptical about the IRGC commander’s boast of a sophisticated sea missile as “propaganda fantasy” and unfounded. If Iran has such a weapon, they said, why don’t they exhibit it?

Jafari said the missiles were test fired as scheduled but admitted “unprofessional photography made the tests seem bogus.”

Sources confirmed after checking the story out that Moscow is withholding a consignment of advanced S-300 anti-air missile batteries promised Iran and will not send them out in the near future.

Moscow and Tel Aviv recently claimed deliveries were due in early September, which would have seriously impeded a possible Israel Air Force strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

2)Civil Fights: Destroying Israel's deterrence
By EVELYN GORDON [Recent columns]


Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin is so worried about Israel's deterrence that he made his concerns public last month. Speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Diskin said Israeli deterrence had "suffered substantially" due to three events over the past three years: the disengagement from Gaza, Hamas¹s subsequent takeover of the Strip, and the Second Lebanon War.

Diskin did not elaborate, but his reasons for citing these events were obvious: All undermined both the physical and the psychological aspect of deterrence.

Physical deterrence relates to the actual balance of forces: The greater the imbalance, the more reluctant the weaker side will be to start hostilities. And while the balance clearly still favors Israel, the gap has shrunk markedly thanks to the events Diskin cited.

UNTIL ISRAEL quit Gaza in 2005, it combated Palestinian arms smuggling with substantial (though never complete) success. But once it withdrew, the floodgates opened. Thus pre-disengagement, most Hamas rockets had ranges of only a few kilometers, and its stockpile never exceeded a few hundred. Today, Israeli intelligence believes the organization has thousands of rockets capable of reaching major cities in southern Israel, on top of thousands of shorter-range rockets. It has also acquired sophisticated anti-tank rockets ­ the weapon responsible for most IDF casualties during the Second Lebanon War ­ and built a network of Hizbullah-style bunkers. Thus should Israel respond to any future Hamas attack, it will risk withering rocket fire on its cities, while any ground operation aimed at stopping the rockets will entail many more casualties than did previous Gaza operations. That knowledge will make any Israeli government more reluctant to respond, which in turn will make Hamas feel freer to strike when it deems the time convenient.

The same goes for Lebanon. The government touted Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Lebanon war, as an achievement, saying its provisions for a beefed-up UN force and the Lebanese Army¹s deployment in south Lebanon would prevent Hizbullah¹s rearmament. Instead, 1701 allowed Hizbullah to rearm at breathtaking speed. The organization now has some 40,000 rockets ­ triple its arsenal in 2006. Moreover, these include long-range rockets capable of striking anywhere in Israel, whereas in 2006, only the north was in range.

Furthermore, thanks to both its arms-buying spree and the image boost it received from the IDF¹s failure to defeat it (a feat no regular Arab army ever matched), Hizbullah now controls the Lebanese government so totally that new government guidelines approved last week formally authorize it to attack Israel whenever it wishes. This governmental approval may well grant it access to Lebanese Army materiel, which includes highly sophisticated American equipment ­ especially since Lebanon¹s new president and former army chief, Michel Suleiman, announced last Friday that he supports "all means" to regain what he terms occupied Lebanese land.

Thus again, should Israel respond to any future Hizbullah aggression, Hizbullah will be able to exact a far greater price than it did last time. That will make Israel think twice about responding, which in turn will make Hizbullah feel freer to attack.

BUT FOR all the importance of the physical element, deterrence is primarily about psychology: Perceptions of a foe's strength often matter more than reality in deciding whether to attack. And on the psychological plane, the events Diskin cited were devastating.

According to repeated polls, 70 to 85 percent of Palestinians believe that Israel quit Gaza due to anti-Israel terror. And with reason: In 2000, no Israeli government would have considered withdrawing from Gaza unilaterally. Yet a relatively low casualty level ­ Gaza-based terror accounted for less than 15 percent (some 150 people) of Israel¹s intifada-related fatalities over the ensuing five years ­ sufficed to reverse this stance. Thus, clearly, terror worked.

Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who is widely regarded as Hamas¹s leader in the West Bank, explained the thought process in an astonishingly frank interview in last Friday's Ha'aretz. He himself, the interview implies, was unenthusiastic about suicide bombings. Yet Israel's own actions proved the tactic so effective that its opponents within the organization were effectively silenced.

"Members of the Israeli Œpeace camp, those who spoke about ending the occupation and withdrawing, pushed us forward in our decision to continue the suicide attacks," he said. "The cracks in your steadfastness encouraged us greatly and proved that this method is very effective. Ariel Sharon's plan for disengagement from the Gaza Strip was also a great achievement that resulted from our activities. For us, one of the best proofs of the rift that suicide attacks had created in Israeli society was the phenomenon of refusal to serve in the army. We thought this rift should be deepened, and use of the suicide bomber weapon became a matter of consensus in our organization."

In short, many Palestinians concluded that Israel was simply too weak to stand up to terror.

Hamas's takeover of Gaza two years later compounded the impression of Israeli weakness, because for years, Israel had openly backed Fatah against Hamas ­ both verbally and, to some extent, in deeds. And when your proclaimed ally is ignominiously routed by your enemy, that inevitably reflects on you as well.

But the Second Lebanon War was the ultimate proof: After 33 days, the IDF proved unable to defeat a much smaller and more poorly equipped foe. And precisely because Hizbullah was obviously militarily inferior, the only possible explanation for its achievement lay in Israel's unwillingness to fight: For fear of taking military casualties, Israel refused to launch the necessary ground operation against Hizbullah, preferring to let a million Israelis cower helplessly under daily rocket barrages. The conclusion is obvious: Israel is afraid to confront Hizbullah head-on. And therefore, Hizbullah need not fear attacking it again.

One might argue that all of the above is water under the bridge: It happened, and Israel is stuck with the consequences. Yet the fact that the government has continued making all the same mistakes in the ensuing years (as next week's column will show) proves that the lessons remain unlearned. And until they are learned, whatever shreds of Israel's deterrence remain will continue to evaporate.

2a) Why Netanyahu is ahead
By Aluf Benn


Kadima, Labor and Likud are just like the cellphone companies. Just like Orange, Cellcom and Pelephone, the three largest parties also sell the same product, and the general public is finding it difficult to tell them apart. Even with regard to the main issue dividing Israeli public opinion today - control over the territories - there is no real difference among the candidates' stances. Their slogans and styles may be different, but all the candidates are pragmatists and will adjust their policies to the exigencies of the day: If they pressure us, we will withdraw; absent any pressure, we will stay in the settlements.

Under such circumstances, marketing relies on differentiation, even if it is forced. Cellular telephone companies have made a tremendous effort to develop an image separate from their product, so consumers will be able to tell them apart. Every one in Israel can identify the orange, the purple and the blue of the three big cellular competitors, not to mention the length of pop star Ninet's hair as she skips between companies. But what does any of this have to do with sending and receiving telephone calls?

In a free market, the prices of products reflect the expectations of the buyers. In the political market, approval ratings do not reflect an assessment about past conduct, only the expression of expectations and hope for the future. This explains why Ariel Sharon enjoyed tremendous popularity at a time when hundreds of Israelis were dying in suicide bombings and the economy was teetering on the verge of collapse. People believed Sharon would extricate them from the predicament, and therefore backed him, irrespective of the changes in his policies. Ehud Olmert did not become unpopular because of his failure in the Second Lebanon War, and not even because of the investigations against him. The public simply lost its faith in his ability to govern.

In order to gain support, politicians must differentiate themselves from their rivals and meet the changing expectations of the public. A simple, catchy message is better than a complex political manifesto or a detailed rehashing of past glories. No one remembers the previous term in office, and how the glowing star quickly turned into a failed leader. The basic product of politics, the ability to rally a coalition to stay in power and execute policies, interests the public almost as much as the way cellular companies split their antenna frequencies. Olmert excels at political management, but did not radiate hope for the future. That is why he fell.

