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Notice!
Our
new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL
server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the
probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages
from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary
cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement
groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.
Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to
use another server. To prevent unwanted correspondence from this
source, simply put ‘aol.com’ on your block list. Ed.
Announcing
TBR Ebooks!
Starting
with a new publication concerning the background behind the 9/11
attacks, TBR News will be presenting a series of interesting,
informative and definitive works for our readers. Future titles will
include the complete Voice of the White House with much more added
material that was considered too controversial to post, the
heavily-censored Armenian Holocaust of 1916, the Bush-Lay private
correspondence, the Assassination of JFK,Pearl Harbor intrigues and
rare documents, Malaparte’s inside study of the making of
revolution, sensational selected articles from the German Rudolf
historical revision files, unpublished before Rudolf’s arrest and
forced deportation to Germany, World War II studies of holocaust
history, taken from secret German files and much more. Please see
the title page for more information.
The
Editors
Descending
Into Darkness: The Harring Report
A
well-researched study into the background of the 9/11 attack: Who
knew what and when did they know it. Russian and German intelligence
material, not published before show that the U.S. had ample
warning...and did nothing about it.
THE
VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE
The
full collection of the twice-weekly commentary of what is really
going on inside the corrupt Bush White House. The spectrum includes
the Gannon scandal, the planned invasion of Iran, many stories of
stupidity and corruption coupled with biting sarcasm. Interesting to
note that many, if not most, of the predictions have come true.
REGICIDE
The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy
A
landmark book that sold very well in hardback, this work contains
actual intelligence documents concerning the inside U.S. plans to
kill Kennedy; the reasons, the methods and the results.
The
Final Reckoning: An Analysis of Demographics in Holocaust Literature
By
Harold Kreig, Lt.Col, AUS ret.
This
is the first rational, heavily documented work on the subject of the
Holocaust. Colonel Krieg has taken thousands of documents, including
the official SS concentration camp records from 1935 through 1945
and official U.S. government postwar analysis of the system and the
casualties and causes of death and produced a book that is highly
informative and readable. Heavily footnoted and annotated,
‘The Final Reckoning’ is logical and compelling and is an
historical work that should be read through by any student of the
period and subject.
Coup
D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution
By
Curzio Malaparte
First
published in Italy by Curzio Malaparte in 1928, this is a seminal
work on historical seizures of power from Napoleon through Hitler.
Gestapo-Chief:
The CIA & Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas
In 1948, the former head of Hitelr’s Gestapo was
interviewed by senior officials of the CIA in Switzerland where Müller
had been in hiding since the end of the Second World War. His
interview, for Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA’s Gehlen
Organization, runs to nearly a thousand pages and for years was
hidden in the CIA’s files.
This is a translation of a part of the interview, which was
initially conducted in German and then translated into English for
CIA use.
It is a fascinating series of historical episodes covering
both the Axis and Allied sides with comments on Hitler, Stalin,
Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, the 20th of
July bomb plot against Hitler, Bishop von Galen’s heroic, and
successful, attacks on the Nazis and their euthanasia program, the
concentration camps, the Duke of Windsor, the Roger Casement diaries
and many more fascinating and insightful views of a man who ran the
most effective counter-intelligence agency in modern times.
There is also extensive information on the attempts on the
part of the CIA to silence or discredit the fact that the Gestapo
Chief worked for the United States and eventually came to live in
Washington, D.C. as part of the notorious “Operation Paperclip.”
Fascinating inside views of many top
Nazis and CIA officials.
The
CIA COvenant: Nazis in Washington
by Gregory Douglas
* From the end of
World War II, the American CIA imported thousands of Nazis into the
United States to work for them, many on the list of wanted war
criminals
*One of the most
important of these was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler's
Gestapo. Mueller was recruited by Colonel James Critchfield who ran
the CIA's "Gehnel Organization' in Munich.
* Mueller kept
journals and this book is a translation of three years (1948-1951)
of notes and observations made of top CIA officials, President
Truman, top U.S. government officials, plans for murder, thefts,
kidnappings, wholesale thefts of public money and a terrifying
pattern of uncontrolled ambition, unchecked by any person or agency.
