Olmert goes into CYA mode.

Israeli politics can be confusing at the best of times. In the whole of the existence of modern Israel there has never been a majority government. The Israeli government operates as a coalition of various parties and the prime minister usually has a very tenuous hold on power. It is a tradition in Israeli politics that failure, particularly where it relates to defense, is accompanied by the resignation.

Ehud Olmert seems to feel he is not beholden to that tradition.

Following the first Lebanon War, Menachem Begin announced that he "could no longer" - and resigned. After the Yom Kippur War, Golda Meir recognized she had lost her political standing - and stepped down. Ehud Olmert is not behaving like them: he reiterates that he is supremely responsible for the decision to go to war and for its results, but he is clinging to his post.

For what it's worth, while the Yom Kippur War was an event for which the IDF was not prepared, they dispatched themselves admirably and emerged the victors. Meir still understood that she could no longer lead.

Olmert seems to be taking a page from the Bush administration's book. Something along the line of I am ultimately responsible, but it's not my fault.

Olmert established two inquiry committees to investigate the outcome of the latest war, one in which Israel came out as anything but victorious. In fact, Israel suffered a huge loss. The Israeli army is demoralized, the reserves are furious at their treatment and the IDF has lost their status as the paragon of invincibility. In the fight between David and Goliath, the IDF came out Goliath.

Olmert's inquiries, however, are already in trouble. With no terms of reference, and with Olmert retaining his seat at the head of the cabinet table, the committee members have no idea what they are supposed to do.

However, most committee members are currently abroad, including Lipkin-Shahak, who will be back in Israel in nine days. The committee will not convene before he returns. Asked whether he would continue to head the committee, Lipkin-Shahak replied: "I have no idea what's going on. They have to decide what they want, after which I will decide if I'm interested."

Other committee members also expressed displeasure at not being briefed regarding the future of committee proceedings.

Whitewashes are common when trying to hide political failure, but this emerges as something even worse. Israel, surrounded by groups that would see them annihilated, does not enjoy the luxury of navel-gazing over a military defeat. Hiding from the truth by producing ineffective inquiries will do nothing to correct the problems in the IDF and Israel's defense systems.

It's what banana-republics do.

While the inquiries, one political and one military, seem to have no clear role, Dan (Just Bomb Them) Halutz, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Force, has made it clear that as far as he's concerned Major General Moshe Kaplinsky will head up the military inquiry.

That's interesting. Kaplinsky was complicit in the direction of the entire war and eventually took over operations on the ground on Israel's northern border.

Appointing Kaplinsky to investigate on "what went wrong" is akin to having ENRON investigate their own unethical accounting practices. Instead of inquiries being conducted at arms-length, they can only be viewed as cover your own ass shams.

If there was any question as to who won in the Israeli/Hezbollah scrap, these inquiry committees provide the answer.

It wasn't Israel.