Benjamin Netanyahu leads in the polls not because the public has good memories of his problematic tenure as prime minister or his role as head of the opposition to a government the public is fed up with. Fact: Tzipi Livni holds a central role in this government, and she is nearly as popular as Netanyahu. Netanyahu was barely noticed as head of the opposition during the past two years. His criticism of Olmert was less than active. On the investigations of corruption at the top, Netanyahu said nothing, probably out of concern that he was going to be reminded of his own stays at luxury hotels, first class tickets and friendship with powerful men. Nonetheless, Netanyahu is leading in the polls over his rivals. How does he do it?

Netanyahu is popular with the public because he is perceived as a leader with a message, ready to fight for his views in an environment of political deal brokering. Time and again one may recall Netanyahu's failures as prime minister, the infighting in his bureau and his problematic memory. But all this is nothing compared to his clashes with the elites as prime minister and the way he stood up to the Histadrut labor federation, the banks and the social lobby as finance minister. Although he is part of the establishment, Netanyahu markets himself successfully as a radical who represents change.

Livni also set herself apart, as a different kind of politician representing novelty and freshness. After all, her call on Olmert to respond to the first Winograd report is remembered, but not her decision to stay in his government. Her lack of popularity in the Knesset cafeteria is a positive sign for the public: It is as if she is above the deception, the illegalities in signing up party members and the appointment of cronies. As the sole woman among the candidates, and the youngest, her rapid rise from anonymity to the top through seven ministries, is seen as a brilliant career and not as insufficient experience - as her rivals claim.

Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz are behind in the polls, despite their vast military experience, which is supposed to be the ticket considering rising anxiety over an Iranian bomb. However, they have failed to differentiate themselves. What is Barak's message? What exactly does he represent? The public is not impressed with the record Barak prides himself on, and not because of his failure at Camp David, but because the public has little expect in the way of a future with Barak.

Meanwhile, at the head of the Mofaz campaign lies the promise of establishing a government with the current Knesset. This may be good for the political allies and for the MKs, but not for the public, which prefers new elections between Netanyahu and Livni and is finding it difficult to understand what would follow Mofaz's rise to power.

In the end, there are minor differences between the four pretenders to the premiership. In the end, the least popular leader might function well at the Prime Minister's Bureau. But they should all learn from Olmert's fall not to ignore the views of the public and that successful marketing of a leader is no less important than managing a country and maintaining a coalition.


3)Rice: All options on table with Iran

Just days after Iran failed to accept incentives in return for suspending their uranium enrichment program, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday that while Washington will continue to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the standoff with Teheran, all options remain in the cards.

Russia plays down talks of tougher sanctions against Iran

"The president keeps all his options on the table, and we still believe that the diplomatic option can work and there's time for it to work," she told Yahoo! News.

"I don't want to get into timelines, but the fact is we're working on it every day," Rice maintained. She added that the current diplomatic efforts were based on the assumption that "there are reasonable people in Iran that see this is not the way to run a country."

"There are a lot of questionings of the policies of President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," the secretary of state continued. "The United states has said we don't have a permanent enemy here. We can move to a better place."

Rice's comments echoed statements made earlier Thursday by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was quoted by an Italian paper as saying that a nuclear Iran would be "dangerous to world order."

Barak emphasized that all options for dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat were "open and ready," and stressed the importance of "strengthening and accelerating economic sanctions against Iran."

"Either way, we need to keep every option open. If they provoke us, or they attack us, our army is prepared to attack and to succeed uncompromisingly," he asserted in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera published Thursday morning, adding that "it's up to us to find the best way to get the best result with minimum damage."

"Iran confirmed its message when it stood against the whole world: To deceive and to reject. Their aim is to obtain an atomic bomb."

The defense minister also spoke of the results of the 2006 Lebanon War, telling the Italian paper, "Two years ago, we saw the price that's paid for a lack of an experienced leadership. Nevertheless, today we're equipped with a good understanding to prevent this from happening again."

"The State of Israel," Barak went on, "is in need of unity."

He also told the Italian paper that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought an end to the war was inefficient since Hizbullah, Syria and Iran were doing what they wanted in Lebanon.

After these comments, Barak stated that he preferred not to comment on internal Israeli politics, or on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's impending resignation, but noted that he agreed to take part in a national unity government.