* Also included are
CIA and other agency's activities that have never been revealed.
*Mueller's deals in
stolen Nazi art for the CIA are covered in detail.
*Also to be found are
the steps the frightened CIA have taken to prevent the publication,
sales or distribution of this work.
An
Essay on the Principle of Population
by
Thomas Malthus
The
1798 classic study of how supplies of food do not keep up with an
expanding population
Malthus'
theory is that population growth is geometric while the food supply
increase is arithmetic.
A
very literate and current study that clearly highlights present and
current population problems
With
the world's population higher than ever before, this is a work of
great and current interest
CONSPIRACIES
for Fun and Profit
Contents
The Evil Catholics Murdered Abraham Lincoln
TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!
The Great 9-11 Plot
Who is Sorcha Faal?
The Bush Indictments
Faked Conspiracy photos
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston
The Great Contrail Conspiracy
Planet X
Remote Viewing unveiled
Notice!
Our
new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL
server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the
probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages
from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary
cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement
groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.
Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to
use another server. Ed.
“As
democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and
more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and
glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s
desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright
moron.”
-
H.L. Mencken
“That
we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public.”
-Theodore
Roosevelt
“Mass
movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been
discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the
blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of
men of words with a grievance.”
-Eric
Hoffer The True Believer
In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.
America’s
Enemies!
There
are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to
American liberties since George III.
They
are:
1.
The
Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another
country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and
deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more
American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.
2.
The
Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States
into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their
hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America
into their idea of Heaven on Earth.
3.
An
element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are
obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or
fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the
American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear
area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military
action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too
old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.
4.
George
W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United
States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is
determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him
and is even more determined to force the American people into
becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who
worship at his shrine and march in step.
In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes
Judge nixes warrantless
surveillance!
August
18, 2006
By Sarah Karush
Associated Press
DETROIT
- A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless
wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate
halt to it.
U.S.
District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge
to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she
says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the
separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution."
Plaintiffs
have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It
is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her
43-page opinion.
The American Civil Liberties Union
filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who
say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs.
They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of
the program, which involves secretly listening to conversations
between people in the U.S. and people in other countries.
The
government argued that the program is well within the president's
authority, but said proving that would require revealing state
secrets.
The
ACLU said the state-secrets argument was irrelevant because the Bush
administration had already publicly revealed enough information
about the program for Taylor to rule on the case.
"By
holding that even the president is not above the law, the court has
done its duty," said Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal
director and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
The
NSA had no immediate comment on the ruling.
Taylor
dismissed a separate claim by the ACLU over data-mining of phone
records by the NSA. She said not enough had been publicly revealed
about that program to support the claim and further litigation could
jeopardize state secrets.
Beeson
predicted the government would appeal the ruling and request that
the order to halt the program be postponed while the case makes its
way through the system. She said the ACLU had not yet decided
whether it would oppose such a postponement.
The Voice of the White House
Washington,
D.C. August 17, 2006:
“It seems that huge numbers of viewers, both domestic and foreign,
have looked at the posting I made on intercepted official
Israeli conversations and I can imagine the hysteria in Tel Aviv…and
Washington over this.
And,
I am so happy to tell you, there is more to come!
On
Monday the 22nd, I will be devoting a good deal of space
to the 9/11 tragedy. We know from intercepts, which foreign
government helped organize and execute this and who in our
government at that time was aware of it. I can assure my readers
that this is not the usual lunatic fringe fictions about plasmoid
clouds or Russian missiles.
The
truth is always less exciting than some blogger’s wet dream.
A
bit of current history here. Bush, ever obedient to the wishes of
Israel, agreed to block any attempt to establish a cease fire in
Lebanon until the mighty IDF crushed the Hezbollah and was able to
occupy, on a permanent basis they decided, enough southern Lebanese
territory to keep Hezbollah from lobbing rockets into Israel.
