Peretz: 'If he had more time...'
Photo: Gil Yochanan
Winograd report praises me, Peretz says
Labor chairman's campaign headquarters tries to snag political gain from Lebanon war report: Aides send email to Labor faction members quoting sections of Winograd report that commend Peretz. Campaign spokesperson: Public must know report isn't all bad regarding defense minister
Although Defense Minister Amir Peretz
disappeared from the spotlight after the publication of the Winograd Commission's conclusions on the leadership's failures in managing the Second Lebanon War, he is still continuing to push forward his campaign for the Labor primaries.
Early Wednesday Peretz's office sent out thousands of email messages with quotes from the Winograd Commission report in attempt to emphasize the few sections which positively review the defense minister's performance during the war.
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The quotes were taken from the 320-page report's later chapters, which Peretz's associates believe "no one has actually read".
Under the heading "The parts of the Winograd report you didn't see", the email lists about ten quotes from the report which commend the defense minister:
- "It must be granted in the defense minister's favor that if he had had enough time, he would have acquired the necessary qualifications" (clause 159)
- "The minister asked fundamental questions, displayed fast understanding, judgment and straight thinking" (clause 143)
- "The defense minister sometimes showed insights which more experienced persons than him did not discover, and he significantly contributed to discussion and decisions on the targets of the offensives" (clause 146).
The email messages would be distributed among the Labor party's thousands of members, to expose them to the parts of the report which were not published, Peretz's associates said.
According to Tom Wagner, a spokesman for Peretz's campaign, "The public needs to know that regarding the defense minister, it is a mixed report which commends his conduct for many pages. The parts of the report that criticize Peretz contain many internal contradictions."
There remain parts of the report, however, which Peretz's office would explicitly prefer the public overlook, such as: "The defense minister, during the period examined, did not demand or review the military plans, did not confirm the army's preparedness, and did not thoroughly appraise the operation and assault plans which were suggested and approved for chosen targets."