According to Barak, the challenges Israel faces are tremendous, both on a security level and in the diplomatic arena.

3a) Bush's Disastrous Flip Flop
By Michael Rubin


Press and pundits applauded George Bush's decision last month to send a representative to Geneva to join a meeting with Iran's nuclear negotiator. Barack Obama, the 2008 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said, "Now that the United States is involved, it should stay involved with the full strength of our diplomacy." Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, said the decision might be "the most welcome flip flop in diplomatic history".

To bring the Islamic Republic into compliance with its international commitments through peaceful means is a noble goal. Nevertheless, the White House reversal was the wrong move at the wrong time. Just as democracy is about more than elections, diplomacy is about more than just a willingness to talk. Absent the preliminary work necessary for its success and attention to timing, diplomacy can accelerate conflict.

Washington's insistence that Tehran cease its nuclear enrichment makes sense. While proponents of diplomacy call this a precondition, abandoning such a demand both unilaterally sets aside three UN Security Council resolutions and enables Iranian officials to run down the clock as they near irreversible nuclear capability.

Even if the White House waffles back to its earlier position, the damage is done. By establishing--and then voiding--the redline laid down by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the United States would not talk until the Islamic Republic suspended its uranium enrichment, the Bush administration undercut the credibility of future redlines. Indeed, this is the message that many Iranians have taken. On August 1, 2008, for example, Ali Reza Hosseini, an employee at the Strategic Studies Institute at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, urged the Iranian leadership "not to take the secretary of state's ultimatums seriously".

This raises the probability that Iranian officials will misread the determination of Bush or his successor administration to prevent the Islamic Republic from achieving a military nuclear capability. Where self-described realists and progressives see flexibility, Iranian officials see weakness. "America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated," stated Mohammad Ja'far Assadi, newly-appointed chief of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, on July 16, 2008.

Diplomacy absent opponent sincerity does more harm than good. The West has already suffered for its efforts to accommodate Tehran. Between 2000 and 2005, European Union engagement with Iran led to a near-tripling of trade. Rather than use its hard currency windfall to build civilian infrastructure and improve the economy, the Iranian leadership invested perhaps 70 percent of its hard currency and oil windfall into its military and nuclear programs.

Such an allocation is not the result of regime hardliners controlling appropriations, for the bulk of the work on Iran's covert nuclear program coincided with a period of reformist resurgence and so-called dialogue of civilizations. On June 15, 2008, the semi-official Fars News Agency provided lengthy excerpts from a panel discussion with Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami-era government spokesman. He lambasted not the content of President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad's nuclear policy but rather its style, and urged a return to Khatami-style diplomacy. "We had an overt policy that was one of negotiation and confidence-building," he explained, "and a covert policy that was continuation of [our nuclear] activities." He recommended that the Iranian government should "prove to the entire world that we want the power plants for electricity [but] afterwards we can continue with other activities."

Indeed, he signaled that Tehran may see the incentive package the White House signed on to in an entirely different light than the western diplomats who offered it. "As long as we were not subjected to sanctions, and during our negotiations, we could import technology," Ramezanzadeh explained. "We should have negotiated for so long, and benefited from the atmosphere of negotiations to the extent that we could import all the technology we needed."

Iranian officials gloat. They welcomed US concessions as affirmation that defiance succeeds. Meanwhile, with 6,000 P-1 centrifuges and a 4.8 percent enriched feed Tehran can produce 20 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium in just 16 days, a period between International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

Iranians play chess while Americans play checkers. That Tehran's nuclear program has progressed so far is a testament to the Iranian strategy. In contrast, Bush's move has little to do with a well-thought out strategy and is more a flailing attempt to change legacy. As Iranian centrifuges continue to spin, the price of Bush's flip-flop will be high: Iranian overconfidence, erosion of future UN Security Council resolution effectiveness and forfeiture of future redline credibility. With its diplomatic card wasted, the next US president will have a stark choice: allow the Islamic Republic to go nuclear or accelerate the application of far more costly measures.



4) Exit Olmert (no encore, please)
By Paul Greenberg




—Stage direction
Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale"


Is it some kind of requirement that a politician who's finally leaving the stage has to depart with a graceless blast at the press, the opposition or the universe in general?