Bush
was initially gloating around here that the all- powerful IDF would
crush the” weak rag heads” in a “few days.” As it turned
out, Hezbollah defeated the Israeli military on the ground in savage
fighting and then a terrified Israel rushed to Bush, via their
Ambassador here, to beg him, whining like hell, to force through an
immediate cease fire before “everything here falls apart.” Bush
and Congoleeza Rice, once Stanford’s notorious Date Rape Queen and
latterly our beloved and useless Secretary of State, rushed in panic
to the once denigrated UN and pushed through a frantic cease fire.
But
given his nutty personality, Bush is now trumpeting around his “confidential
inner circle conferences,” that Hezbollah was ‘soundly defeated’
by the IDF!
Those
here, or informed others in D.C. know that both Bush and Israel have
taken a terrible, terrible propaganda defeat over this. They were
both once terrifying manifestations of raw force, keeping the world
frightened of their anger, and retribution, but now Bush is seen as
a paper tiger in a rainstorm.
The
Israeli defeat will, without a doubt, prove to be a disaster in our
occupation of an Iraq where American military units are being
mortared in their green zone on a daily basis (not reported
domestically, of course) and a terrible civil war is now in full
swing.
Emboldened
by the Hezbollah victory, the resistance people in Iraq are
redoubling their murderous attacks on American soldiers and this is
a trend that shows no sign of abating.
He
threatened North Korea with “immediate military retaliation” if
she launched any missiles. They launched sixteen and nothing
happened.
He
has continued to threaten Iran if she does not stop her atomic
development program. Iran has not only laughed in his face but
openly supported the Hezbollah with weapons and money.
We
here all know that Bush has shown that America can do nothing but
threaten and pretty soon, the rest of the world will treat all of us
like a Punch and Judy show. Remember this in November, why not?”
Desert of Trapped Corpses Testifies to
Israel's Failure
August
15, 2006
by
Robert Fisk
lndependent/UK
They
made a desert and called it peace. Srifa - or what was once the
village of Srifa - is a place of pancaked homes, blasted walls,
rubble, starving cats and trapped corpses. But it is also a place of
victory for the Hizbollah, whose fighters walked amid the
destruction yesterday with the air of conquering heroes. So who is
to blame for this desert? The Shia militia which provoked this war -
or the Israeli air force and army which has laid waste to southern
Lebanon and killed so many of its people?
There
was no doubt what the village mukhtar thought. As three Hizbollah
men - one wounded in the arm, the other carrying two ammunition
clips and a two-way radio - passed us amid the piles of broken
concrete, Hussein Kamel el-Din yelled to them: "Hallo,
heroes!" Then he turned to me. "You know why they are
angry? Because God didn't give them the opportunity of dying."
You
have to be down here with the Hizbollah amid this terrifying
destruction - way south of the Litani river, in the territory from
which Israel once vowed to expel them - to realise the nature of the
past month of war and of its enormous political significance to the
Middle East. Israel's mighty army has already retreated from the
neighbouring village of Ghandoutiya after losing 40 men in just over
36 hours of fighting. It has not even managed to penetrate the
smashed town of Khiam where the Hizbollah were celebrating yesterday
afternoon. In Srifa, I stood with Hizbollah men looking at the empty
roads to the south and could see all the way to Israel and the
settlement of Mizgav Am on the other side of the frontier. This is
not the way the war was supposed to have ended for Israel.
Far
from humiliating Iran and Syria - which was the Israeli-American
plan - these two supposedly pariah states have been left untouched
and the Hizbollah's reputation lionised across the Arab world. The
"opportunity" which President George Bush and his
Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, apparently saw in the Lebanon
war has turned out to be an opportunity for America's enemies to
show the weakness of Israel's army. Indeed, last night, scarcely any
Israeli armour was to be seen inside Lebanon - just one solitary
tank could be glimpsed outside Bint Jbeil and the Israelis had
retreated even from the "safe" Christian town of Marjayoun.
