Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.

The story is told that Hitler, during the disaster that we now call the battle of Stalingrad, forbade his generals to read, or even possess, the memoirs written by Armand de Caulaincourt, adviser to Napoleon during his own catastrophic invasion of Russia 120 years earlier. (I'm indebted, as always, to my literary hero Herman Wouk, for teaching me this and so much more about the last war from his majestic books). Reading this work, the madman reasoned, would open his army's eyes to the possibility of defeat, and his crooked mind couldn't countenance such things.

Why is this relevant today. Because there's an old saying - "Generals train to fight the last war". But probably more importantly, politicians plan for the last war. So we need to see what went wrong in the last war in Lebanon, and make sure we get a set of politicians that understand where, why and how we failed, and prepare for round two.

To do this, we need a thorough, independent and strong investigation. Its purpose is not to point the finger at who made mistakes last time (although hopefully that will happen too), but to tell us how to prevent the same, and worse mistakes, happening again. Every citizen of Israel should be crying out to the heavens for this investigation, and should make sure they understand what it says, because the next government we elect MUST do better than the one we've got now.

Come and join us for a few coldies.

Oh, the nostalgia! the nostalgia!!!

greatest athlete ever???

ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski has a column in which he makes the following statement ...

Tiger Woods is the greatest individual athlete of our time. OK, of all time.

Now, I'm not going to say anything bad about Woods, who is a phenomenal sportsman, but I think Gene's going over the top. You can see why, when you see who he's comparing Tiger to -

"one-namers (Pele, Babe, Jack), your initialers (MJ), your nicknamers (The Great One, The Greatest), your oldies (Jim Thorpe, Willie Mays, Joe Louis), your Olympians (Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis), your netters (Martina Navratilova, Pete Sampras), your others (Lance Armstrong). "

With just one exception, they're all Americans, and they're all involved in sports that are popular in America (and in some cases, nowhere else).

I have a strong recollection of an article in Time Magazine s few years ago, titled "and quiet goes the Don" published shorlty after Sir Donald Bradman passed away in Adelaide. That writer makes my point much better that I can, when he says that if Tiger Woods keeps winning like he had until then for another 15 years, then maybe he could seriously be considered a rival, but until that time, there simply is no other individual in any sport, any time, anywhere, who comes near the perfection of the Don.

Think about ... a life-time batting average of 99.94 runs, in a career spanning 20 years! The next best is Greg Pollock, with average of 65, but over a much shorter period. Where else will you find a sportsman that is 50% better/faster/stronger than his nearest rival, ever! To come even close, Woods would need to be winning consistently with scores in the 50's. It's like running the 100 meters in 7 seconds, high jumping over 3 meters - and not just once, but over your whole career.

This will be a hard point to sell to the Yanks, who don't understand any sports that aren't played on their home turf, and who are also convinced that they have it right, even though they have to split the country into pieces in order to have a "World Series" contest in baseball. But truth is, the Don was so far ahead of anyone else that it's difficult to see even Woods taking the title off him.

Anyone else got opinions on this?

trust the BBC

We should be grateful for the services provided by the Beeb. Just today, they have given a fascinating story that tells us volumes about the nature of Israel's battle.

First, notice the picture - a young child posed next to an armed but unexploded bomb. Now, in the real world, what's your first reaction to walking into a room that could at any moment be blown to smithereens ...
1. Run for your life or
2. Pick up your children, and run for their lives or
3. get your kids to stand close to the bomb, posing while the photographers get the right shot.

When we say that the Islam is a religion with a death-wish, why does the West continue to doubt it. A picture is worth a thousand words, and who would doubt the Beeb!

Second, read this bit ...
The eastern Mihaniya area, where Um Ali lives, is also largely destroyed, mostly the result of aerial bombing and artillery fire from over a hill which separates Bin Jbeil from the Israeli border less than 5km (three miles) away....There was also house-to-house fighting here, after Israeli troops entered Mihaniya and were engaged by Hezbollah fighters at close quarters.

But hang on, weren't we told, endlessly, that Israel was deliberately attacking civilian/residential areas that posed no military target. Why then was Hizbollah fighting "house-to-house" - everyone else says they weren't ever there, but who would doubt the Beeb!

So be grateful to the BBC, because they time and again show themselves for what they are - unredeemable anti-Semites who wouldn't know the truth from a bucket of their own turds.

Errr Derrrr!

In this article from CNN, US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton said.

"As long as Hezbollah fighters remain armed," the international peacekeeping force and the Lebanese forces "would be vulnerable."

No shit Sherlock...

So why didn't you shut up and let Israel do the job for you - you pansies!

Hizbullah have perfected time travel

Browse your way to Hizbullah's Iran-based website, and you'll see this fascinating picture, together with the claim (non-Arabic readers will have to trust my sources) saying that it's a photo of them destroying an Israeli warship in their victorious war last month.

Now look again. Israel doesn't have destroyer-class vessels. This picture shows all guns have been removed. And the Australian Navy shows the same picture, dated 1998, of the decommissioned HMAS Torrens being used for submarine target practice off WA coast (hats off to Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun).

So here's the story. Either Hizbollah are blatant liars (what??? never!!!) or they've discovered the secret of time travel, picked up an Israeli destroyer (which doesn't exist yet), moved it back in time to 1998, disguised themselves as RAN sailors on a RAN sub, and sank it. For my money, I'll believe the latter, just like all the 1.5 billion followers of the religion of Peace do.

the crystal ball is still working

Sometimes, the naiveté of both our media and our Government astound me.