Call it the Nixon Rule, as in Richard Nixon's whine when he lost a race for governor of his native California in 1962: "As I leave you, I want you to know — just think about how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." (He was wrong about that, too.)


Ehud Ohlmert followed the Nixon Rule last week when he announced his long anticipated resignation as Israel's premier just ahead of the Israeli prosecutors digging into his personal finances: "I was forced to defend myself against relentless attacks by self-styled fighters for justice who sought to oust me from my job and saw all means as justifying of that end."


Mr. Olmert leaves behind a record strewn with failure after failure — all rooted in overweening ambition, ethical insensibility, poor judgment, and the kind of arrogance typical of successful politicians who haven't been caught yet. All that on top of a general incompetence, which in his case was exacerbated by a lack of any extensive military experience in a country that must regularly defend its existence on the battlefield.


The one thing Ehud Olmert seemed adept at was political intrigue, and now even that talent seems to have been undone by his avarice. The most embarrassing part of his leave-taking is the sheer tawdriness of the accusations against him. They add a final, grace(less) note to his fall: taking envelopes of cash Spiro Agnew-style, double and triple billing for travel expenses, always holding his hand out for more. ... Is this a prime minister or a small-time grafter? What's he supposed to be guilty of — double bookkeeping and incessant schnorring?


Mr. Olmert's more dangerous shortcomings as a leader were on embarrassing display during the course of the Second Lebanon War two years ago this month. Israel somehow managed to fight to a draw only because of the courage and improvisation of her common soldiers — the kind of long-suffering reservists who pull on their boots and hustle off to the nearest front whenever word comes that there's another war on. Once again they had to overcome the faults of their leaders, whose incompetence didn't keep them from being arrogant, too.


In a different time and in a different Israel, another premier — Golda Meir — prepared to step aside after an official inquiry criticized her for not having foreseen the surprise attacks from both north and south that stunned Israel at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Even though that same report also pointed to her steadfastness after the onslaught began. (It was said at the time in Israel that Golda had proved herself the only real man in the Cabinet.)


What a contrast with the mod Israel: After an official inquiry into Israel's last war detailed Ehud Olmert's multiple failures as a wartime leader, it took him over a year to announce his resignation. And then it wasn't because of his manifest inadequacies in that conflict but because of still another investigation of his tangled finances.


Ehud Olmert is all too representative of mod, upwardly mobile Israel. Is it only Ariel Sharon, the Israelis' last great general, who's fallen into a comatose state, or has the spirit of the whole country done so as well? A once pioneering, almost spartan society seems to have developed a disease at its psychic core. Call it Olmertism.


Thanks to the byzantine rules of Israel's semi-parliamentary, semi-constitutional but always raucous democracy, Ehud Olmert will remain in office for an uncertain while, the timing of his exit as cloudy as most other things in the always hazy Middle East.


If there was one success of the Olmert Years, it was the virtual completion of the wall — excuse me, security barrier — that now has prevented all but a few suicide attacks within most of the Jewish state. And, oh yes, one more thing: Ehud Olmert can also take credit for making the hawkish leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, the popular favorite to succeed him.

4a) It's embarrassing to be an Israeli
By ARIEH ELDAD


Once, many years ago, we were proud to say we were Israelis. Israel's accomplishments in agriculture, settlement and science were internationally acclaimed, and the Israeli army was our pride.


We all recall the world's applause after the Entebbe operation, when we proved that nothing was too far for us, and nothing too difficult.

We didn't negotiate with murderous terrorists, we fought them. We didn't trade in blood. Anyone who attacked us paid for doing so. We rescued our brothers even from the grip of distant savages.

Where did we go wrong?

Today we want to hide our faces in shame as Israel deals with Hizbullah and frees murderers in exchange for corpses. The world blinks at our weak leadership, our paralysis and the loss of our will to defend ourselves.

Last week Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Knesset's Security Affairs Committee: "With 270,000 Arabs [in Jerusalem], there will be more tractors in Jerusalem." The deputy prime minister, convicted sex offender Haim Ramon, declared that we have to get rid of the Arab neighborhoods because murderous terrorists come from them.