It is now clear that the 30,000-strong Israeli army reported to be
racing north to the Litani river never existed. In fact, it is
unlikely that there were yesterday more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers
left in all of southern Lebanon, although they did become involved
in two fire-fights during the morning, hours after the UN-ceasefire
went into effect.
Down
the coast road from Beirut, meanwhile, came a massive exodus of tens
of thousands of Shia families, bedding piled on the roofs of their
cars , many of them sporting Hizbollah flags and pictures of Sayed
Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's chairman, on their windscreens. At the
massive traffic jams around the broken motorway bridges and craters
which litter the landscape, the Hizbollah was even handing out
yellow and green "victory" flags, along with official
notices urging parents not to allow children to play with the
thousands of unexploded bombs that now lie across the landscape. At
least one Lebanese child was killed by unexploded ordnance and
another 15 were wounded yesterday.
But
to what are these people returning? Haj Ali Dakroub, a 42-year old
construction manager, lost part of his home in Israel's 1996
bombardment of Srifa. Now his entire house has been flattened.
"What is here that Israel should destroy all this?" he
asked. "We don't deny that the resistance was in Srifa. It was
here before and it will be here in the future. But in this house
lived only my family. So why would Israel bomb it?"
Well,
I did happen to notice what appeared to be the casing of a missile
hanging from the balcony of a much-damaged house facing the rubble
of Ali Dakroub's home. And a group of Hizbollah militiamen, one of
them with a pistol tucked into his trousers, walked past us
nonchalantly and disappeared into an orchard. Was this, perhaps,
where they kept some of their rockets?
Mr
Dakroub wasn't saying. "I am going to rebuild my home with my
two sons," he insisted. "Israel may come back in 10 years
and destroy it all over again and then I'll just rebuild it all over
again. This was a Hizbollah victory. The Israelis were able to
defeat all the Arab countries in six days in 1967 but here they
could not defeat the resistance in a month. These resistance men
would come out of the ground and shoot back. They are still
here."
"Come
out of the ground" is an expression I have heard several times
these past four weeks and I am beginning to suspect that many of the
thousands of guerrillas did indeed shelter in caves and basements
and tunnels, only to emerge to fire their missiles or to use their
infra-red rockets on the Israeli army once it made the mistake of
sending troops into Lebanon on the ground. And does anyone believe
that the Hizbollah will submit to their own disarmament by a new
international force of UN and Lebanese troops once - if - it
arrives? There was a symbolic moment yesterday when Lebanese
soldiers already based in southern Lebanon joined Hizbollah men in
Srifa to clear the rubble of a house in which the bodies of an
entire family were believed buried. Lebanese Red Cross and civil
defence personnel - representatives of the civil power which is
supposed to claw back its sovereignty from the Hizbollah - joined in
the search. The mukhtar, who so blatantly regarded the Hizbollah as
heroes, is also a government representative. And at the entrance to
this shattered village still stands a poster of Nasrallah and the
Iranian President Ali Khamenei.
Far
from driving the Hizbollah north across the Litani river, Israel has
entrenched them in their Lebanese villages as never before.
Lebanon war
cost Israel $1.6bn
August
15, 2006
Julian Borger in Jerusalem
Guardian
Unlimited
Israel's month-long war against
Hizbullah has cost the country $1.6bn (£850m), or about 1% of GDP,
according to initial government estimates. About a third of that
went directly to the army.
Most analysts believe the ceasefire
arrived just in time to stop the conflict putting a significant
brake on Israel's high growth rate, although the economy is
vulnerable to any resumption in the fighting.
However, the total bill is unlikely to
exceed the approximately $2.5bn Israel receives each year in aid
from the US - $2.2bn of that in military grants.
At
least 6,000 houses or businesses in the north were destroyed or
damaged during the fighting. Much of the region's fruit harvest
rotted on the trees because farm labourers spent the month in their
shelters. More than a million people were displaced from the north
and about a quarter of the region's small businesses had to be saved
from bankruptcy by emergency government support, according to Oded
Feller, the president of the Chamber of Commerce for Haifa and the
north.