Headline on front page of today's Jerusalem Post - Annan to give UNIFIL "teeth". And the gist if the story is that Israel's good and true friend, in response to persuasive arguments by our Foreign Minister, is going to amend the rules of engagement to include "opening fire on Hizbullah where necessary".

I didn't know crystal balls could laugh, but mine does. Sure, UNIFIL will get orders allowing it to open fire on Hizbullah. And the moon is made of green cheese!

This "persuasive argument" by Israel's FM comes exactly one day after we sent our brave troops into Lebanon in what even JP describes as a "brazen Israeli commando raid into the heart of Lebanon". Now, what do YOU imagine is uppermost in Coffee Anal's mind, that he's going to write rules allowing UNIFIL to shoot at Hizbullah, or he's going to say something like "UNIFIL can resist any violation of the cease fire agreement, by any party, with force of arms"?

And what is that rule other than a mandate for UNIFIL to get in our way when we decide to try and stop Hizbullah re-arming and redeploying. What is this rule other than a carte-blanche for Hizbullah to go back to the good-old-days of the past six years, except now we have another enemy to contend with.

I've said it before, it's time for Egghead Omlette and his Merry Men to be shown the door.

an excellent post-event analysis of the fiasco in Lebanon

As I've been saying here, the time is rapidly approaching when the people of Israel should get their chance to show Egghead Omlette and his band of merry men the door. There's a great summation of my feelings in this piece posted tonight in The New Republic, and I urge all to read it. Especially, take note of the closing paragraph ...

"Whether or not Hezbollah won this war, Iran did. It encouraged and supported Hezbollah in this catastrophic mischief, and it emerges from the adventure satisfied with its ability to hurt Israel and damage regional stability and thwart American strategy. At this moment, therefore, it is important to remember that Iran is not only Israel's problem. It is also America's problem. Indeed, it is the West's problem. There is no figure in the world right now--not Osama bin Laden, not Nasrallah, not Ayman Al Zawahiri, not the Sunni insurgency or the Shia death squads in Iraq, not the cells, Al Qaeda or otherwise, in any European or American city--that represents the Islamist danger more perfectly, with greater ideological and physical force, than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And he has been enjoying his summer immensely. "

was I right, or was I right !

10 days ago, I made a prediction here about the likely outcome of the arrests in Britain ...

"My crystal ball tells me that within a matter of days, many left-wing pollies (I think I see the names Galloway and Livingstone, but there are more I can't read) will start a campaign for the immediate release of all prisoners, for an apology from the Home Office, and for an official complaint to the Pakistani government about the torture of the British citizens innocently going about their business in Lahore. Furthermore, they will demand that any evidence gained from following up the interrogation in Pakistan be ignored as "tainted evidence" since the techniques of "interrogation" do not conform to the British standards required for a court case."

So go have a look here in today's Guardian (hats-off to OpinionJournal - still the bechmark) ...

"Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies. The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all." If this is shown to be the case, the prospect of securing convictions in this country on his evidence will be complicated."

blame Canada? no need - there's always Bibi

It's time for the Establishment to start doing the only PR thing they actually know how to do - shifting the blame onto some-one else. Instead of Egg Omlette standing up like a mensch and saying "the buck stops here, it was on my watch, I resign", we're starting to see the spin-doctors coming into play, and telling us that he did a WONDERFUL job, and if anything was even slightly wrong it was because of Joe Shmo or, as we now hear, Benyamin Netanyahu.

The case in point is an article in the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday August 16, titled "Cost of a tragically botched war" by Jonathan Lipow, who is described as "an economist". He says, basically, that we lost (I agree), and that it's all Bibi's fault.

"It's one thing to shave NIS 1 billion off a 33 billion budget given six months of advanced warning" says he, "It is quite another to shave off a billion 6 months into the current fiscal year when that money has already been allocated or spent. Faced with the need to slash spending fast, the IDF did the only thing possible - it cut readiness and training expenditures". So lets see, the IDF has been under notification by the Treasury that they have to review expenditure for at least 3 years, but not in the last year, since Bibi wasn't Treasurer for most of it. They had to find (incredible!) THREE PERCENT, so in anticipation of this they, by all accounts from reservists, stopped training 3 years ago (they being both omniscient and flawless predictors).

What else is Bibi's fault? The economy is stagnating. Unemployment is standing at the "staggering" level of 9 per cent, stuck there for four months (during which Bibi, again, was not Treasurer), having [start sarcasm] rocketed there from the much better level of 11 per cent [end sarcasm] when Bibi took the reins. Lipow rabbits on in this vein for 4 columns of drivel, all saying the same thing, basically that anything that went wrong in the war was due to the financial catastrophe that Bibi nurtured (average 6% GDP growth, lowest inflation, declining unemployment, etc,etc,etc).

Oh, and it's not all Bibi's fault. The head of the Bank of Israel also gets his, because he raised interest rates by one half a per cent. Clearly, this has ruined our economy. After all, the exchange rate, in a time of war, actually improved! What other sign do we need that Fischer was Bibi's accomplice in spoiling Omlettte's victory.

Let's keep an eye on this game - looks like it's only the opening shots in a long campaign to pull the wool over our eyes - again.