Along these lines, he could have suggested that we have to "get rid of" the village of Abu Snan because one of its residents blew himself up in Nahariya; or "get rid of" of Jaffa because one of its residents drove a murderer to the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv?

Does Ramon advocate transferring Kfar Manda to the Palestinian Authority because one of its residents murdered a policeman in Jerusalem? Has Ramon taken up the old, extreme right-wing slogan "No Arabs = No Terrorists"?

ANYONE WHO suggests dividing Jerusalem because he can't deal with a security problem is an embarrassment. It's hard to fathom whence comes this loss of will, this inability to deal with difficulties. Once Israel dealt with hard issues; now it runs from them.

Gilad Schalit is not in Entebbe. He's in Gaza, within walking distance. The sole item on the government's agenda should be a military operation to free him and destroy Hamas - but instead the government is arguing over whether to free 400 murderers or 800 murderers.

It's embarrassing to be an Israeli led by the likes of Olmert, Haim Ramon, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz.

As if this were not enough, added to these disgraces are Olmert's scandals. This prime minister is apparently the most corrupt Israeli leader since King Ahab, yet Ruhama Avraham-Balila, the ministerial liaison to the Knesset, a few weeks ago said of his various scandals: "This is not the first investigation, not the second investigation, not the third investigation, not the fourth or fifth, and I don't know if it will be the last. So what? Who really cares?"

Who indeed? She herself is under an ongoing criminal investigation on suspicion of having accepted a bribe from Agrexco.

MILLIONS OF honest people live in this country, working hard to support their families. They pay taxes. They serve in the military. Their children serve in the military. But the prime minister and his cronies have been mocking us all, asking, "So what? Who really cares?"

We care.

What angers us most? That our prime minister can be bought for a few thousand dollars?

The Book of Exodus states that bribes blind the eyes of the clear-sighted. But Olmert cannot be accused of blindness - he sank to the depths of corruption with his eyes wide open. Maybe we are angriest because he treats all Israelis as if we were fools; because he stayed in office years after his corruption was exposed because he was so sure he would eventually get away with it.

I accuse the prime minister of shaming millions of Israelis. I accuse him of causing the world to see Israel as a den of thieves, takers of bribes and kickbacks.

Olmert was furious about leaks from his police interrogations. Leaks are a serious matter, but thievery is worse, and bribery worse yet. A small-time thief breaks a window and steals from one house. A corrupt politician steals from everyone.

"Since my first days in the Prime Minister's Office… I have been forced to defend myself against ceaseless attacks on the part of self-named justice-seekers who have made the goal of deposing me one in which the ends justify all the means," Olmert said in announcing his impending resignation.

I am very proud to be one of the "self-named justice-seekers." If the nation's leader has no integrity, and if the legal system is too slow to stop him before he causes irreversible damage, it is the duty of all "self-named justice-seekers" to struggle so Israelis will not be ashame

5)Congress's unsound fury over Big Oil: Movie theaters capture more windfall profit than oil companies.
By Justin Danhof



Washington - With this summer's high gas prices, Americans are trading in their traditional vacations for "staycations" – vacations much closer to home.

But compared with other things Americans might do, driving is still a bargain.

Consider, for example, the costs of going to a movie:

To take a family of four to a movie at an AMC Theatre, it will cost anywhere from $55.75 to $71.50, depending on whether the family shares movie snacks or not, and this does not even include gasoline.

For that same $71.50, the family could purchase enough gas for their car (of decent gas mileage) to drive from Disneyland to Las Vegas and back again. And for the price of tickets and extra-large refreshments, , they could drive from Disneyland to the Grand Canyon and back again.

Where are the calls for federal investigation into price gouging at concession stands?

For years, populist politicians have dragged oil industry executives to Capitol Hill and accused them of price manipulation. Every time gas prices increase, liberal lawmakers direct the Federal Trade Commission to investigate oil industry price gouging. To their chagrin, the FTC has never found oil industry price manipulation.

What evidence does congress use to back their price gouging claims? Try none.