On top of that, 30,000 reservists left
their jobs around the country when they were called up.
Most importantly, tourism died
completely in the northern beach resorts and around the Sea of
Galilee and was badly hit in the rest of the country. Even if
fighting does not break out again, there are likely to be ripple
effects on tourism into next year at least.
With the truce holding for the time
being, the Tel Aviv stock market has already recovered to within 2%
of its pre-war level and the shekel has also bounced back.
The 5% growth rate of the past three
years could be slowed, but perhaps by less than 1%, government
economists hope.
"In a couple of months, we can
recoup half the losses. The factories will work overtime," said
Shraga Brosh, the head of the Manufacturer's Association of Israel.
Foreign investment, which has fuelled
the high growth of recent years, is expected to double this year to
about $12bn, mostly in the form of acquisitions of Israeli
start-ups, he said. "Right now, there is no negative reaction.
Those people who plan to invest in Israel are keeping their
investment here. People believe the economy is strong."
According to Mr Brosh, the damage would
have been much more serious if the war had gone on even a few weeks
longer, and such economic considerations may have played a role in
the government's decision to accept the UN ceasefire.
Israel's capacity to sustain confidence
will depend on whether the truce represents the start of a lasting
peace on the northern border or only a lull before the next round in
the Arab-Israeli struggle.
The tourist industry is the economy's
canary - the first to succumb to the impact of instability - and it
has taken a beating. The number of foreign tourists arriving in the
second half of the year is expected to halve, a loss that would
represent 0.4% of GDP.
"We're getting no future bookings
whatsoever. Nobody is coming here," said Mark Feldman, the
managing director of Zion Tours in Jerusalem.
There have been a few "solidarity
tours" by pro-Israeli groups to help prop up the industry, and
there are even "Katyusha tours" of the north.
But Mr Feldman said the tours accounted
for little more than 5% of the war losses.
"The economic effects have yet to
be felt, and the long-term ramifications are very, very
serious," he said. "As British and German companies start
planning for 2007, Israel will be omitted from the brochures. So I
can't give a figure for loss of income tomorrow."
For Arabs, Lebanon war smashes Israeli army image
August 14, 2006
by Tom Perry
Guardian/UK
BEIRUT, Aug 14 (Reuters) -
Guerrillas fire rockets and Israeli soldiers weep. Hizbollah's
television station tries to convince viewers that the Middle East's
strongest army is far from invincible.
For many Arabs, the claim
is more than propaganda. They see Israeli casualties in south
Lebanon as evidence of the weaknesses in an army long held in awe by
its neighbours.
At least 116 Israeli
soldiers have been killed in more than a month of fighting between
Hizbollah and the Jewish state, which has poured thousands of troops
into Lebanon to drive the guerrillas from the border and stop rocket
fire into Israel.
Israel says its army has
killed about 520 of their fighters. Hizbollah has said 80 have been
killed.
Israeli forces for weeks
faced fierce battles with Hizbollah fighters in the south, in some
places just a few kilometres from the border, and could not stop the
guerrillas' rocket fire.
"They have overcome
fear of the Israelis, which is very common in the Middle East and is
a part of the Israeli military doctrine," Timur Goksel, former
spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, told
Reuters.
Israel's capture of the
Sinai peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
in six days in 1967 showed the Jewish state's military supremacy
over its neighbours. The war is still known by Arabs as "The
Naksa", or "The Setback".
Some Arab media have called
the Lebanon conflict the sixth Arab-Israeli war, although it is
different from previous conflicts because Israel is fighting a
guerrilla group.
Although Israel could beat
any Arab army in a conventional war, the Lebanon conflict has
exposed weakness in a guerrilla war, analysts say.
"BLED WITH TIME"
"There's no doubt that
the impression for the Arab public is that Israel is not a legendary
power and it can be bled with time," said retired Egyptian
general and military analyst Kadry Said.
Israeli army officers have
said they were held back, while Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit has
criticised Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for producing
"humiliating defeat".