In 2005, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) of Washington responded to a question on whether she believed oil companies were price gouging, "[a]bsolutely." she said. "I just don't have the document to prove it."

And this past May, in a speech on the House floor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) of Florida targeted oil company executives when she said, "I can't say that there's evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are."

Shouldn't we demand more from our politicians than unfounded accusations?

These congressional hearings are often followed by attempts to impose so-called windfall profits taxes on oil companies. The process is reminiscent of the medieval practice of trial by ordeal, in which the accused are subjected to a painful – possibly fatal procedure – with the expectation that the truly innocent will be saved.

So far, the oil companies have survived. The most recent attempt to impose such a tax on "unreasonable" profits failed in June.

And just what do congressional advocates of a windfall profits tax consider unreasonable?

In the first quarter of 2008, Big Oil had a profit margin of 7.4 percent. Over that same period, the pharmaceutical and medicine industry earned a 25.9 percent profit, the chemical industry earned 15.7 percent and the electronic equipment industry earned 12.1 percent.

What about those movie theater refreshments? Four large popcorns and four large sodas cost $31.50. The total raw ingredient cost is approximately $7.56. That equals a 76 percent gross margin. Where is the political outrage over that figure?

Still believe it is the oil companies gouging us? Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to.

Ms. Pelosi has called oil company profits "obscene," and recently supported yet another measure to investigate alleged oil industry price gouging.

Let's take a look at where each dollar spent at the pump goes. In the first quarter of 2008, the majority – 70 cents – was spent to purchase crude oil, 17 cents was spent on refining and retailing, and 13 cents on paying taxes.

American oil companies cannot change the largest factor influencing gasoline prices – the cost of crude oil.

In The New York Times, columnist Edmund L. Andrews asked satirically last year "if the oil industry is so powerful, why did it let gasoline prices fall through the floor throughout the 1980s and part of the 1990s? For that matter why did it let gasoline prices fall sharply after they spiked in 2005 and 2006?"

Pelosi never decried this "obscene" lack of profits and shareholder abuse. Instead, she seeks to punish an industry that makes a modest profit margin on a high demand good.

6) Could Obama still lose the nomination?
By Denis Keohane

Will Hillary outsmart Obama and take the nomination at the last minute?

Many of us familiar with Hillary Clinton's approach to achieving her goals refused to believe that she ever gave up all hope of winning the nomination and the presidency. Her words and actions on the subject of the convention itself always left the door open for a return, should Obama falter or suffer some calamity.

Her artful evasions were enough to lull journalists and (more importantly) Obama and his supporters into the presumption of inevitability. No further rumblings of a mass protest in Denver should the first black candidate be denied his rightful due were heard. After all, he received enough publicly expressed support from super delegates to put him over the top. And he won the popular vote in the primaries, we were assured, lending legitimacy to the super delegates who voiced their support.

Everyone presumed the presumptive nominee was a lock.

Now there are a few signs that Hillary may be making her move.

- Blogger Patterico alludes to the Hillary Clinton campaign burning up the phone lines to the super delegates.

- Bill Clinton told ABC News, "I am not a racist" and contended the race card was played against him. Even when prompted in the same interview to state that Obama was ready for the Presidency, he did not deliver.

- Hillary's PUMA ( short for "Party Unity My A--.") supporters in Denver and nationally plan a rally at a Denver park during the convention.

- ABC news reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton does not rule out putting her name in nomination,contradicting earlier press reports.

Many people, including no doubt a goodly number of nervous Democrat super delegates, are asking themselves the David Brooks' question about Obama's standing in the polls: "Where's the landslide ?" After evaluating him for several months, voters in the middle still aren't ready to embrace him.

National polls show not only a tightening of the Obama-McCain race to a statistical dead heat but momentum toward a McCain lead, something inconceivable only weeks ago. The specter of an Obama collapse has to haunt more than a few super delegates.

Buyer's remorse seemed evident and growing among many Democrats toward the end of their primary season when Obama lost again and again to Clinton, even as the delegate math was by then stacked in his favor. That remorse was put on hold (but apparently not resolved) by Obama's seeming to secure the nomination and the subsequent popular boost he enjoyed at first. But lately the candidate with a difference has had a hard time living up to his promise to be a new kind of politician.