Hizbollah attacks helped
drive Israel from south Lebanon in 2000 after 22 years of
occupation. That withdrawal encouraged Palestinians to take up arms
later that year in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, analysts say.
"2000 is seen as a
Hizbollah campaign that succeeded and this will be seen more as an
Israeli campaign that failed," said International Crisis Group
Senior Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani. "This was a war in
which Hizbollah was supposed to be devastated and wiped out and look
where we are now."
Hizbollah's strength this
time will also give a morale boost to Palestinians. But more
important could be its impact on the wider Arab world, especially in
Egypt and Jordan, where some sections of public opinion oppose peace
deals made by their governments with Israel, Rabbani said.
"People will look at
this and say if this group, which is blacklisted on half the planet
is able to do this, then how come our own leaders who possess actual
states with real militaries, are not even prepared to do one percent
of this," Rabbani said.
"It will show that it
is possible to say no to Israel and the U.S. and to emerge stronger
rather weaker."
August
16, 2006 Agence France Presse
Stocks Scandal Spells Doom of
Embattled Israeli Army Chief
by
Marius Schattner
Israel's
army chief, under fire for selling shares hours before launching an
offensive in Lebanon, was looking set to become the first head to
roll in the outcry over the state's handling of the month-long war.
Israel's
media have piled opprobrium on Dan Halutz since the Maariv newspaper
revealed Tuesday that he had sold shares hours before the start of
the Israeli offensive in Lebanon on July 12.
The
story, confirmed by Halutz himself, has focused the anger of many in
a country struggling to come to terms with the less than decisive
outcome of its war against the fundamentalist Hezbollah militia
sparked on July 12.
"There's
an old Romanian saying that goes like this: 'the country is burning,
but grandma is combing her hair.' The country was on fire, and all
that interested Halutz was his investment portfolio," member of
parliament Colette Avital said Tuesday.
Resignation
calls have come from parliament but also from the highest circles of
the defence establishment.
Defence
Minister Amir Peretz, also under fire for his performance since the
start of the war on July 12, defended the army chief's "loyalty
and dedication".
"His
attention is entirely devoted to the war and the success of the
army's missions," said Peretz in a statement.
"This
regrettable affair would never have captured so much attention had
the Lebanon campaign ended with clearcut victory" for Israel,
said Mark Heller, an analyst with the Jaffee Centre for Strategic
Studies.
"It
is possible that the general made mistakes, but he certainly isn't
the only one, whether at the political or military echelons,"
he told AFP.
Newspapers
pilloried Halutz Wednesday, using the scandal to vent their anger at
the man whose forces suffered unexpected setbacks at the hands of
well-armed Hezbollah militiamen.
Maariv's
editorial writer Ben Caspit was confident that the public's
perception of a general who tries to save his stocks portfolio
whilst sending his troops to the front lines would spell the end of
his career.
"He
entered this war as a prime minister designate. He is leaving it on
a stretcher," he wrote.
The
appointment last year of the former air force chief to the position
of chief of staff had received a lukewarm reception within the ranks
of the military, where some senior officers argued that a pilot was
ill-suited for the top job.
Halutz
was often criticised for being arrogant and over-estimating the air
force.
The
reproach returned to haunt him over the past month as it gradually
emerged that Israel's fighters jets were failing to inflict enough
damage on Hezbollah, which continued to rain rockets on northern
Israel until the last day of the war.
When
he was still air force chief, Halutz had ignited a controversy in
2002 when he said he had not lost any sleep over the death of 14
civilians in a strike of a top Palestinian militant in Gaza.
The
sale of his shares caused a bigger stir.
The
army chief sold shares worth 26,000 dollars on July 12 at noon,
three hours after the Hezbollah border attack which left eight
soldiers dead and two in the hands of the Lebanese militia.
A
day later, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's TA-25 index had lost 8.3
percent.
Halutz
did not deny he had sold his shares but charged he was the victim of
a smear campaign.
"They've
made me into a Shylock... I've gone into a tailspin, but I'll pull
out," he was quoted as saying by Wednesday's newspapers.
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