According to RealClearPolitics, Obama has 1766.5 pledged delegates, 352 short of the 2118 needed to secure the nomination. He also has 463 super delegates, which puts him over the top -- if they hold. If a combination of Clinton campaigning and nervousness can cause a hundred and twenty or so super delegates to sit out the first ballot, Obama does not get the nomination on the first ballot and perhaps not at all. After that first vote a great many pledged delegates and all the super delegates are free to vote as they choose.

How much pressure could there then be for the forty-seven year old Obama to take the VP spot under Hillary, with the understanding that he would as such be the next Democrat in line for the top nomination whether Hillary won or lost, served one, two or no terms?

It looks like Obama's belief in his inevitability may have led him into a blunder, making it easier for Hillary supporters to prevent a nomination on the first ballot. After that point, anything goes, as all super delegates and many pledged delegates are free to vote their preferences.

After accepting the party's decision last June to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida but with half votes, only days ago Obama said he wanted the delegates to have full votes

Obviously, he said this believing he has won the nomination and that pandering to voters in critical general election states is of more importance.

If the party goes along with Obama's request, it reduces the number of super delegates who would need to sit out the first ballot for Obama to be denied the nomination, opening the way for Clinton! Ouch!

This is proof that the man should not be negotiating with Ahmadinejad. If he cannot think strategically and recognize his vulnerability to a last minute ambush at the convention, he would be eaten alive in big league world affairs.

Worst of all, in his letter to the Credentials Committee arguing in favor of full votes for the two delegations, he writes:

Democrats in Florida and Michigan must know that they are full partners and colleagues in our historic mission to reshape Washington and lead our country in a new direction.


These words tacitly argue for acceptance of the popular vote results in those states. Obama cannot see one step ahead, for adding them to the vote count would give the Democratic primary season popular vote majority to Hillary.

There are about three weeks to the delegate voting. Things can still happen or even, as sometimes suspected with the Clintons, be made to happen.

7) Israel backs Georgia in Caspian Oil Pipeline Battle with Russia


Georgian tanks and infantry, aided by Israeli military advisers, captured the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, early Friday, Aug. 8, bringing the Georgian-Russian conflict over the province to a military climax.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin threatened a “military response.”

Georgia called up its military reserves after Russian warplanes bombed its new positions in the renegade province.

In Moscow’s first response to the fall of Tskhinvali, president Dimitry Medvedev ordered the Russian army to prepare for a national emergency after calling the UN Security Council into emergency session early Friday.

Reinforcements were rushed to the Russian “peacekeeping force” present in the region to support the separatists.

Georgian tanks entered the capital after heavy overnight heavy aerial strikes, in which dozens of people were killed.

Lado Gurgenidze, Georgia's prime minister, said on Friday that Georgia will continue its military operation in South Ossetia until a "durable peace" is reached. "As soon as a durable peace takes hold we need to move forward with dialogue and peaceful negotiations."

Geopolitical experts note that on the surface level, the Russians are backing the separatists of S. Ossetia and neighboring Abkhazia as payback for the strengthening of American influence in Georgia. However, more immediately, the conflict has been sparked by the race for control over the pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region.

The Russians may just bear with the pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s ambition to bring his country into NATO. But they draw a heavy line against his plans and those of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route the oil routes from Azerbaijan and the gas lines from Turkmenistan, which transit Georgia, through Turkey instead of hooking them up to Russian pipelines.

Saakashvili need only back away from this plan for Moscow to ditch the two provinces’ revolt against Tbilisi. As long as he sticks to his guns, South Ossetia and Abkhazia will wage separatist wars.

Israel's interest in the conflict as reported by exclusive military sources:

Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.

Aware of Moscow’s sensitivity on the oil question, Israel offered Russia a stake in the project but was rejected.

Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel.

These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday.

In recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was “defensive.”

This has not gone down well in the Kremlin. Therefore, as the military crisis intensifies in South Ossetia, Moscow may be expected to punish Israel for its intervention